I'll Take the Senior Discount, But I Will Not Be Discounted

Apr 17, 2025

My daughter called this morning. I am grateful I listened to my side of the conversation. I couldn’t believe it was me speaking. What the hell? I gave a recital of aches and pains, physical and mental, that would put any volunteer martyr to shame. Periodically, not very often, I whine and moan before I crack myself up listening to myself. Lately, however, something has been wearing me down. And I think I have finally figured out what it is.

Three weeks ago, my sister, at 88, the baby of the family, called to tell me her husband had been taken to the hospital. He had a stroke. Since that time, I have been her primary contact and source of support.

For the last three weeks, my sister updates me daily about what is happening. If the health care system in this country was a permanent disaster before this happening, taking the measure of it on a daily basis has made the political condition of our Government its conjoined twin. Both are failing their patients and their citizens. (I’ll let you know when they come for me.)

Nightly, for over three weeks, I have listened to my sister talk about the care her husband was not getting. The phrase the doctors and nurses kept using again and again and again: “After all, he’s 91. What can you expect?” It was the constant repetition of that phrase that settled somewhere in my psyche and began to do battle with the reality of my own situation, and the whining and complaining and the depression began.

I am not comfortable in a world of negativity. I am far more comfortable with this:

But I am so human, it’s ridiculous, and what’s even more ridiculous is the hardcore reality of health care in this country. For goodness sake, look at the cuckoo who is Secretary of Health and Human Services. I find myself being hoisted on my own petard. Like the Wicked Witch of the West, I was whirring myself into a big puddle.

THIS HAS GOT TO STOP!

Every day, the call from my sister turns me inside out and upside down. I am unable to physically help. How soon will it be my turn? Whoa!

The title of my memoir smacks me upside my head!

NOT YET!

I’ll be damned if I am going to spend more time than necessary preparing for what cannot be prepared for. I’ve already done what I’ve done. I have a living and dying will. And I have lived my life emptying my bank account, making friends and family my beneficiaries, which, as my bank account emptied, filled my heart and soul. No regrets there.

But as I listen nightly to my sister’s struggles with the roller coaster life she is now living, I fear for us all. To have an even minuscule chance of surviving health care in this country, never, and I mean never, go into a hospital or emergency facility alone. If you don’t have an advocate, someone to watch, question, and basically care, literally and actually, you are doomed.

Empathy for nurses and doctors, I have aplenty. They are understaffed, underpaid, and under the cloud of misguided political views that fear socialized medicine is one step closer to a Communist takeover. And we must not forget the medical money-making oligarchs, the profiteers of humanity’s miseries that have taken over the healthcare industry… Imagine… It’s an industry… not the doctor’s manifesto I was raised to believe in. Obamacare is the closest this country has come to universal health care. But it is feared, misunderstood, and definitely not universal.

What I wonder most is who is the person to remind the medical community that, before his stroke, my brother-in-law was a vital, involved, active person who just happens to be 91? With all that is going on, he is breathing on his own. He can move his arms and legs. Before this last setback, he was walking. He can talk… not like he used to… but he can be understood. He was hit by a physical hurricane, tornado, or cyclone, and he is weakened. Why, oh why, are they counting him out before he is out?

At 91, I thought my biggest challenge was to keep moving, keep making whatever transitions that have to be made as smoothly as possible, and in all of that, most importantly, keep breathing. But it isn’t because sure as shooting it’s going to be my turn for some medical, someone to say, “What do you expect? After all, she’s 91!”

And that’s when my advocate will whip out my tutu and toe shoes, shouting to the powers that be, “Hey! I just want to remind you guys, she was entertaining just a minute ago. She wants the senior discount, but will not be discounted!”