Money talk leaves a heavy heart

NHI, bad treatment by the government – I was going to tell you all about it but my heart is heavier.

Short story: daughter had a “not-drunken-dance” and hit the floor with a clear concussion.

Having a medical aid but being out in the bundus without a private hospital, she landed in the nearest state care.

Her history of having a shunt – yeah, a baby with water on the brain that can make her blind, but didn’t because the little pipe from her stomach to her brain does its job – was ignored.

Not quite ignored: false eyelashes were fluttered and no doctor saw her for two days.

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In fact, after eight hours of waiting with no-one giving a (insert expletive) she walked out past uncaring nurses, absent doctors and security who vetted her for having a place in the long, long queue of incompetence.

So NHI won’t work, even though I’m part of the State’s Care.

God forbid my strange brown spots that are all turning black will raise the state’s alarm.

It makes my heart heavy that I’ll probably die because some state doctor five years ago was too busy to say “let’s do a biopsy”; “Mrs Hartman, I’m booking you in to have those three little worrisome spots cut out/frozen.”

But, like my husband asking: “Lovey, please let me die”, I’m resigned to die, without the help of some opinionated doctor who made R750 000 off my medical aid.

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Like Beloved, I want to defy “them”.

He told me to tell “them” he’s done with eating.

So I tell the head sister: “Don’t give him food.”

But I see him the day of his death rising to the occasion over some cold pap: “I’m eating,” that eternal gentleman tells her.

Next up is some weird poppie pummelling him and all I can say is: “Why are you giving him physio?” He is dead.

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I never spoke to the doctor who told me he’ll decide when my love will die.

I lie.

See, I’m a do-gooder; people-pleaser. So when I found the “cure for cancer” – simplistically put, a natural cure from the University of Alberta’s trials and ask him to be part of my foundation bringing it into a country known for its research, I got ghosted: him (been there, done that); not a word from the medical research council, people in the know.

Money talks. Always will. And few of us have that… It makes for a heavy, heavy heart.