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[tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

Lynda wrote:

> VA hospitals are notorious for poor care!

tvoivozhd---depends where---not here and sure as hell not at Walter Reed 
or Bethesda Naval Hospital
where Senators and Congressmen go.  From personal experience I can tell 
you that the Houston VA
Hospital gave near-instantaneous first class care to veterans in the 
1980's when Texan Lyndon Johnson
was  President and able to influence funding. Their surgical teams came 
in from Baylor then. Here in Roanoke the Bush-reduced funding makes it 
hard for
a Primary Care physician to get a patient in front of an Oncologist or 
Cardiologist---but once that hurdle
is jumped, the specialist care is excellent.  Again, from personal 
experience I can tell you the medical
care at the Salem VA is immeasurably better than Roanoke Memorial which 
did their damndest to kill
me and my daughter after we were rear-ended by a truck as we went 
through an intersection.

>  DH's father laid in a bed for a
> week before they got him the cat scan he needed.  Then another week before
> they decided to continue the chemo he'd been getting prior to admission.
> With a fast moving cancer, two weeks is too long.
>
> We still get the Timberwolve newsletters upon occasion and the complaints
> about the VA haven't diminished over the years.
>  
tvoivozhd--And they probably won't---the Bush budget last year didn't 
allow for the increased costs of Iraq wounded---hell
it was taking six months before they ever saw the inside of a VA Hospital.

> However, if one is about to step off this mortal coil, the VA hospital is
> the way to go.  They have no restrictions on morphine and if someone is in
> too much pain and is terminal, they will up the dose and put the patient in
> a morphin coma.  "Regular" hospitals are too worried about a patient
> becoming addicted.  Ah, hello, they won't be around long enough to worry
> about being addicted.
>  
tvoivozhd---civilian hospitals don't give a rats ass about being 
addicted or unbearable patient pain either--thanks to
Ashcroft threats to put the prescribing doctor out of business---as he 
did to the only civilian doctor in Roanoke
who would prescribe narcotics appropriate to the pain suffered..

When I developed completely incapacitating Sweet's Syndrome---before the 
VA hired a permanent  dermatologist,
they brought in an incompetent visiting civilian doctor named Dr.Gross.  
The only reason I survived Dr. Gross was
because of a young intern who had the temerity of puncturing a leg 
swelling which Gross adamantly refused to do.
Pus erupted like Vesuvious and Gross could not avoid sending it to the 
lab for analysis---permitting the diagnosis
of Sweet's Syndrome---which  /Dr. Burwell---the subsequent fine 
permanent VA dermatologist, in conjunction with a very good VA dermal 
wound specialist
were able to bring under reasonable control after about three months. 

I was being closely monitored by the VA Oncologist and his Nurse 
Practitioner---and yes she gave me enough morphine to kill a
horse if I chose to take it  (don't like to be numb and out of 
control---a holdover from years as a military pilot)---so I never took 
any---having a pretty high pain threshold
helped.  She also gave me some milder pot-pills---took a couple of those 
but did not like the sensation of being three feet off the ground, so 
resorted to even more innocuous Ibuprofen.
Bad for your liver, but the spleen will kill me before the liver goes..


> Lynda
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>
>
>  
>
> > tvoivozhd---Except working for the government---in the military or in a
> > Veterans Admnistration Hospital, where the pay is good if not
> > spectacular, working hours are reasonable---and they can spend whatever
> > time they need with a patient. And wonder of wonders, a Veterans
> > hospital is thirty percent more  efficient than the average for-profit
> > hospital.  Only if a patient is wealthy enough to go to the Mayo Clinic
> > or Johns Hopkins will the medical care be better.  Like Rockefeller used
> > to say when queried about what it cost to own a yacht---if you have to
> > ask what medical care costs at a half dozen of the best hospitals around
> > the country, don't even think about buying it.
> >    
>
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