Healthcare Woes Hitting (My) Home

We moved my mother-in-law in with us a week ago yesterday. The plan was for her to move in temporarily in a couple of weeks, but that plan went quickly astray.

It was a 10 PM trip to extract her from the bed where, we had just learned, she had been for going on three days except for excruciatingly painful hobbles to the bathroom. See both her knees are shot, and she has had to wait to afford the replacement surgery she needs. She had to wait to save enough from her part-time door greeter job - yes, at Wally World - to buy private health insurance, and then wait out a waiting period for the benefits she needed to be covered by her policy.

While she was waiting, what was left of her left knee joint wasted away. The final deterioration had occurred literally overnight. Now when she moves her left leg she gets a jolt of needless bone-on-bone agony.

I say needless because she was told over two years ago she needed the surgery, but she had no means to pay for it. She is 67 years old and the widow of a veteran of two wars, WWII and Korea. She had enough income from his Social Security and her part-time paycheck to subsist, but only just subsist. She wasn't eligible for Medicaid or TennCare as we call in the Volunteer State because she was self-reliant and wouldn't just quit and throw herself on the mercy of the state.

She could well have died at home alone unable to move with a known and correctable condition. We were in a position to take her in and help her make it just by chance and proximity. She is scheduled for the first of her two planned knee replacements in two weeks. We are hopeful she will be able to walk pain free again someday.

I can't help but feel angry over the pain she has felt for the last two years, and the agony she is in today.

She deserves better from this society, as do millions of others.