If our Healthcare System is so great, why this…

March 27, 2012.  Today my energy and emotional fortitude is all but drained from my body.  My initiative for things creative is in the gutter.  My brother’s condition is sapping me of anything I might give to those around me.  He’s fallen gravely ill and I’m doing my best to make a quick trip out to Florida to see him while he is yet conscious.  The health care system seems to be failing him so very badly.  It is explained to me that the tumor on his pancreas is preventing him from making digestive enzymes needed to turn food into energy and he is wasting away.  He barely has the energy to walk anymore and I’m afraid he will starve if there is no intervention.  They never keep him in the hospital when he’s there for tests and yet he is on death’s door.  I’m not medically trained but anyone I talk to says he should be fed intravenously if he cannot absorb nutrition the usual way.  He’s been told to get stronger and gain weight to be in shape to survive an operation… but shouldn’t they be helping that to happen??  I feel so hopeless in all of this… …and being in Canada now, for all the talk in the US about how “the Canadian Free Public Healthcare System is so inferior”, I know for a FACT Phillip would be checked into a hospital and everything that could be done for him WOULD be.  NOBODY, not even a homeless person gets left to die on the street…

New addition to my original post.  April 26, 2012.  I’m grieving the loss of my dear brother Phillip.  As my sister Dina wrote,  “Our hearts are broken into pieces. Our dear brother, son, father, soul mate, uncle and friend, Phillip Myers, passed away this morning at 3:30 a.m. There was no kinder, compassionate, beautiful and talented man. He would help anyone in need, no matter how difficult the task. I had the privilege of holding his hand during his last few hours. Phil, we will miss you more than you will ever know but you will live in our hearts forever. It pains me to have to let his friends know the sad news and I know it is probably a shock to many of you. Phillip was a very private person and didn’t want to burden people with his illness but I know you would all want to know.”   He will be greatly missed indeed.

I feel like the healthcare system failed him somehow.  I’m not a medical professional so my opinions may not be count.  I just know that in the town I call home, there’s a man going about his business who hasn’t had a working pancreas for years by now.  He has to wear a “back-pack” with special “food” in it that is somehow automatically fed into his digestive system through a special port on his side.   He functions well and appears totally “normal” in every other way.   Apparently this is the only method by which you can survive without the digestive enezimes normally made by your pancreas.  Phillip basically died of starvation.  A pretty horrible way to go.  He was unable to eat anything due to the digestive problems created by his pancreas not working.  I’d like to learn more about this problem and would love to see other people going through this better helped.  My heart is so very broken right now….