Triggered
My husband is sick. We went to urgent care. Afterwards, I locked myself in the bathroom and sobbed.
2025 marks six years since my dad died of esophageal cancer. I absolutely have PTSD from that. Through that experience, I walked away with complete disappointment and a distrust of modern medicine. I saw alternative medicine work. And then I saw modern medicine kill my dad.
Of course the truth is not that simple. But when it comes to our medical system and who profits and who decides what doctors can promote and prescribe, and how much corporate health insurance companies control, and even what is taught in medical schools, not to mention all the backdoor politics of HEALTHCARE… do any of us really believe we know the truth?
From my experience, HEALTHCARE is not about health. It is about managing sickness for profit.
My husband doesn’t have cancer. He has the flu. The smiling doctor said there is currently a high rate of secondary pneumonia cases coming in for people that get the flu. I asked if there was anything he could do to minimize his risk of developing pneumonia. She scrunched up her face, shook her head and said no.
REALLY. NOTHING? Gosh… I didn’t go to medical school. I don’t get paid the big bucks that doctors do. BUT… I am pretty f’ing sure there are things we can do to support our AMAZING and miraculous bodies to prevent a secondary infection.
My sister-in-law was super sick. It sounds like she had the flu and it turned into pneumonia. They diagnosed her with a chest x-ray and then put her on double antibiotics and a rescue inhaler. That sounds a lot more profitable than someone sitting in a sauna, doing an ice-bath, loading up on vitamin C or elderberry or homeopathic medicine, or empowering our own immune systems in other ways to heal our bodies…
We pay a lot each month for health insurance. And we’ll no doubt owe a pretty penny for the visit to Urgent Care and the flu test. It’s a fucking joke. I have zero confidence that our healthcare system is at all supportive of helping us be healthy. How are we ok with this? Maybe a lot of us aren’t ok with it. But what do we do? We just keep paying exorbitant health insurance premiums and take the meds the doctors prescribe and don’t question anything.
This is not a diatribe against specific doctors or nurses. I personally know compassionate amazing people that work in medicine. There’s good and bad apples in every field. Jesse recently got a new primary care doctor. He started off a regular MD and soon found that a handful of rabbit holes lead him to becoming an Osteopathic doctor who leans away from pharmaceuticals and relies on more natural treatments and lifestyle changes. We only know what we know. Doctors are trained to be doctors at medical school. Who decides what they are taught? The insurance companies? Pharmaceutical companies? I don’t know.
I have so many more examples… High Fructose Corn Syrup was the primary ingredient in the food they gave my dad for his feeding tube while he was fighting cancer. I feel like everyone, ESPECIALLY medical professionals should know that stuff like sugar and corn syrup FEED CANCER!! Where is the common sense?? Someone close to me was diagnosed with a heart condition of which there is no cure, but there is a medication that costs $500 per pill that will stop the progression of the disease and she can go on to live a long fulfilling life. Part of me thinks…. wow a cure sure wouldn’t earn the pharmaceutical companies as much money as a $500 per-pill daily prescription!! I could go on, but I am just getting more pissed.
I feel like the medical system failed my dad. And even though my husband will be fine, whether or not he gets pneumonia, it’s failing him too. It’s failing all of us. I am shocked by how badly I was triggered at the reminder that our healthcare system will not have my back when I need it most.
