February Surgery - Not a reason for Universal Health Care

Monday, I finally got some problems fixed that has been causing me many problems. At least that's what we're hoping. It all started several years ago when I was on a C-5 mission in Puerto Rico. It was raining slightly and I slipped when leaving the airplane while carrying a suitcase. I fell about 10 feet to the tarmac but at least I had the presence of mind to try to roll into the fall rather than just smack the ground. At the time the only problem I incurred was a broken wrist but as time went by a few more problems came up. About 4 years after that I started losing strength in my left arm and went to see a neurosurgeon. The MRI found that I had a herniated disk in my neck that was impinging the nerves in the arm causing the problem. He went in and opened up the nerve conduit in the spine and relieved the problem but in the process weakened the vertebra. At the time we didn't realize this but recently I fell again but this time the impact was on my right arm. The transfer of the impact reinjured the weakened disks and I started having the same symptoms again but this time centered in my right arm and wrist. The MRI revealed another impingement and herniation which required another surgery. Also the Doc identified a carpal tunnel problem in my right wrist so back under the knife I went and now I'm in the recovery phase. Here are some pics of the results:

A few points I'd like to make here. First, the quality and expediency of the medical coverage we in the military get is almost unequaled in the civilian world. Of course being an crew-member covered under the flight medicine program helped out but still from the time the problem was diagnosed until the surgery happened was only a few weeks. We in the military are taken care of very well although I know there are a few folks out there that would disagree; for me I'm pretty damn happy with them.

The other point I'd like to make is how even though I'm in a government run health care system this should not be a statement as to how a system would be beneficial for the rest of the country. We in the military reap the benefits of an affluent private medical system that augments our own. When I first joined almost every base or post had its own hospital with its own cadre of doctors. Since then the government decided to shift the care to an insurance based system (Tricare) with referrals from our primary care physicians at the base. This system uses the local medical infrastructure to support the base population so we get top-notch care at no cost to us. It's pretty much transparent compared to what we used to have. While this process works for us it only works because we have a local civilian medical team to feed off of. If the government decided to take over the health care system we would be back to what we had before with long waits, poor service and endless amounts of red-tape and bureaucracy. As far as medical care goes I'm almost in a perfect world right now, why would I want to go back to an antiquated system that had problems supporting the very people it was there to service? No, don't equate what the military gets when you try to argue for government run health care, its apples and oranges since we still depend on the strong prosperous medical system our country enjoys.

By the way, I'm doing fine now and with luck, should fully recover. :)