For Karen Delgado
Throughout human life we have felt that we are not at 100% of our capacity. I would dare to say that this is a constant in the bodies, that it is normal to fluctuate between different bodily and mood states. When a strong imbalance is found, a lack of well-being that accompanies us suddenly or that we have suffered for a long time, we enter the patient condition.
But what does this mean? what do we go through this? Well, this is chronicles of the sickle, a series of installments whose center is analysis and reflections on the health system in Colombia, so that it leads us to rethink privatization, the hospital bureaucracy, the problems and violations to which the patient and health personnel in the country. This is a space that invites you to think about dignifying life. Next, I will leave the first installment as an appetizer for others, problematizing the issue of health in the country and the condition of the patient.
CHRONICLES OF THE SICKLE
One more day, one day less, what time is it?
1:30 p.m. the window; Have you already gone through billing? Pay the corresponding fee; the doctor went out for lunch, you have to wait an hour for him to come back; only one companion enters per patient; make an appointment with the specialist; I have an agenda available for next month; their medicines are delivered to them elsewhere”. If this story does not sound entirely similar to you, it must be one of the few that has access to a prepaid health system in the country. If what they have experienced is even worse than the story itself, they must belong to the subsidized health regime. Why has this become natural to the point where it is already impossible to conceive of a health system that guarantees life?
Of course, the elderly have a preferential queue and a doctor's appointment one month after their pain. Illnesses and clinical conditions are scheduled, logically, and of course you don't have to spend a whole day in the emergency and priority appointment system. “There are a lot of patients today,” explains the administrative staff at the register. How to blame the EPS for offering the minimum guarantees when purchasing the most sophisticated plan with the best benefits. “We do what we can”, they say as an excuse, as if they were doing us a favor by attending to our claims; as if it were not a matter of providing service for life. How could bureaucratic logic think that someone can practice medicine thinking about dignity? Inconceivable.
If all of the above sounds familiar, has happened to someone you know, or has you experienced it firsthand, let me tell you about it firsthand. that it is not a particularity, that not only you have faced this systemic violence, that this is the day to day of all the health centers in the country. It is profoundly denigrating to continue thinking that this should be the norm, that someone in deep pain should be subjected to obstacles that seek to restrict their right to health and life. It is heartbreaking that these revictimization scenarios occur not only in health centers but in spaces such as work, university, school, where there is a commitment and responsibility.
The patient's condition
All those who have had a family member going through the condition of patient will be convinced of the following thing that I am going to say: no no one is wished to go through the degrading process of dehumanization that turns people and their pain into a number, a figure, an authorization and a price. The condition of a patient is deeply challenging because it generates in the individual and his support network the best and the worst of each one. Favor, accompaniment, love, empathy, care, patience are values that are generated on multiple occasions in support networks, it is important to recognize it and it ends up being important precisely to get out of the patient condition.
But this condition is not only exhausting for those who suffer from it, but it ends up being a load net for those who accompany process. I'm not trying to say that being sick is a problem, but that being sick in Colombia makes it violent. Psychologically it causes deterioration. Stress levels combined with sadness produce a type of physical exhaustion that ultimately ends up being a traumatic experience for all those who have experienced it.
What should be expected in a country where you are asked not to have anything serious for fear of submitting to the condition patient? What comes with it can be seen from multiple angles: the underestimation of professional health practice, automated personnel that is governed by the number that can attend in less time and not by the quality of diagnosis and service, the lack of inputs for comprehensive care, scheduling and waiting times for different authorizations, exams, medications or services, duties and rights in the event of an imminent hospitalization, among many other variables.
Thinking about the above frightens anyone, because seeing or getting to see those we love in this situation allows us to question if it is not appropriate to claim for a system that instead of taking lives saves them, that thinks both in quantity and quality, that generates an appropriation for care, risk prevention and timely attention. I am sure that we would all bet on a “YES”. If we have, in general, a unanimous opinion regarding the expectations of the health system, what is behind that prevents it? Well, giving a single answer is difficult for multiple reasons: personal experiences, professional criteria and legal perspectives. However, I tell whoever reads me not to worry. I intend to give my version of events in the next installment of these chronicles.
September 4, 2022