Published: July 15, 2008 09:16 pm         

LION AND THE LAMB: Health care

After a delightful July 4 picnic at a neighbor's side yard, I made my weary way home, not entirely sure that I'd make it.

I went to bed early. In two hours I wakened, violently shaking, shivering. I pulled up more covering and warmed up a bit, but the convulsive shivering continued. Constantly.

My wife, wide awake by now, urged me to "call the doctor," but I knew that doctors do not make house calls at two o'clock in the morning. I called 911, and asked for transport to the hospital. The ambulance arrived within a half hour (bless them!) and I arrived at the Emergency Room.

The examining physician told me that my temperature was 102 plus. He said I needed to be admitted and put to bed.

But then he asked me, "Are you financially able to pay these expenses?" Of course I said yes, and I was X-rayed and carried to the fifth floor, where there was not only a hospital bed for me, but also a sofa bed for my wife. She was permitted to stay with me for the entire 36 hours that I was there.

But always there was the lingering question: What if I had said that I could not pay?

I remembered seeing, probably on public television, pictures of an old woman, barefoot and in night clothing, wandering and confused outside a public hospital. It seemed she had gone to the ER of a for-profit hospital, and they had put her in a taxi and sent her to the public hospital, where the cabbie dropped her off and drove away.

What if I had been penniless, that early Sunday morning? Would the good people in ER have given me two Tylenol and sent me home in a cab?

It is hard to say enough good things about the treatment I got at Cumberland Medical Center. All my attendants were cheerful and friendly. They even laughed at my wise cracks.

The room service food was by far the best I had ever experienced in four or five previous hospital stays. I was given a complete menu list and told to order anything at all. I could even have "built" my own pizza. Feeling pretty good soon after Sunday's dawn, I ordered more than I needed. By far. And yes, my wife received the very same treatment, food wise.

But what if I had been unable to pay?

The tentative diagnosis of my illness was a mild case of pneumonia. And I, 85 years old, remembered the saying that pneumonia is the old folks' friend. But I was told that my symptoms could have come from a tick bite. X-rays seemed inconclusive. The attending physician was quite willing to speculate with me, and by Monday reported that my white cell count was far down from the danger zone. She told me to get a ride and go home.

I got a ride and came home, but that nagging question remained.

What if I had been unable to pay?

I know that the law says that all visitors to Emergency Room must be cared for.

But what if there are two levels of care, one for rich folks and another for the poverty stricken?

Thinking that after I had been freed from hospital I was back to my normal vigorous self, I came home to find that I was/am pretty feeble.

But that question stayed with me.

I called the hospital and asked to speak with an administrator. I told her my question. She did not hesitate to answer.

The emergency staff are required to ask the question, and if the answer is that the patient is in poverty, "We have a staff of social workers who come in to offer assistance, to fill out forms, to get the financial aid that they — and the hospital — must have."

Once again I was delighted, not only with the answer to my query, but by the friendly response it elicited.

Cumberland Medical Center stands in a largely rural area of Tennessee. There is a great deal of poverty hereabouts, and the hospital has had to find ways to care for indigents, and not to go broke.

After receiving such excellent care from so many excellent people, I am most happy to sing their praises.