Medical Bureaucracy Is a Slow-Motion Horror Show
You know that feeling when your body is waving red flags like it’s at a NASCAR race, but the system insists you take a scenic detour through six different departments, a paper trail, and a couple of voicemails that nobody returns? Yeah. That.
I’m not being dramatic. I’ve just been stuck in medical limbo more times than I can count. If you’re a fellow senior trying to survive the modern American healthcare system while your insides feel like they’re staging a coup, you know exactly what I mean. You don’t even have to be in a full-blown emergency—just experiencing, say, a low-key organ mutiny—and you’ll find yourself caught in a maddening chain of “next steps.”
It always starts the same: something hurts, throbs, bloats, beats weirdly, or doesn’t function like it used to (which is frankly a long and growing list). You go to your doctor—assuming you can get in this month—and they nod very thoughtfully and say, “We’ll need to order some tests.” That’s when the real fun begins.
Now you wait. Wait for insurance to approve the scan. Wait for the scan to be scheduled. Wait for the person who schedules the scan to return from lunch. Wait for the scan machine to be unbroken. Wait for the radiologist to review the results. Wait for your doctor to look at those results. Wait for someone—anyone—to tell you what the heck is going on inside your own body.
Meanwhile, you’re popping Tylenol like Tic Tacs, chewing Tums like snacks, and re-Googling your symptoms every other day just in case you missed something. (Pro tip: Don’t Google. Just don’t. It’s always either nothing or something so scary that you’ll end up needing another doctor for anxiety.)
What they don’t tell you when you get older is that the worst part isn’t just the pain or the illness—it’s the bureaucracy around it. It’s the eternal loop of waiting for approvals and follow-ups and phone calls that never come. It’s being told, “If you don’t hear back in 7-10 business days, call us.” Ma’am, I might not have 7-10 business days. My colon seems to be entering its flop era.
So how do you cope without turning into a full-blown howler monkey at the front desk of radiology?
You breathe. You call back. You keep a notepad next to the phone with names, dates, extensions, and exactly what was said. You ask questions—even if you feel annoying. You bring a buddy or family member if you can, because sometimes just having someone else in the room makes them take you more seriously. And when you finally do get the scan or test or blessed call-back, celebrate like it’s bingo night and you’ve just won the whole pot.
We seniors don’t have time to sit politely in a holding pattern while our bodies play Whack-a-Mole with new symptoms. But here we are, doing just that. And no, it’s not being dramatic to say that the system is exhausting—it is. But if you’re in the middle of the slow drip of medical limbo, I see you. You’re not alone. You’re just stuck in a poorly designed waiting room with the rest of us, wondering how the MRI machine is somehow both booked solid and broken at the same time.
Hang in there. Scream into a pillow if you must. And when the call finally comes? Answer it with the regal, long-suffering grace of someone who waited 17 days for a scan of a body part they didn’t even know could hurt.
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