Looking Deeply at a Social Problem
medical & public health
The Harsh Truth
By Brittany Wetklow
I was not familiar with the term ‘essential workers’ before the start of the pandemic. I wondered why the government would praise us for our bravery and solitude, but refused to provide us with the proper protective equipment and compensation we needed. After three months of being away from my family and living in a hotel room, it’s unfortunately not surprising that I developed severe depression and anxiety. I was finally released from the mission because of my mental state as well as the fact that my apartment lease was coming to an end back in San Diego.
Corporate Cannibal
By Anonymous
Blindly playing my part in American healthcare as a pawn for legalized criminals, the capitalistic corporate cannibals who ran my clinic. They salivate over large profits prioritizing them over people as corporations did in the gilded age. Patients and healthcare teams are their life support, exploiting our lives is their literal sport. The pandemic gave me a glimpse into how sinister corporate greed in healthcare can be. It gave me a chance to navigate the dark and twisted side of the healthcare system I one day hope to be a light in as a physician.
Lifting the Burden so People Can Live
By Anonymous
We as a society should work together to make a change that will include the regulation of the pharmaceutical industry. In turn, this will allow the members of the low-to-moderate income bracket to have affordable medical necessities. This will allow struggling families an opportunity to focus on other aspects of their lives besides that of medicine. They can live more fully rather than cutting corners to afford medical prescriptions needed for survival.
Western Medicine’s Superiority Complex
By Anonymous
I am not anti-Western medicine. Western medicine is great for operating on medical trauma, vaccines and providing fast solutions for symptoms when effective. However, this relief is often short-term and leads to harsh side-effects. Take for example, a nerve block that I had which had no effect on my symptoms and instead left my legs numb and weak; This as a result, makes walking long distances difficult. And note, I also became resistant to treatment because of the amount of time it took doctors to take my symptoms seriously and take action.
In the U.S. Healthcare System We Are Customers, Not Patients
By Ella Lee
Four years ago, when it hadn't been too long since I first moved to San Diego, I started feeling pain in my right ankle. I endured the pain for several months, because I didn’t have insurance at that time. Also, I knew it would take days and weeks to finally see an orthopedic specialist. I have also heard from and seen people who got bombarded with expensive medical bills after their visits to doctors. The complicated process, anticipation of waiting, and the unpredictable amount of medical bills kept me from visiting the doctors here in the United States.
An Unhealthy Ideology
By Andrea N Lopez Huizar
The most heartbreaking story that I heard and experienced was about a friend of mine, who had her mother diagnosed with cancer at the time I met her. She was really desperate because the hospital of the town did not provide the necessary treatment for her mom, since her medical insurance did not cover the payment of the treatment, and her family did not have any way to pay for it. In addition, her father could not provide her mother’s treatment because he had advanced diabetes.
Viral Individualism
By Anonymous
Individualism in our country led to the massive Coronavirus cases in our country, but this individualism isn’t just becoming a problem in our country, it’s been an issue throughout our history. Our country has been built on our individualistic culture, and many of the other issues caused by our culture have been brought to attention due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Unemployment and lack of healthcare have been two issues that Americans have been suffering with all throughout history, but many of the people in our country did not care since it did not directly affect them. Now though due to the consequences of the pandemic, more people are suffering this fate, and finally understand the difficulties.
In Remembrance of My Mother
By Hannah Jung
I am 21 years old. Old enough to buy alcohol at a store and confidently show my ID to the cashier. Old enough to finally understand why my dad enjoys the flavor of strong scented mushrooms. Old enough to map out the path to my future without the guidance of my parents, and old enough to gulp down the overwhelming emotions to look composed and mature. But, I’m 21 years old, not old enough to possibly imagine a life without my mom. Impossible to move forward without her presence for even a second. Where the world without her seems strange, dark, cold, and empty. No words of comfort and condolences are able to heal the deepest part of my heart.
Street Address and Health
By Annsana Biju
My family as well as many of the Porter Ranch residents had been seeing the air grow thicker and some felt sick with symptoms including dizziness, abnormal coughing, and difficulty breathing. All residents who felt affected were asked to pack up and move out in the subsequent days. Due to the near unlivable environment in my hometown, my family as well as many others were encouraged to reside elsewhere for around half a year while Aliso Canyon Gas Company worked on fixing the leak and restoring the environment to what it once was. What this experience of mine highlights is that when air quality conditions are poor, people are not expected to live in that area as it could lead to short-term as well as long-term threats to an individual’s health.
Bridging the Gap in Healthcare
By Asma Rehman
The system of healthcare isn’t the way I thought it was as I grew up. It is more evident that there are contradictions in this system. These contradictions can be seen when there are providers out there who refuse to treat patients just because of their race. The quality of healthcare given to a poor family vs. an upper class family is a night and day difference. The heartbreaking part of this all is that kids don’t even know what racism is, but the way these systems are set up they will eventually catch on to the idea that not everyone is treated the same.
