Despair. We’re six weeks in this joint despite Sophie being ready for discharge over a week ago. First of all, the nurses, care partners, doctors and folks who clean and turn and otherwise help have been wonderful, and I have no complaints. I am deeply grateful to them for saving her life and for so compassionately caring for her every day. That being said, I’ve had ample time here to have reinforced what I already know: the incredible broken-ness of our healthcare system. I am utterly whipped. A colossally inept “Case Management” team has let another week go by, a week of constantly changing “case managers” who apparently don’t communicate with one another so that each reinvents the proverbial wheel and dumps their findings on me. I will forever think of the UCLA Medical System as an enormous field with a barn whose stalls keep animals locked inside, powerless in agency and at the mercy of systems, siloed delivery systems crippled by processes and vague directives that couch for-profit aims in the language of corporate service models. It means that no one, and I mean no one is accountable for the ridiculous inefficiency that is preventing us from leaving our stall in the barn. You know I am a tough woman, but at this point I am an old gray mare who ain’t what she used to be and have been reduced to copious weeping (this morning) as yet another day goes by and we seem to be no closer to being released. This, despite the fact that Sophie is good. She has been eligible for discharge for well over a week, and I have taken a leave of absence from my beloved job to get things in order in this new life. We languish, are told to be patient as these things take time, or, worse, in so many words, that we are a burden, that we ask too many questions, that we are too demanding. The case manager who slammed me with a packet of meaningless papers told me last night that she’d worked ALL DAY on Sophie’s case, yet when I looked at the papers I saw nothing new, nothing that I hadn’t been informed about for nearly two weeks and — well — what’s the use? I am learning the art of surrender even as I am gaslit. There’s something interesting and terrible about that.
Dearest Sophie- It is a blessing to see your beautiful face. I'm so grateful you are still here, in spite of the fuckery we call our health care system. And Elizabeth. I know. We midwives have a hell of a time getting our clients in to the hospital if they need to go there. It is an absolute nightmare, with one of our babies ending up in high-risk care because we couldn't find a bed ANYWHERE for her momma to go in a timely way. It is a complete disgrace. I can't say enough about the current situation except that the nurses we know are beyond exhausted and overworked and the whole thing is just dreadful.
Much loving kindness from the PNW.
Beth
xxxxx your eloquence about it sends out waves..