by Meghan R. Coleman

Created on: November 05, 2008

Latrophobia is a word that I have just learned. Knowing there is a phobia for almost anything, I looked it up just to know. It is the term used to shorten the sentence... I am scared to go to the doctor. I have a fear of going to the doctor for anything life threatening. The worst place for me to be, is the hospital. The list is long of why I have this phobia. It includes watching other members in my family become far more ill from the hands of those in the health care field, as well as traumatic events that I myself have endured. We live in America!

My grandmother who had been a nurse and served in World War Two as one, relied on her son, my father to help her change her clothes at a well paid for facility for inpatient health care. Baths were seldom given. My father, also being a veteran for our country, the United States, will not disclose what ever else they did to my grandmother because it is too emotional for him. All I know is that anyone that serves our country should have a right to any kind of health care they want, with the best results possible. Right there, health care has failed if it can't even treat a public servant such as my grandmother with the utmost respect as she deserved.

My brother who has been in and out of treatment for bi-polar disease since the age of ten is now facing his second trip to the state penitentiary. Two houses could have been bought with the treatment that my parents have paid for, but have yet to see any decent results from. Not one facility will take him as an adult because he is deemed "too violent" for their facilities because of our lack luster Mental Health care in the United States. In prison he has been beaten, starved and ridiculed for his illness not so much by inmates, but by our "fine correctional officers". I wonder why he has become so violent, even an animal would fight back with such voracity after being treated like my brother has. Health care, unless we become millionaires, again has failed.

As for myself, I had a tubal pregnancy that I was forced to walk around with for a month while being prescribed pain pills that were used as my treatment. I was told that the pain pills would abort the fetus growing in my tube. I had insurance, not any provided by welfare. As a child, I had horrendous asthma attacks and had to wait in the emergency room for two hours for treatment. Again, I had insurance not provided by welfare. I am scared to go to the doctor now that I have high blood pressure at the age of twenty-five, not only because of what kind of treatment they might prescribe, but the bills I might incur now that I do not have insurance.

When health care fails is when our veterans, who have served our country, who have given their freedom to protect ours are not given proper health care. I use the word given because what they have given us, it is their right to have the best health care possible. Health care fails when hard working American citizens who work fifty to eighty and more hours a week to stay off welfare, who still can not afford to go to the doctor or even receive proper treatment. They are the type of people who work hard and will not accept "hand outs", they should have affordable and affective health care available to them. Health care has failed in the country of the United States of America when its own citizens who work hard and have served their country who have developed latrophobia.

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