Olde Hornet
Well-Known Member
Health Care in America
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/poor-and-uninsured-in-texas
Geronimo Oregón was wheeled out of the intensive-care unit at Houston’s Ben Taub Hospital on April 17, 2016, his body wired with electrodes and his mother at his side. He had arrived in the emergency room six days earlier, complaining of confusion, stomach pain, and shortness of breath. Physicians had drained nearly half a gallon of fluid from around his right lung, corrected his sodium imbalance (a cause of his confusion), and relieved the worst of his pain. Now Oregón was being transferred to the step-down unit, a kind of limbo between the I.C.U. and the general ward. His new room had a vacuum pump on the wall. When the suction was on, a bright yellow fluid drained out of a tube in his nose and into a clear cannister. Every part of his body—his belly, his face, his eyes—was the same vivid shade. He had jaundice, the result of old red blood cells leaking into his tissues rather than being cleared from his body as waste. In medicine, this is known as a stigmata, a physical mark of illness. Oregón was dying of liver failure. A calculation made using his blood work showed that, unless he received a liver transplant, he had only an eighteen per cent chance of surviving the next ninety days.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/poor-and-uninsured-in-texas
Geronimo Oregón was wheeled out of the intensive-care unit at Houston’s Ben Taub Hospital on April 17, 2016, his body wired with electrodes and his mother at his side. He had arrived in the emergency room six days earlier, complaining of confusion, stomach pain, and shortness of breath. Physicians had drained nearly half a gallon of fluid from around his right lung, corrected his sodium imbalance (a cause of his confusion), and relieved the worst of his pain. Now Oregón was being transferred to the step-down unit, a kind of limbo between the I.C.U. and the general ward. His new room had a vacuum pump on the wall. When the suction was on, a bright yellow fluid drained out of a tube in his nose and into a clear cannister. Every part of his body—his belly, his face, his eyes—was the same vivid shade. He had jaundice, the result of old red blood cells leaking into his tissues rather than being cleared from his body as waste. In medicine, this is known as a stigmata, a physical mark of illness. Oregón was dying of liver failure. A calculation made using his blood work showed that, unless he received a liver transplant, he had only an eighteen per cent chance of surviving the next ninety days.
