Surgery Went Well - Here's Some Good Reporting to Tide You Over
Healing and Stealing received a lot of lovely, kind thoughts as I headed into surgery, so I wanted to drop a quick note to say it went really well, we’ll be back soon and alert readers to some solid health care reporting in another outlet.
The surgical team was able to operate laparoscopically, so I have 4 small incisions around my belly, and a longer one at the bottom, all far less intrusive than might have been. The first few days I was in a fair bit of pain, but nevertheless able to follow the most important recovery protocol - get on my feet and walk, which is good for moving the bowels and preventing atrophy in the core muscles.
Hospitals are where you go to get life-saving or life-altering treatment, but sleep is essential to healing and floors filled with very sick people of necessity too bright, loud and busy to let patients get very much. So I was happy to be discharged last Sunday, just 3 days after surgery. For the past week, I’ve followed a “low-residue,” low fiber diet, taken frequent walks and tried to avoid the twin temptations of over- and under-exertion. My excretions are progressing nicely, thank you very much.
I want to say an amazed thanks to the staff at Yale-New Haven Hospital. The surgery and initial recovery were carried out with a professional blend of rigor and kindness across the entire spectrum of care, from my surgeon to the patient care associates who took my vitals.
I’m thankful especially for the leadership of the registered nurses who drove the day-to-day delivery of bedside care in the days after the surgery. The nursing team on my unit kept track of small details and big pictures while under extreme stress. Despite the melodrama of my pre-surgical writing, I was nowhere near the person in need of the most attention. Yet my water pitcher was never empty, questions that nurses and aides could answer were answered honestly and those that needed to be put in front of my doctors came back as quickly as could be expected. I’m in awe of the work that the whole gamut of healers do for people in pain every day.
A Couple of Good Reads: We’ll be publishing again soon, with plenty to say about the state of health care under the Trump II Administration. Meanwhile, I want to pass along two pieces of excellent health care reporting in The Lever, the independent news outlet founded by David Sirota.
The Deadly Secrets Behind “Breakthrough” Alzheimer’s Drugs. Writers Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee have been investigating the metrics used by the Food and Drug Administration to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of drugs for years. This Lever article gathers the threads of their own work and that of other reporters and researchers on the shaky - sometimes fraudulent - science and regulatory influence peddling behind blockbuster Alzheimer drugs. It’s a clear narrative with enough detail to illuminate the various ways that the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA tilt medicine and academic science in favor of profit.
If the rhetoric coming from the new Administration about the capture of the FDA by Big Pharma is to have any meaning beyond mindless anti-vaccine pandering, President Trump and incoming Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will have to be held accountable for fixing these processes and outcomes.
The Hidden Cost Behind Your “$0 Copay” Drug Assistance Program: Lever reporter Helen Santoro has dissected yet another health insurance industry scam.
Large deductibles and high out-of-pocket maximums price patients out of many expensive drugs. So drug companies offer patients discounts, sometimes including the full cost ($0 copay!) for early doses. Many insurers refuse to count these discounts against patients’ deductibles or out of pocket payment limits. That leaves patients who start using medications made affordable by the discount programs suddenly responsible for large drug costs in the middle of treatment.
Some states are working on mandates requiring insurers to count these payments against deductibles and copays. As with most such reforms, mandates could provide some short-term relief to some people, even as insurers retain a host of other tools to screw patients. But Santoro has done a terrific job documenting the ruthlessness with which they use this particular tool. It’s well worth reading if you can stomach an up-close look at the insurance industry’s tactics.
It’s impossible to express how much all your good wishes, prayers and encouragement have meant to me over the past 10 days. I’m profoundly grateful and looking forward to being back to work soon. Thank you.