I'm in Concord Hospital, I've been having heart palpitations and I'm losing feeling in my left arm. Don't worry, it's not a heart attack, it's a haemorrhagic brain tumour, but to take my mind off of it (so to speak) I'm going to make a little thing about the absolute state of public healthcare in this country.
There are five people in this ED. Five. Most of us have been here for at least three hours. If I was the PM, I'll tell you what, I wouldn't be buying submarines from the US, I'd be making sure people in situations like this aren't paying three bucks for water.
If I slip into a coma from this tumour, it'll be the fourth time. If it happens on the floor of this ED, it'll have been the second time that's happened. The neurosurgeon here said after the second coma that they'd usually consider operating at this point, but due to a wrong scan, a few pushed appointments, the comas and Covid, we're at the stage where in July, we decided I was able to wait until next March to see if the bleed had gotten worse, because there is a long wait list for the MRI. Now it's September, and its gotten worse.
But you know what's really killing me, I'm sitting here alone, my partner should be here to support me. Actually, if my partner was better able to support me, or had spent less time over the past few months yelling at me, I might have been able to make a better recovery from the last coma bleed and might not be here in the first place. I'm talking yelling, every day, at least once a day. I have had tinnitus and a headache since last October and every loud noise hurts, but yelling can send me catatonic and sometimes tonic-colonic.
Now, it's not her fault. She loves me so much, which I'll post proof of, and does a lot to help me, she understands the situation, but she has schizophrenia. For six years we've tried to access the public healthcare system. She has a psychiatrist, psychologist, a plan through the NDIS. We've been promised evidence based solutions. She got people making shit up as they went along.
If I ever get the chance, I'll do a video going into detail on how badly we got shafted by this system. And I'll affirm, its not an accident, public health has been deliberately defunded as an incentive to get people onto private health. I've heard too many times that if we wanted an adequate level of care, we should just have more money.
I dont think it's fair. Its not fair to the workers in this system, nor the patients.
There's a sign on the counter that says, "offensive or aggressive behaviour is not tolerated in this health service", which is not only offensive to people for whom their condition includes symptoms of aggressive behaviour, like schizophrenia, but also misses the irony of ignoring the aggression of the governments budget cuts.
If I do survive this one, I'm not coming for Morrison's job, I'm probably too weak at this point, but I'll see if I can get a crowd together to be finding the people who'd do it my way and amplifying their cause, then holding them to account where we can.
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