Hosting this video is Destin from SmarterEveryDay giving you a health update on Dianna Cowern. Destin and Dianna have been friends for many years, and recent...
Not to downplay her situation but I can't help but think of the people who are in a similar situation but lack the support system she has. Like what if she didn't have a loving husband as a caretaker? What if she didn't have thousands of patreon supporters funding her recovery? What if she didn't have access to healthcare at all? It's a terrifying thought, that this could happen to anyone, including those of us who lack the means to fight it.
A close friend went through something close to this because of covid, so here is what a normal shit-job working class non-patreon funded person with obamacare can go through if they get unlucky with long covid. In my friends case: heart disease requiring heart surgery, cataracts causing blindness, kidney failure, dangerously erratic blood pressure, severely reduced lung function requiring constant oxygen, and extreme fatigue after any physical exertion.
One way or another you end up in the hospital and basically live there for a while before insurance figures out you can't work and denies all care. The doctors will ignore that, if they have to, to keep you alive.
Then you lose your job, and any health insurance you might have officially had, because you can't work.
If you survive the period of being denied medical procedures and medications, however long that takes, and are still too sick to care for yourself, eventually the hospital will try to get you on disability and social security and government run healthcare programs.
If at some point you become stable enough to send back home, and you have a place to go, they'll send you home. You'll have to rely on friends and family to take care of you and drive you around for errands, and disability and social security might be enough to cover your bills and needs.
If you are lucky they'll find someone to check on you and clean up for you, and maybe a nurse to come by and sort your meds. They might find volunteers to transport you to a doctor every once in a while if friends or family can't. If you need regular schedule appointments you'll get special medical transport.
If your health is stable at this point, and have somewhere to stay, you win!
If your health is deteriorating you will end up back in the hospital until you are stable enough to be kicked out again. At which point you will need to find new people to help at home and reschedule transportation, and probably new assortment of meds to figure out.
Hopefully you survive whatever it is you are dealing with, because you'll probably have to repeat this experience of being in and out of the hospital a few times until you it's obvious you need constant medical supervision and are sent to a rehabilitation center/nursing home.
If you had no place to stay on you first visit to the hospital, you'll likely end up in a nursing home.
Quality of care varies dramatically in nursing homes, but your insurance will cover the first couple months. If its a place where they send people struggling with drug addicttion you will likely be neglected by staff who won'tbe accustomed to helping people as sick as you are. If its a place that helps retirees, it might be ok. You will likely have to share a room with someone.
Hopefully you don't have a special dietary requirement, because the kitchen staff are probably not trained to follow them and you'll just get whatever.
After two months you can stay or take your chances wherever your home is. If you end up in a bad place you'll probably want to leave asap, and then repeat the hospital experience within a week or two of leaving, and then back to a nursing home that's hopefully better than the last one.
Whichever place you end up staying at they will basically take all your mone from now on, except for maybe a hundred dollars, but all your basic needs will be met. If you need physical therapy you get a few weeks of that free, but at some point you have to pay with money you likely don't have. So if your leg muscles are weakened from being in a hospital bed for months at a time, and you need help rebuilding your strength, you'll eventually lose all strength that remained in your legs.
You will probably end up in a hospital again for various reasons, but will be able to go back to the nursing home you left and not have a disruption of care like before.
Sooner or later the bills you wracked up before being deemed disabled will be sold to a debt collector and you'll start getting harassed for that. It may or may not end up in court, but you'll have no money, so fuck 'em. Maybe you will have the wherewithal to do a medical bankruptcy thing or something, but I doubt you'll have enough energy to care one way or the other.
If you are lucky, friends and family will find time to visit often, but a shameful number of people basically get abandoned and their friends disappear.
This experience may be better or worse depending on which state you are in. I'm in one of the more generous liberal ones.
Greatest country in the world, btw.
This is just what I've witnessed first hand, so it could be better or worse depending on the severity of your disability, but is probably what would have happened to physicsgirl if they weren't famous or wealthy.
Maybe someone reading this has experience in healthcare and can say what my friend went through wasn't typical, but that's what I saw.
I'm guessing a lot of people simply die while being in-between hospital visits and places to live. I've had to call an ambulance several times to save my friends life, and so have nursing home staff, and one time a grocery store, and doctors have expressed surprise that they keep surviving.
While writing this my friend texted me that they are back in the hospital with heart issues. It has been a couple months since that last happened, which is the longest stretch they've gone without hospitalization since 2020.
Almost every time I’ve been to the ER as an adult, mostly for unexplained excruciating pain, they just stick me in a room for five hours before coming in to treat me with the utmost contempt and insinuating I’m there for drugs before kicking me out and charging me the ridiculous copay. So I’m just done dealing with doctors for anything other than routine visits, vaccinations, or being shot or something.
it's wild i recall reading a oxford doctorate that
[suicide warning]
took his own life after developing long covid.
I keep talking to people about long covid and they look at me like a hypochondriac, i guess when the injustice is systematic - people just shut it out of their mind as it is the path of least resistance.
