Shiners and the Healthcare Debate

When you live in a small town like Immokalee the ideas of community and entertainment take on a whole new definition. Community is very important here. Everyone knows everyone. Some people may view this as a negative i.e. there is no escaping. It is more often viewed in a positive light—as a close knit group of people who are always there for you. Now for the entertainment portion—what does a small community do for fun? The closest movie theater is 45 minutes away. There are a limited number of restaurants in town so it is easy to get burnt out on them quickly. Activities such as disc golf can take up to an hour to get to. So while some days we embrace the idea that “the journey getting there is half the fun,” there are other days when we want something close to home. As a result, one of our favorite activities here in Immokalee is games in the park. The lights in the park stay on until 10pm every night and usually at least 1 night a week if not more, you will find a group of us out playing basketball, volleyball, or soccer.

Last week was no different. There was a group of us playing basketball on a crisp Tuesday night (I say crisp because cold is something that hasn’t really happened yet this far south). It was a friendly yet intense game of 3 on 3 and my team was winning (I’m only guessing at this because we do not really keep score, but we were doing really good). At one point there was a loose ball and my own teammate and I both fervently went after it. In all of our focus on the location of the ball we forgot to keep track of the locations of our heads and their proximity to each other. We collided. I stood up quickly thinking it was all ok when I noticed everyone staring at me. I was bleeding from my head. Paper towels were quickly procured from someone’s car and I soon found myself sitting out (luckily at this point another friend had shown up so the game of 3 on 3 continued). After I stopped the bleeding I returned for the last 10 minutes or so of our game.

When we got home that night I washed out my wound and after the assessment from myself (a certified athletic trainer and licensed physical therapist) and my roommate (a former EMT) we determined that I would indeed need stitches. With head wounds you really need to get stitched up within 12 hours of the injury. That meant we would have to go that night as we all had work the next morning. So when you live in rural Florida and you need to get stitches at 11:00 at night what do you do? Drive to the Naples ER. 2 hours of travel, 1 hour in the ER, 1 awesome roommate, 1 PA, 1 hilarious nurse named Jose, 1 updated tetanus shot, and 3 stitches later and I was finally in bed for the night. Check out the awesome shiner I’ve been rocking for the past week (yep, my kindergarteners love it!):

So then I was thinking about healthcare and how lucky I am. First of all, I have some training so I was able to assess my wound and know what I needed to do. I then was able to use my internet to look up numbers of local urgent care centers and then use my cell phone to call them to see what their hours were (they were all closed because apparently people only need urgent care between the hours of 8am and 8pm). Then I was able to get in my car filled with gas and drive an hour to an emergency room where I used my insurance card to get care. It was not a matter of whether or not I was going to get care, it was just a matter of where. Many people do not have any of the above resources that I just mentioned. They could get the same exact injury and not know what to do or not know where to go to get advice. Then even if they knew where to go they might not have transportation or a means to pay for the services. It is likely that they would end up with a wound that had a hard time healing and became infected. And we’re just talking about a minor head laceration here—imagine some of the bigger health issues out there such as diabetes, heart disease, strokes, cancer, or major orthopedic issues due to accidents. Just a few weeks before my minor injury there was a local man who injured his knee playing soccer. He was unable to work in the fields (no AFLAC to cover bills here), and he had no health insurance to cover the surgery that he would need (it was also a time sensitive injury and needed to be operated on within a week, not a lot of time to figure out your financials in this case). It took a lot of community organizing and donations to enable him to have his surgery (once again that close knit thing comes into play). Regardless, it is hard to believe that we live in a country where people are denied the right to take care of their own bodies. I know that the system we have now is broken, but I do not know what the answer is. We need a solution that allows for care for all people without a breakdown in the quality that is provided. There is no easy fix and it is a problem that will need a lot of brainpower and ingenuity behind it in order for a successful outcome. In the words of Albert Einstein, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Peace Out
Love,
Babs