Not Seeing ME/CFS
By James Holcomb
Although Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) has been viewed as a mental illness for decades, there has been evidence since at least the 1990s that ME/CFS is a physiological disease. Only now are people, government administrators, and healthcare workers beginning to see it as the complex, disabling, neuroimmune disease it is.
We, as Human Beings
By Anonymous
I used to love to use this sentence to start my writing: “ We as human beings....” However, under this long dark pandemic, people and society are incredibly divided. Instead of the virus, people regard each other as enemies. Separation replaced united; the definition of “We” no longer exists. Whenever I saw those traveling pictures and protests against wearing masks to achieve personal comfort, I questioned myself: when we lost the ability to distinguish reality and lost compassion, are we still human beings.
Stranger Than Fiction
By Anonymous
Four years ago, my grandfather was dying from pancreatic cancer, and in hopes of curing him, my aunt and uncle, decided to buy a pseudoscience medicine called miracle mineral solution. The claim of this medicine was that it cured malaria, HIV, and cancer among many other diseases. Unfortunately, my aunt and uncle were not diligent in their pursuit, and they were unable to understand that the medicine contained industrial bleach. I can attest from my experience of viewing my grandfather’s cancer progression, that the industrial bleach only made things worse and caused him more pain. It is for this reason, that when I say pseudoscience can impact us all indirectly, I truly mean it, as it is always possible for us to have friends or family members that believe in such misinformation.
A Long Way From Medical Treatment
By Mengyuan Chai
The doctor said my grandpa only had a bad cold after checking my grandpa's tongue and listening to his heartbeat. My uncle asked the doctor to do a full CT test and physical examination. But the doctor said that they did not have the equipment for these tests. He said that they already asked the official health department for the fund to buy the machine, but they needed to go through a lot of checks and departments to get the money. So my uncle took my grandpa home with some medicine for a bad cold. However, my grandpa did not feel better after taking medication. He could not talk clearly and always cough badly… So my uncle decided to take my grandpa back to the capital to do full examination quickly. After the complete test in Beijing, we found out that my grandpa had Alzheimer's disease.
The High Cost of Health
By Anonymous
We are all human being. We will get sick or even a surgery sometimes. My story is a good example that accident can’t be predicted. You will never know that when the accident and disease will come to you. No one expects the Covid-19 will sweeping across the United States and making over 100,000 deaths. Recently, some patients were received a Covid-19 bill which exceeded $800,000(Live). In order to solve the imperfect medical system, we need government, people and hospitals to collaborate on this mission.
Scapegoat for the Plague
By Anonymous
The situation that Chinese people are facing in the pandemic period is almost the same as that when the first group of the Chinese immigrated to the US 150 years ago. In the book A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki, the history of Chinese immigrants is depicted. The Chinese in history were a racial group that was often discriminated against and suffered attacks. The Chinese were exploited as cheap labor for whites. They worked in mines, built railroads, helped to develop agriculture and did laundry for communities. Chinese workers made a lot of contributions to the development of the American society, but they were viewed as aliens who deprived white men of their working opportunities and thus they became targets of resentment.
Misplaced Hate as the Force Behind Mass Shootings
By Richard Kim
There may be a sort of numbness in these shooters. They have lost their ability to care for anyone else, even themselves. “Societies are held together by a web of social bonds that give individuals a sense of being part of a collective and engaged in a project larger than the self” (Hedges), and then these social bonds do not exist, a person’s mental state can start to waver and turn very dark.
Unhealthy Country
By Saad Hassan
Try and picture this scenario. One day you get out bed, not feeling particularly well. You decide to go and visit the doctor, in hopes of diagnosing your illness. Upon arrival, you are told that there is a co-payment that needs to be fulfilled before seeing the doctor. You exit the office and head to the bank in order to withdraw a sufficient amount of money. During this process, you begin to contemplate if this visit is truly worth the price of admission. Maybe you could shrug off the illness and feel healthier in a couple of days? This is an experience I witnessed far too often during the summer of 2017, when I had the pleasure of shadowing a physician and directly interacting with patients.
Failing to Support Us When it Matters Most
By Anonymous
My grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer in her 40’s and passed away before I was born, but it propelled my mom to pursue a career as an oncology nurse. My mom has been an oncology nurse for 25 years, and over the course of her career she has treated hundreds of patients. Most days she comes home with stories of them, how sweet her new 11 year old patient is and his weird obsession with Star Wars, the patient who’s cancer has gone into remission after months of care, or the 42-year-old mom battling breast cancer who was just admitted under her care. She shares their joy, their anxiety over the sight of needles, their odd sense of humor, and even sometimes pain of their brief stay. So, most days I see her experience the typical emotions associated with a career, the stress, frustration, the bright moments, but I have learned that she hides a lot of them too. Maybe a few months later her patient has relapsed, and the cancer has returned in a worse state, or the 11-year-old lost his battle with leukemia. On those days, my mom is more quiet than usual, but she doesn’t bring those moments home to show us.
