Mom's Stroke and Universal Health Care

Mom was only 37-years young when she had her first stroke. It devastated my family. Technically, it was an aneurysm of the brain. But to my 14-year-old mind, and the seven-year-old feelings of my little sister, it was proof that we lived in an indifferent country, where someone whom you loved could be in extreme peril--at death's door--and yet there was a social stigma that to ask for help would be imposing on others, and a shaming proof of your lack of self-reliance.

I had just gotten off the high school bus and my parents were waiting in the car to pick me up. I knew something was wrong when I heard my mother, in agony, crying in the back seat of the car. She had laid down so her head would't hurt so much, and she was rubbing her temples and moaning, "Oh, God, please don't let this happen. Why won't this headache stop?" The "headache" had been going on for several hours, my father told me. "I don't know what to do. She took some aspirin but it's getting worse."

"Oh,God," my mother went on. "I can't be sick. I can't afford to be sick."

I hated that phrase, "CAN'T AFFORD." It seemed like the operative commandment of our lives, as poor people. We couldn't afford this....we couldn't afford that....now I was learning that we "couldn't afford" to be sick. I already had a strong sense that we really couldn't afford to "LIVE," and that we might not be worthy of living as poor people. Our needs might be an inconvenience to others. As a little boy, I had learned how difficult it was for people to share. Not that there weren't good people in the world in 1962--I am about to tell you about some. But there was a collective shaming that permeated social structure and was effective in keeping people from asking for help when they needed it.

"Dad," I asked?" Shouldn't we go to see a doctor?"

Dad stiffened, and I could tell the question had challenged his pride and made him feel disempowered.

"We can't afford it," he said. But there was something in his voice that was telling me that he was thinking that he had to afford it or things might be even more terribly wrong than they were right now.

"I can't afford to go to the doctor, Richard. We don't have any insurance and we don't have any money.Oh, oh, oh, God, make it stop!!!!" My mother was holding her head, trying to find a way to alleviate the pressure that was building from within her brain. My sister was crying and holding my mothers head. She looked at me for answers and I became frantic.

"Dad, who cares about the MONEY!!! We gotta get help!!!!"

My father's eyes told me he was frightened, and angry about the constant predicament his family lived in on a daily basis. He started the old plymouth's engine and pulled out his wallet. "I got enough for gas, but that's about it."

"No, John, I can't go to the doctor. Just take me home." And then, in her agitation, something happened in my mother's brain and she screamed out in great agony and then passed out. She's still breathing," my father said and jumped out of the back seat where he had gone to check on her, to the front, and put the car in gear to go. It was 15-miles of mountainous country road between Jacksonville and Sonora, California. It was pointless to call an ambulance because it would have doubled the time in getting her to a hospital in Sonora.

"I don't know what I'm gonna do," my father said. I can't pay a doctor. And what if mom needs to go in the hospital? We can't pay for that."

"What kind of a world is this?" my child's mind thought to itself. "How come people have to suffer like this when they don't have any money? Why don't people care? How come we have to live by the commandment, "We Can't Afford It," when it comes to our very lives?" I raced through everything I knew about my mother's work at the cannery and asked my father, "Mom talks about people at the cannery having Teamster's insurance. Doesn't she have it?" "No. You have to worked steady to get it. She only gets seasonal work so she doesn't log enough hours. She was hoping to eventually get it. Damn!!!!" my father cursed and slammed the steering wheel of the plymouth.

I was too young and afraid to accept the fact that we were about to enter a long and dark chapter in my family's life. My mother, despite her part-time work, brought home most of the money for us to live on. My father went from job to job and had difficulty working with others. World War II had left him with deep personal demons and a meanness that included being abusive.

We pulled into the first hospital in Sonora, which was the private hospital. It was a fine facility and I thought that any place that was as pretty as this would surely be able to help my mother get better. Dad ran into the reception area and described the situation to the nurse at the front desk. I saw them taking another patient into the hospital on a gurney and thought someone would come right out for mom. But then Dad came running to the car and jumped behind the wheel again. "Where are we going?" I cried in panic. "Won't they take mama? No. The nurse said we have to go to the county hospital. That's where people go who have no money. I should have thought of that," my father said as he, indirectly, acknowledged his own panic. We drove to the other side of town, across some rickety railroad tracks, to an old brick building that could have passed for an eighteenth century prison, without the barbed wire. I was shocked. This place looked scary. I thought my mother would die in this place.The private hospital had looked so nice. It was hopeful. "We can't afford it," ran through my mind.

What is a child to do when he sees his parents intimidated by the social structure of their lives? What are people to do when they don't have the power and the comfort of money? My mother would be shuffled around for several days and my father would be forced to focus on the crisis at hand and to ask people for help. Asking for help was hard for him, but it would open up his world, for awhile anyway, and give me and my sister a greater sense of safety and hope.

One of the best phone calls my father made was to Hunt-Wesson Foods in Oakdale, California, where my mother worked. The hospital wanted him to check on the insurance, even though he told them mom didn't have any. I don't know what happened at my mother's plant that day, but some how, some way, they "calculated" that she had logged enough hours in the season and that she would be covered under the Teamster's health plan. I think there was an angel working in that Teamster's office. An angel that could make the difference between night and day. It became the difference between hope and despair. It became the difference between a "have" and a "have not" person. "And my mother and her family were still the same people," I thought to myself. And so the cruel contradictions and hypocrisies of my country became more clear to me. But all I cared about was mom. I wanted my mom back.

