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OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 11/2/14

Health Care Only In U.S.A. The Too Often Deadly And Truly Absurd

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Message Dr. Lenore Daniels

Months before my teaching contract began, the administration at the University of Wisconsin at Parkside tried to have me see a psychiatrist. Why? Well, I had the nerve to arrive in Wisconsin without a car!

Middle class folks just do not do that! Are you middle class or what? What are you? What is your problem lady?

I was supposed to "get the point" and pack my bags, running as two other Black women hired by the English department had done before me. We are not serious about keeping you here!

But here I was to set up shop! To work. To teach, and yes, as a Marxist and Black Feminist, to really contribute to revolution and not reform. The affirmative action director, a "black" man, thought otherwise. He, doing the bidding of his masters, was assigned, surely, to send the woman packing! And quick! He came to the building complex where I rented an apartment to inform the management that I had a cat! I had no intentions of staying there. It was inconvenient, difficult for me reach stores--or any place--other than the campus itself. But there he is walking past me, bold and determined. He is on a mission! So am I! It is hard for me to play the role of Mammy or Jezebel in a narrative featuring the Master and his minions.

When I received a call from management, I was not surprised. Enslaved victims of that "peculiar institution" that was supposedly done away with in 1865, turned in fellow enslaved who kept their minds on freedom. I called the white chair and knew for sure that "Uncle Tom" was still in play: Don't bother me, said my new chair. Whatever is happening is between you and _____--this has nothing to do with me. I, "a Black chick," recruited by the liberal arts dean, another white male, was to communicate with the affirmative action administrator. Period!

I should have been on my way before September 2000. But I was still there! And I am still here, in the US, where citizens, well-meaning, patriotic citizens, are programmed to be on the look out for the "crazy," someone in need of "meds." It is everywhere now, this fear and "anxiety." Everyone is a potential patient for some psychotropic, anti-depressant, anxiety disorder of some kind. In Madison, the Mad City, the "progressive," "liberal" city, it is assumed that someone like me with dreads, here in Madison, with a history of "dangerous" ideas, is crazy. Of course! Definitive proof? Listen to her story.

Nothing she claims to be is real!

In isolation it is hard, but we go on. Somehow. I kept silent about the pants I bought dark green in April of this year. Thirty minutes later, at home, those pants were black. I did not say anything to anyone about the left hand that increasingly missed grasping cups or spoons or towels on the rack. I remained silent about the shortness of breath for the least exertion or losing my balance momentarily while walking or watching the number "6" become "8" then "6" again, all in a matter of seconds.

In my kitchen, at the sink, I would have to turn my whole body to see the stove just inches to my left while I had to pause as I thought I saw something moving, shimmering to my right. "Providers": You are getting older. Increasingly, a sepia world became the norm for me. I was not thinking clearly. According my GP at Meriter Hospital, swelling of the brain would have begun around February or March. In that month of March, I went to see a UW Health ophthalmologist, a woman. She learns everything she needs to know about me by reading my record on the computer which, incidentally, she moved, that is, placed at the edge of the desk so I could not read what she typed into the computer. Peculiar, but then fear makes one do peculiar things.

Needless to say, this "provider" of health services, too, missed a major piece of the puzzle. My eyes were re-examined at Dean Duehr Davis in September, and the ophthalmologist found that I had lost some peripheral vision in my right eye. If you had come to me, I would have known to do a CT scan--head!

I changed hospitals again and sent a letter to the University of Wisconsin's Patient Resources. Enough! I established contact with a GP at Meriter Hospital as early as January of this year, 2014, but I believe I canceled at least four appointments, including one scheduled for May 9, 2014. I canceled appointments even while I felt worse and worse. I could not stand to see myself sounding like a child, feeling like a child, as I tried explaining to "adults," conscious of their race, gender, and class privilege, I have a medical problem and it is not mental nor is it "old age"!

I ended my column with the Black Commentator after 7 years in September 2013. Just too overwhelmed with fatigue. Most of the time I could barely see the print I was typing or reading off the computer screen. I sent some articles out to Open-Ed News, if I could manage to pull together enough determination to not give in.

I can't go on. I go on, Beckett wrote .

***

I do my "banking" with Madison Credit Union, but, to save travel time by bus, I ride to a shared branch where I am not a "valued" member, then board another bus to Noah's Ark on behalf of "my boys," cats, who are valued "customers" since 2012. On that morning of June 3, 2014, I was not feeling my best. But then I have had such mornings. I go on.

I made it home, but still had to stop by the neighborhood senior coalition to sign some forms. While there, I noticed that I was losing track of what I was doing. I was acting, doing but thinking--what was happening? What was I doing and why again? I am used to taking these opportunities when I travel by bus or walk or ride my bike to think. I am a thinker. I am a cultural theorist; I hold a doctorate in modern American Literature. I am an activist--an activist for whom thinking is the doing. Thinking is life on life, on the human condition. But now, at the neighborhood coalition, I had no idea what I was doing, let alone what I was thinking.

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Activist, writer, American Modern Literature, Cultural Theory, PhD.

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