The Social Sickness Shaping Gun Violence
By Anonymous
In September of 2017, I was at a concert called Life Is Beautiful in Las Vegas, it was one of the best weekends of my early adulthood. Seven days later, there was a shooting in a country concert festival called Route 91 Harvest Music. I had a few friends at this concert who luckily were not injured but are scarred for life, hundreds were injured and several died. Many people died due to actions of a very sick minded individual who was also wealthy and had the means to buy many semi-automatic rifles. Several days after the shooting, it was announced that his original intentions were to shoot the concert which I had attended just a weekend before. This concert where I have some incredible memories watching and listening to my favorite bands, could have been my last day on this planet.
Survival of the Wealthiest
By Rickie Emilie Farah
The system reinforces an unjust socioeconomic hierarchy the same way it did 500 years ago. Our evolution and natural selection process has shifted from “survival of the fittest” to a more modern version, ‘survival of the wealthiest.’ That is no way for a country that claims the motto “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to function. The healthcare system in the United States needs to be rethought. Something needs to change.
Navigating Transitions
By David J Everly
All throughout my life I struggled against social injustice in the medical system. It began when I was about 12 years old. At that time, I would have greatly benefited from what are known as hormone blockers in order to bypass the freight train of female puberty. However, in order to obtain these hormone blockers, I would have needed over a year of therapy, signed documented letters from a psychiatrist and a mental healthcare provider who were working in tandem on my case, and over 3 years of continuous care and what is known as “counseling” by a primary physician; all of which I did not have. As a result of not having any of these things, as well as signed documents from my parents allowing the doctors to initiate hormone blockers, I suffered for an additional 7 years through every phase of female puberty. In that time, I experienced an innumerable amount of my days in the deepest points of grief, dysphoria, frustration, horror, bewilderment, and even sought my own death on more than one occasion.
A Healthy Fight
By Alexis Doan
From September of 2017 to June of 2018 I lost 3 family members, my uncle, grandfather, and grandmother, all of which are on my dad’s side. They passed away so unexpectedly and each within a span of a few months from one another. This truly was the hardest year of my life, I had never really lost anyone close to me so learning how to cope was difficult and at times put my family and I into dark places. The process of grieving, comforting one another, and coping with these events continuously throughout that year in the midst of returning to college is what really put things in perspective for me. We were fortunate enough to have given my grandparents good health care, one that would make sure they were at peace when the time came, one that we could trust would aid our loved ones and us through these hardships. That year changed my lens on the medical/health care system, it made me wonder how people who did not have the means to financially pay for these institutions dealt with the “unexpected.”
Healthcare Disparities Based on Socioeconomic Status
By Dalal Abiaad
Working in a pharmacy for the last three years and having to deal with many insurance situations I have learned a lot about the struggles patients are faced with, in particular with the concept of a formulary. Health insurance formularies are a list of drugs, both generic and brand, that are covered by your corresponding insurance plan. Many of my patients have been sent to the pharmacy with a new prescription to drop off just to find that it isn’t covered by their plan because of its formulary not including it. Whenever I’m in the position of dealing with a customer’s medication that isn’t covered, most of the time this includes certain inhalers, specific brand names, all over-the-counter drugs, and some suspensions or drops, I look for other options to help reduce the costs or even send a request to the doctor to change the medication to something on the formulary or fill out a prior authorization. A prior authorization is a request that pharmacies send to doctors, in which the doctors are asked to see if they can get permission from the insurer in order to bypass their restrictions on coverage. Although this sounds like it fixes the problem, more often than not, the patients are left with no medication for quite some time, in the case of waiting on their doctor to get approval, or end up paying high out of pocket prices when in need of the prescription and have no other choice but to buy it.
Women in Medicine
By Parmida Zolfaghari
“What a thing to be a woman, setup to fail the moment you were born.” My mother always held this idea to be her truth. She gave birth to three daughters and it ached her heart thinking of this male dominated world they were born into. As much as she loved us, she would tell us how she wished were born male instead. Knowing her intentions behind her words did not make it any easier to hear them and living in a society that reflected her words was even harder to process. Did it really matter that much what gender assignment my sisters and I were given when we took our first breath? How could such a small concept dictate the rest of our lives? The sad truth of it all was that our mother was trying to warn us because as a woman that was her truth. It was something she wanted to protect us from but had no real control over. It felt like men were given a head start from the moment they left their mother’s wombs.
Can’t Afford to Live
By Dylan James
Around five years ago crisis struck my family, my grandmother’s large intestine ruptured and she went in for emergency surgery. She spent two weeks in intensive care and five months in a convalescent hospital recovering from the surgery, we watched in dismay as the numerous drugs hollowed her into a husk of her former self. To add insult to injury the bills for all of this were three hundred thousand dollars, yes $300,000 and without her two private insurance policies and Medicaid, she would have spent the rest of her life paying for it, luckily enough my family was able to cover the nearly fifteen thousand in deductibles. Her story is not an isolated incident.