That very same day, mom was moved from "the hospital for poor people" to the nice, modern private hospital, "for people with money." My 14-year-old mind was processing how different "reality" was for different people. Brain specialists were brought in and the distinction between a stroke and an aneurysm was made clear. Sonora's level of medical expertise was insufficient and mom was transported to Stockton, where a prominent neurologist would be in charge of her recovery. Thousands of dollars were spent on a poor lady who had nothing--except two children to raise, and a war veteran with post traumatic stress disorder to keep afloat. We all affect each other. Each person's death diminishes us....

Mom would stay in the hospital for months. The Teamster's--not our government--would make an investment in her value as a human being. She would go on to work for them for another twenty years and rise to the level of a laboratory technician, working with a microscope and analyzing food bacteria. She would pay perfectly good income taxes to the government for all those years. But first she would have to learn to walk again and see again. She was paralyzed on her left side and her left eye was bandaged to preclude the double vision she was experiencing. At fourteen, I became the primary cook and house cleaner for the family. My father went looking for another job and he stayed with a logging company, as a truck driver, for over a year, while my mother recovered before returning to her job. We lived in a small mountain community of about 125 people and it was heartwarming to have many of the neighbors volunteer to help bathe my mother and help her to learn to walk again, and bring complete ham or turkey or beef dinners to the house. It gave me some sense that people cared, to a great degree. But it still confirmed my observations that they were intimidated by the thought of finding themselves as vulnerable as my mother, in a society that was intimidating in its neglect of basic human needs and the sharing of social wealth.

I recently listened to an address by the highly regarded journalist, Bill Moyers, of PBS, who was talking at a media reform conference about the "Plantation mentality," of the American status quo and the politicians who work for them. Plantation ownership has its privileges. And Mr. Moyers was pointing out that a plantation mentality has the privilege to ignore social injustice for as long as public ignorance and intimidation prevails.

I have written this short story of a mother's stroke and it's horrible impact on a family's life because the issue of Universal Health Care is still not resolved. There is still a plantation mentality of "haves," over "have not's," in this country that allows politicians to ignore the basic human needs of its people. John Edwards talks about it in his "Two America's" campaign speeches. I am now two years older than my mother, who died of her second stroke at the age of 57. That means I have watched 45-years of American plantation politics without a resolution to the problem of people not having health care. At 59, I do not have a primary doctor or health insurance. I am like the seven million Californian's and 45-million American's who "can't afford," to be sick. At 59, the doctors recommend that people my age have an annual check-up; a test for prostate health for men; a blood cholesterol test; screenings for cancer and many other preventative measures. I have had none. I pray my body lasts a little longer, but I know I'm playing with the odds.

45-years and still no Universal Health Care? And the plantation owners have come to a place where even they "can't afford," to pay for the health insurance of their employees. My neighbor is a Ford Motor Company retiree and he reports that insurance cuts are coming to his plan. He is in his late 70's and worries about the future. In California, even a Republican governor is now proposing health coverage for the uninsured. The meanest amongst his plantation mentality are upset with him. I wish him well in trying to bring some social justice to his people. But research indicates his plan is NOT truly "Universal" and cowtows to the insurance industry. A better plan is California Senate Bill 840. You can watch a 3-minute or 20-minute review of this plan by going to OneCarePlan.org on the Web. We are the richest nation on the face of the earth. We can spend eight-billion dollars a month on a President's war. But we "can't afford," health insurance for our own people. My friend went to Greece for a vacation this summer and broke his arm mountain climbing. He wanted to pay at the hospital and the doctor said, "It's covered. We have national health insurance. The people of Greece have paid it for you. Go spend your tourist dollars in the town. That will be payment enough." It's marvelous what people can do when they don't have a plantation mentality. When they share a goal of protecting each other. I was just visited by a couple from France. As we talked about health care issues and he spoke of their universal health care, he smiled and said, "Our government treats us very well. We pay more taxes but we enjoy the benefit from it." I remembered having looked at my paycheck last week and the $22-dollars in what conservatives think of as "evil taxes," that I am paying for social security. I would have gladly payed $44-dollars for a better and more secure social security program. I don't believe I will have any "security" other than this program. And I would gladly pay $22-dollars on my next paycheck (or whatever it takes) to have Universal Health Care. But what we all now call a "Do Nothing Congress," won't give me the option to prevent the health calamity that could occur to me at any time. Plantation owners have always been like this.

45-years sense mom's stroke and the politicians of the plantation owners can still find excuses to avoid basic American human needs. Before, they told us if we got a good corporate job, we'd be covered. But the corporations "can't afford it." And because of deficits and war and "high taxes," and any other decoy politicians can devise to keep us ignorant, we can't have health coverage because, "We Can't Afford It." I know a "con man" when I hear one. I heard a con man talking about dismantling social security recently. I know when I'm being conned about the "unaffordability" of universal health care. I know when the plantation owner is conning me. I know when I'm being conned into subservience on the plantation.

WE CAN AFFORD IT!

WE IGNORE IT!

IT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE TO THE MENTALITY OF THE PLANTATION!

For 45-years, I have watched this con game played on the American people. IT IS SICK. AND IT MAKES US SICK AS A NATION.

No Congressman or Senator or President of the United States should receive any better health care than the "least" of us. It's our money they are spending, not there's.

What we "CAN'T AFFORD," are politicians who think like plantation owners.

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