XIV – Penn Medicine Delays My Wife’s Surgery Again. Why?

There’s a lot going on today and a lot not going on today.

Today, January 20, is not surgery day. We learned this Friday — my wife’s surgeon is, we are told, having surgery himself today. I wish him the best. Denying or delaying a desperately needed surgery would be monstrously cruel and inhumane. it is good to learn that Penn Medicine understands this, at least, for when it comes to their own doctors.

It would be better if anyone there understood this for when it comes to their patients. This is the sixth time her surgery has been casually delayed by this monstrous system over the past three years.

I’ve had multiple conversations with representatives of Penn Health and left messages with every number I can find, but they still have not contacted us at all since they first called on Friday to give us the bad news.

Thank you to everyone who supported us in our recent fundraiser here. That support will get us through at least March and we — literally — would not have been able to do that without you. Thank you so very much.

We are busy here, working through bureaucratic phone trees, rescheduling our plans for the coming weeks, and refilling subscriptions for painkillers and electrolyte supplements that we had hoped to be done with by now.

But, of course, beyond our household, life goes on.

Some things will be complicated in the months and years ahead. But this is very simple:

Fourteenth Amendment

Section 1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The privileges and immunities of citizens are sacrosanct and may not be abridged or denied to any person born or naturalized in the United States.

And every person in the United States — not citizen, but person — is owed the full due process of law, the equal protections of the laws, and their full right to life, liberty, and property.

Period.

Now please excuse me, I have to go back to pleading and haranguing and begging anyone I can get on the phone at Penn Medicine.