I am a 63 year old woman and I have painful arthritic damage in my right knee. I have been consulting with orthopaedists, I have had synthetic cartilage injections, arthroscopic surgery and other treatments, and I have come to realize that this condition is not going to heal by itself or with conservative treatment. On January 15 I am having total knee replacement surgery.
The knee is a hinge. A hinge is a point at which direction may change, in this case, the direction of force, the direction of bone structure.
Barack Obama will be inaugurated as President of the United States on January 20, 2009, just a few days after my surgery. This event too is a hinge, a place where directions may change.
I have an adult daughter who has lived in Europe with her family for over fifteen years. I spend a lot of time with her, everything considered, and one of the many things I have learned is that the American health care system as in effect right now, on January 9, 2009, is broken. And that it can be made better, since the health care systems of all other industrialized countries work better than ours, by any measure you chose to apply.
This blog will be both a personal story for the benefit of my family and friends, and a chronicle of my personal journey through our existing health care system, the latter with the hope that we may be able to use this time to change direction.
I am relatively wealthy and I have good medical insurance. My surgery will be performed by a highly qualified specialist at a very highly-ranked hospital in the San Francisco Bay Area. This will be a journey, then, through the top layer of a highly stratified health care system. I will not use the real names of my doctor, the hospital, or any of the people I meet. Mistakes will be made in the course of my treatment, because nothing human is perfect, but it is not my intention to identify individuals, either to praise them or to blame them. My interests here are both more narrow (in that I want to regain my mobility) and more broad (in that I am interested in the reform of our entire system of health care delivery).
Comments from readers are welcome.
About Me
- The Gimp
- I am a 63 year old woman and I had painful arthritic damage in my right knee. On January 15, 2009 my right knee was replaced surgically. The knee is a hinge. A hinge is a point at which direction may change, in this case, the direction of force, the direction of bone structure. Barak Obama was inaugurated as President of the United States on January 20, 2009, just a few days after my surgery. This event too is a hinge, a place where directions may change. This blog will be both a personal story for the benefit of my family and friends, and a chronicle of my journey through our existing health care system, the latter with the hope that we may be able to use this time to change direction. I am relatively wealthy and I have good medical insurance. My surgery was performed by a highly qualified specialist at a very highly-ranked hospital in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is a journey, then, through the top layer of a highly stratified health care system. Comments from readers are always welcome.
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