CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Think Medicaid Cuts Won’t Affect You? My Story Says Otherwise

I was 13 years old. We’d just returned from Christmas vacation, and I was asleep in my room.

My mother tells me she heard a noise and found me in my bed, twisted up like a clam, frothing at the mouth. She was in shock. The paramedics came and took me to the ER. I don’t remember anything about it.

That night, I had a CT scan and an MRI. They found an abnormality in my brain called a cavernoma, and I needed surgery right away to correct it. Because it was a delicate operation, I needed not only a pediatric surgeon but a sub-specialist — a pediatric neurologist.

Little did my family know, there is a nationwide shortage of pediatric sub-specialists.

The surgeon on-call that night assured us that I could be cured with surgery, but we needed to get it done as soon as possible to avoid another seizure and more damage. But when my mom called the hospital, they said the next available appointment was more than three months away due to a lack of pediatric neurosurgeons.

I was already isolating myself. Scared,........

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