Drinking the Kool Aide or atleast sampling it.

A group of churches including mine have come together here in Winston and started a free clinic. Its held at my church once a month. Today was the first day I have able been to go in a while.  This was the week in NC where all kindergartners who had not previously filled out their physical forms got a letter saying they would be kicked out of school if they did not get a physical and vaccinations. The clinic was a mess.  I was hurried to a room given a file and told to just do whatever needed to be done, the doctor would check behind me.  Honestly if we had a first year medical student I think they would told them the same, we were desperate. So I threw myself into exam after exam of  5 yr olds who ranged from terrified to crawling up the walls.

About half way through the morning, a family with two kids, 4 and 6 came in. The Mom hands me a giant pack of papers, her daughter has just started kindergarten and has already been suspended for hitting the teacher. I take a good development history and undercover she had a global speech delay at 3 (as in not talking at all) and has only seen a doctor once or twice in her life. The parents can’t afford insurance because they both work they don’t qualify for Medicaid. The little girl is running around the room in circles one second or in her Dad’s lap messing with his face the next.  She doesn’t seem to understand my questions or instructions, she fails her development exam across the board, its obvious she has a global delay. Her Mom thinks its ADHD, I know that its far more than that. This is a free clinic. We give vaccinations, we do acute care, we even monitor BP and Diabetes a little bit but we can’t help this little girl. She needs a developmental pediatrician referral and is going to have a long medical journey one that we are already at least 3 years behind on. The window for early intervention is gone.

Its maddening. These people aren’t unemployed, they love their kids, they most likely are not criminals or dealing drugs, they are part of the PTA, they go to church and they don’t live in some god forsaken corner of the world, they live in America.  Yet they can’t afford health insurance and they don’t qualify for assistence.  So who suffers because of this? This little girl does, so does her family but don’t think it stops there.  Her teachers suffer having to deal with her behaviors and society suffers because we get to pay for it if she ends up in trouble legally or ends up on assistance later because she drops out of school or can’t stay employed.

For all the resources we have in this country, are not our children among our most valuable? Are  they not the ones who will run this country in 25 years?

In the mist of  Sarah Palin action figures and all this talk about hope and change…I sit in muggy NC  with tears of fustration in my eyes because from my point of view my country cares more about the value of a barrerl of oil than the life of a child.