Friday, March 19, 2010

These are not our Golden years

bf5432e9d11a9e6c Why is it that with age comes not only the usual aches and pains and gray hair, but illnesses, Alzheimer's, cancer, medication, and  around the clock nursing care? My mother died eleven years ago from Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. If she were alive today she would be 81. Her twin sister also is suffering from a pulmonary disease. (see note below)She lost two brothers from heart attacks. She has three other sisters, another set of twins; one which is bed ridden in a nursing home with Alzheimer's and Osteoporosis, and the other who just got out of four months rehab in a nursing home from falling, weight loss, surgery, and the beginning of Alzheimer's. The last sister is house bound in a wheel chair from falling so many times after two knee replacements. My dad is also mostly house bound and falls all the time, has had seven bypasses, and surgery on his brain to dissolve a blood clot. My husband has Buergers disease, and had a stroke the 18th of December, 2008.
I could go on  and on for long time and list more illnesses and disease of many family members, all of who are getting up in age. This was not what our golden years were imagined to be.
Our President wants to pass a Health care bill this weekend.  He has stated that he wants it passed once and for all so he can  go on his trip out of our country.This scares me to the point that I am worried about how all those I love  will be able to afford health insurance. Most of them are on social security and Medicare only. This bill may do away with Medicare and  the social security will be cut, most likely in my lifetime or theirs.  Some don't even have insurance of any kind because a provider wont pick them up from either a precondition or high risk. The ones that do have health insurance already are seeing their premiums climbing higher and higher each year like ours has. My husband and I pay over $1000.00 a month for personal health Insurance and if our President succeeds with this bill, it will be people like us that will suffer from higher and higher premiums so that off the wall providers will pick up everyone forced to get health Insurance that wont pay most of their care.  And when it gets so high we cant afford it, we will be forced to take a fly by night health insurance or be fined by the government. The government will be telling us who we will go see, what medications and surgery's they think we need and which ones they think we don't need. They will be your doctor and making decisions, not your regular doctors treating you for the best care. If your old and dying, they want you to stay home and suffer, ride it out, your going to die anyway so you don't need a doctor. Doctors will not be giving us the care we all need because they will only be getting paid for the lesser care and not the tests, drugs, and surgery's they know we really need.
We are all going to get old. Some of us sooner than we want. Shouldn't we be comfortable in our old age, treated with dignity, and given a chance to get the help we need so not to suffer?
It saddens me to tears to see those I love hurting and suffering. To see so many loved ones be buried from diseases and illnesses. I hope when my time comes, and it will, that I will be asleep when it does. That death will be quick and painless. I am not scared of the death, but the suffering. I am not scared of leaving this world we live in, but leaving the ones I love behind.

*Note..After I posted this on my blog, I recieved word that my moms twin, Zanie Anderson, passed away around 7pm yesterday, March 20 2010. She and mother are walking hand in hand now in the sight of God where there is no pain or suffering  from IPF.)

2 comments:

  1. I'm 30, but I think on this future quite a bit. I don't know much about the health bill. I'm hesitant to support government involvement in something of this magnitude when they can't even do a budget...kinda scary.

    The only thing I'm sure about anymore is that I'm not sure.

    You will be in my prayers Betty. We all need a little calm and positive thoughts and energy surrounding us right now, don't we?

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  2. Today is a sad day . Obama singed the heath care bill . I hope the republicans can fix it or at lest get the force you to buy insurance part out . I did see in today's paper that part of the bill says all big restaurants will have to put calorie count on there menus. that is the only good thing I have seen of this bill.

    db

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