Our windmills

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Fighting the windmills of the American health care system sometimes drives me almost to despair. Naturally, we should always use it when our nerves are on edge. But I’m learning not to lose myself in it.

This is not a very good story. It doesn’t follow the internal logic, it is confusing, confusing and hard to understand. “That doesn’t make any sense!” is the most common reaction. No.

About 18 months ago, Victor was diagnosed with cataracts. A perfectly normal sign of aging that no one likes to hear about. But for someone who has been ill as long and seriously as Victor, the signs of old age are not insolence, but an unexpected privilege. Finally a find that does not mean anything bad, nothing life-threatening. Something that can be corrected with conventional surgery.

Then it was not so easy. Of course not. Before the cataract could be treated, the growths that had developed as a side effect of the transplant drugs had to be removed. Among them was a well-hidden rare crab. Several months of chemotherapy followed, and once it was completed, Victor woke up with unilateral facial paralysis, which prevented him from closing his other eye for several months. But everything was finally over, and it was possible to set the last date for the operation. We celebrated early, imagining that it would soon be possible again when Victor could finally see clearly again. I think we tried our luck with this one.

The operation has been cancelled. At the last moment. At first it was said that the health insurance company withdrew the permit. The hospital then no longer works with the health insurance company. Then the case began with the coordinator. And then it all started all over again. It’s been like this for five or six weeks now. Weeks that we, and especially Viktor, spend on phones, in queues and mail chains. We deliver the documents ourselves, break the wall and again stand in line for the next one. At first I couldn’t think of anything else, day or night, or talk about anything else. I vented my anger, strategized, grasped at straws. Until Victor rebuked me quite harshly. “Stop,” he said. – It does not help. It’s wasted energy.” He often didn’t even pick up the phone when worried friends called. For the same reason: “I don’t like to talk about it all the time. Either way, it takes up too much space.”

Since then there has been no more grumbling, cursing and whining. Only short, factual statements. I confess that at first it was difficult for me. My thoughts did not revolve about anything else. But I understood that it would eat us, us, our daily lives, our work, our time together. Our luck. Victor is a veteran of this fight, having fought in it for over twenty years. He developed strategies, had to develop them in order not to lose the taste for life, in order to be able to continue working. Therefore, he finds the comparison with windmills wrong. “I am not Don Quixote,” he says. “I’m struggling with something very real.” And he refuses to dissolve in this struggle. Gradually, I also manage to think about something else, talk about something else. Work. Cooking, eating, laughing. Live. And hope.

Source: Blick