Not to downplay her situation but I can't help but think of the people who are in a similar situation but lack the support system she has. Like what if she didn't have a loving husband as a caretaker? What if she didn't have thousands of patreon supporters funding her recovery? What if she didn't have access to healthcare at all? It's a terrifying thought, that this could happen to anyone, including those of us who lack the means to fight it.
She'd die. That's the answer.
A close friend went through something close to this because of covid, so here is what a normal shit-job working class non-patreon funded person with obamacare can go through if they get unlucky with long covid. In my friends case: heart disease requiring heart surgery, cataracts causing blindness, kidney failure, dangerously erratic blood pressure, severely reduced lung function requiring constant oxygen, and extreme fatigue after any physical exertion.
One way or another you end up in the hospital and basically live there for a while before insurance figures out you can't work and denies all care. The doctors will ignore that, if they have to, to keep you alive.
Then you lose your job, and any health insurance you might have officially had, because you can't work.
If you survive the period of being denied medical procedures and medications, however long that takes, and are still too sick to care for yourself, eventually the hospital will try to get you on disability and social security and government run healthcare programs.
If at some point you become stable enough to send back home, and you have a place to go, they'll send you home. You'll have to rely on friends and family to take care of you and drive you around for errands, and disability and social security might be enough to cover your bills and needs.
If you are lucky they'll find someone to check on you and clean up for you, and maybe a nurse to come by and sort your meds. They might find volunteers to transport you to a doctor every once in a while if friends or family can't. If you need regular schedule appointments you'll get special medical transport.
If your health is stable at this point, and have somewhere to stay, you win!
If your health is deteriorating you will end up back in the hospital until you are stable enough to be kicked out again. At which point you will need to find new people to help at home and reschedule transportation, and probably new assortment of meds to figure out.
Hopefully you survive whatever it is you are dealing with, because you'll probably have to repeat this experience of being in and out of the hospital a few times until you it's obvious you need constant medical supervision and are sent to a rehabilitation center/nursing home.
If you had no place to stay on you first visit to the hospital, you'll likely end up in a nursing home.
Quality of care varies dramatically in nursing homes, but your insurance will cover the first couple months. If its a place where they send people struggling with drug addicttion you will likely be neglected by staff who won'tbe accustomed to helping people as sick as you are. If its a place that helps retirees, it might be ok. You will likely have to share a room with someone.
Hopefully you don't have a special dietary requirement, because the kitchen staff are probably not trained to follow them and you'll just get whatever.
After two months you can stay or take your chances wherever your home is. If you end up in a bad place you'll probably want to leave asap, and then repeat the hospital experience within a week or two of leaving, and then back to a nursing home that's hopefully better than the last one.
Whichever place you end up staying at they will basically take all your mone from now on, except for maybe a hundred dollars, but all your basic needs will be met. If you need physical therapy you get a few weeks of that free, but at some point you have to pay with money you likely don't have. So if your leg muscles are weakened from being in a hospital bed for months at a time, and you need help rebuilding your strength, you'll eventually lose all strength that remained in your legs.
You will probably end up in a hospital again for various reasons, but will be able to go back to the nursing home you left and not have a disruption of care like before.
Sooner or later the bills you wracked up before being deemed disabled will be sold to a debt collector and you'll start getting harassed for that. It may or may not end up in court, but you'll have no money, so fuck 'em. Maybe you will have the wherewithal to do a medical bankruptcy thing or something, but I doubt you'll have enough energy to care one way or the other.
If you are lucky, friends and family will find time to visit often, but a shameful number of people basically get abandoned and their friends disappear.
This experience may be better or worse depending on which state you are in. I'm in one of the more generous liberal ones.
Greatest country in the world, btw.
This is just what I've witnessed first hand, so it could be better or worse depending on the severity of your disability, but is probably what would have happened to physicsgirl if they weren't famous or wealthy.
Maybe someone reading this has experience in healthcare and can say what my friend went through wasn't typical, but that's what I saw.
I'm guessing a lot of people simply die while being in-between hospital visits and places to live. I've had to call an ambulance several times to save my friends life, and so have nursing home staff, and one time a grocery store, and doctors have expressed surprise that they keep surviving.
While writing this my friend texted me that they are back in the hospital with heart issues. It has been a couple months since that last happened, which is the longest stretch they've gone without hospitalization since 2020.
tl;dr: it's a fucking nightmare.
Almost every time I’ve been to the ER as an adult, mostly for unexplained excruciating pain, they just stick me in a room for five hours before coming in to treat me with the utmost contempt and insinuating I’m there for drugs before kicking me out and charging me the ridiculous copay. So I’m just done dealing with doctors for anything other than routine visits, vaccinations, or being shot or something.
it's wild i recall reading a oxford doctorate that
[suicide warning]
took his own life after developing long covid.
I keep talking to people about long covid and they look at me like a hypochondriac, i guess when the injustice is systematic - people just shut it out of their mind as it is the path of least resistance.