A little over a year ago, I took my aged father for a specialist visit. The appointment, which I still recall with painful clarity, put me in mind of the Anglo-Saxon poem known simply as “The Ruin.” The manuscript is damaged, so what remains is itself a kind of ruin, a meditation on former splendor contrasted with brokenness and fragmentation. It struck me then, as it does now, as a fitting metaphor for the current state of healthcare in our nation.
The receptionist hands me a tablet and stylus and tells me to register my father. There are a series of questions on the screen, all related to his bladder. In addition to recently losing his vision, my father is now hard of hearing, so I begin: “How many times a day do you have to. . .” But I stop myself as I realize how embarrassing, even dehumanizing, this will be in a crowded waiting room. My father waves his hand in the air and says with his characteristic midwestern bluntness, “Just answer down the middle for all of them. They don’t read that sh*t anyway.”
The wife of a couple nearby cups her hand to her mouth in
Read more...
