Warning...this blog is going to be ugly. I am so frustrated and irritated with the Humboldt County Healthcare System that it's making me ridiculously pissed off. Rather than listen to the homicidal thoughts running through my head or the little voices telling me to get the Hell out of Humboldt and seek real medical care, I'm going to calm myself by venting to you, the unknown reader.

A very special person in my life has suffered a lifetime of lung problems. He's been told that he's had everything from asthma to aspergillosis (essentially fungus in the lungs) since he was a little kid growing up. Having worked a lifetime in the mills, you can pretty much come up with your own conclusion on the kind of crap he's been subjected to breathing in.

Almost three years ago, this person spent two weeks in ICU battling near death, due to severe lung problems. The night he was placed into ICU, he actually called us from his short stay hospital room to tell us that he thought he was dying. The nurses had instructed him to adjust his position in bed and essentially blew him off, not taking him seriously. You could practically hear the water and other garbage sloshing in his lungs as he struggled to breathe and tell us goodbye – just in case. We immediately rushed to the hospital in the wee hours of the morning until they finally admitted him and two wonderful respiratory therapists spent the following weeks sucking the junk out of his lungs. The ICU nurses were excellent and attentive but it was still the scariest two weeks of my life. I have never cried so much; I cried to the point of having no tears or snot. Sorry for the visual, but you get my point.

Flash forward to this month. He's starting to get some of the same symptoms again and this time we all take note and encourage him to go back to the doctor. They up his medicine, take away this medicine, and try this new medicine; nothing was working so they finally did some x-rays to confirm it wasn’t pneumonia. Thankfully, it wasn’t and they diagnose pleurisy (a painful inflammation of the chest wall - hurts like a buggar). He's not getting any better and goes back. Almost lackadaisically, they finally order him into a CT scan after a few more visits and he gets this call a few days later:

Hi, we got your results. There are spots everywhere on your lungs. You either have lung cancer or a very bad infection. It’s really 50/50 as of this point. Let's do some more tests.

What?! You drop the "C" word to a man whose parents died from cancer and then had two adult sisters battle cancer as well? This is not something we take lightly nor did he. So two weeks later, he finally gets in to have a more extensive scan. He's told that he'll have the results within two days. That was Monday. Hmmm...let's do the math...two days would be Wednesday? Sounds reasonable to me. Guess what? The results are in...and on the doctor's desk...but the doctor took the rest of the day off. What? Have another doctor in the same practice interpret the results? One of the other doctors who's seen him numerous times? Hmmm...again, sounds fair to me, but sorry, not going to happen. You have to wait until the doctor is in. I’m sorry if you’re scared and having nightmares that you might not see your family grow up. That’s just the way it is. Hurry up and wait, again and again.

So here we wait. Sitting on two and half weeks of the knowledge that someone we love may have the "C" word. Can't someone throw us a frickin' bone and just give us a yes or no? Can I please have some information so that we all can sleep through the night without nightmares of grief and loss?

I hate running on medical time frames. What if the police didn't make a felony arrest because they didn't share information with their fellow officers or want to take the time to do the case? What if classes were routinely cancelled in schools because teachers didn't share lesson plans with substitutes? Do you see where I'm heading here? No accountability. You are literally held by the balls in a small community when it comes to health care. For those that escape Humboldt, there are many options out there. Unfortunately for the rest of us, if you don’t have the funding, you’re stuck with Podunk time frames and neither here nor there attitudes. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of wonderful doctors, nurses, etc. in Humboldt County; but in this circumstance, I feel as though the entire system has failed him. Do anything, but just do something; that's all I ask.

I’m frustrated and I want answers. I’m tired of the fact that this person had received a lifetime of care provided by doctors whom I thought were the slight bit vested in his well-being. I guess I was wrong. He is just a number, and like the rest of us, must follow the insane and uncaring time frames set about in our crappy health system. All I ask is that medical care eventually turn back to where it should be; the patient. Please tell him if he’s got a fighting chance so he can start fighting again; the mental games he’s waging against this unknown illness are kicking his ass.

Alright, vent over. Back to gumdrops and butterflies.