But that didn't happpen. Instead it continued for another ten to fifteen minutes, at a minimum, negotiating the narrow and congested
streets to the other hospital. And the process of unloading the patient was minutes longer.
Why did Hospital A choose the inferior hospital, and the one that required more travel time? I know, rhetorical question.
I did arrive in sufficient time to preserve my life for the time being. After a diagnosis of coronary artery disease
a bypass graft was performed two days later. Successfully. Two days later I experienced an event of bradycardia and
PEA cardiac arrest and after twelve minutes of CPR I was revived, but not before my next of kin (who had left the hospital
to go to church, believing I was in no danger) were called and advised that I had expired.
Actually the message was "we've lost him", which may have meant something else but in any case was rather unprofessional
to say the least. They were forty-five minutes away and by the time they returned I was in fact very much alive.
Well, not very much. More like barely, having had a tracheostomy. During the next twenty or so days my family members were
told more than once that I was unlikely to recover, i.e. tha I would likely be a vegetable.
To be fair, on one occasion a doctor was advised of this and said that those who said that should not have done so. But
the consensus was that my prospects were somewhere south of bleak. Nevertheless I was, a month after being admitted,
Hospital B sent me - the tracheostomy tube still in place, to Hospital C.
At that time I had been for a month completely incognizant due to the drugs administered. I would remain in that condition,
with the exception of several brief periods when the effects were wearing off, for another two months.
Would Hospital X have acted so irresponsibly? I'd like to think not, but will probably never know.
In any case I was about to learn that what I already knew was worse than I could have envisioned.
Hospital C is a case of, if not the worst aspects of the Medical Industry, certainly somewhere close.
It had only been in operation for four years. By comparison Hospital B was over a century old and while Hospital X was only a few years old it was, as I observed, part
of a large network of hospitals that was itself over a hundred years old.
Hospital C is located in a facility that was occupied by a legitimate hospital since the 1970s. That hospital was closed after the company that acquired it encountered legal
and financial problems. It had been unused for many years. It was acquired by investors who put it into operation as a long-term acute care hospital, usually referred
to in the industry as LTACH.
LTACHs in this form did not exist prior to 1999. The federal budget of 1999 had, as all do, what are known as carve-outs, special laws or parts of laws that serve special
interests. In this case the politicians bought by the Medical Industry lobbyists did their job and created yet another profit center.