Squeaky Wheel

I’m at the age where I don’t care what strangers think of me. I’ve been this way for most of my adult life. But at 55, it’s set in stone. I speak my mind, sometimes too loudly. I ask for what I want, question what I don’t understand and challenge what I find unreasonable. Sometimes, like now, when I’m in post-op pain and feeling angry about being physically dependent on others, I'm brazen. But either way, I don’t care, because wherever I go, I’m usually old enough to be somebody’s mother.

Like the doctors and nurses milling around me in the emergency room, where I languished for hours yesterday afternoon. I had busted out of the hospital early after my hip replacement, and after spending a little too much time sitting at my writer’s desk, my legs swelled.

Post-op legs are tree trunks. They must move every hour to keep the circulation going. I lost track of time and soon noticed that I could not flex my ankles. Fluid and blood had pooled in both legs, turning the one with the new hip orange.

Panic struck. The highest risk for me right now is a blood clot.

So off we went to the ER, where I was quickly ushered into a room and told to wait for a doctor.

They were busy. It was Good Friday, and there were people on gurneys and in wheelchairs much worse off than I. Still, after nearly 2 hours of laying with my legs propped high on pillows, I was getting cranky.

When a woman came to take my $200 (!) co-pay, I said, “I’m not giving you $200 because at this rate, I’m not sure I’m even staying here,” I said.

“Haven’t you seen a doctor?” she asked, trying again to secure my credit card number.

“I’m not paying for care I haven’t received.”

Within minutes, a doctor shuffled in, looking irritated and disinterested, as if just having been awoken from a nap.

How pathetic and wrong is it that the threat of my not spending my $200 in their ER brought the doctor, however reluctantly, to my room?

And what of the rest of the patients waiting for care, not to mention people everywhere, who cannot speak up for themselves?