dear younger me,

Dear younger me, 

Remember how you always thought that life was always going to suck and your dreams were never going to come true. Well I'm here to tell you. It takes you longer than you ever think it will and you will get so frustrated with how long it takes and how much grinding and busting your ass you have to do to get there. You will go through some of the worst things in your life you've ever been through and there will be many times that you're not even sure you will make it to the other side or that you even want to. You'll find out family is something that you make on your own not necessarily something you're born into. Feeling like you have family doesn't happen until later in life. You'll wind up cutting off an entire side of your family. Keep your head up and look forward. Don't look in the rear view. There's nothing there for you anymore. It's going to get rough. Long stretches of hard times. During that time just remember you're not alone not nearly as alone as you think you are. People do care. And don't give your heart and soul to a job it will destroy you or a family out to do the same.  You will make it to the other side through that even though you don't think you will. But you wind up living in the place that you always used to run to when life got tough. It was always hard to be sad when you were near the sand the sun and the water and that great little Beach town. It's where you will find your spirit again. In more ways than one. It will be the place that brings you back to life.  You'll still hate health care that won't change. You do find some good people along the way who make it tolerable. Eventually you make a few friends who just get it.  You end up buying your dream house and meeting your soulmate. It's every bit the fairy tale that they talk about in books and movies. And it's completely worth it. So keep your head up as you go through dating thinking that you'll never find the one. Because you do just takes you a little longer to come together. And that one that you always thought you would end up with. He was never The Shining Star that you thought he was. You were. He was just too blind to see it for a very long time. You'll have a surgery that terrified you,  learn to walk again. But for the first time in almost your entire life remember what it's like to walk without pain. You'll be able to climb stairs and still Marvel at it like you are climbing Mount Everest. You'll come to find that peace that you always search for in sunrises and sunsets and coffee in the early morning and growing herbs and plants and sunflowers. Learning to live again will be challenging. It takes a lot of stepping out of the darkness and into the light. Something you're not at all familiar with. But just trust me and go with it. It feels very foreign to you. But once you find that light you never want to let it go. You have to remind yourself probably a hundred times that you deserve to be happy. And you do. You just didn't think you deserved it because of all the horrible stuff you went through in life. You never had time to live or find happiness. You were too busy just trying not to die or drown as life tried to take you under. But you get there my girl. Just takes way longer than you ever think it will. And at some point you realize you made it. Came out of the darkness and found the light and somehow found your happily ever after in the process. 

Do No Harm 2nd. Cover your ass first.

First, do no harm. One of the famous lines in the Hippocratic oath. However in today's society especially in healthcare the motto is cover your ass first, Do no harm second. When did patient care take a back seat to, well almost everything when it comes to healthcare? Lets be real here for a second. Its the unspoken truth that no one wants to acknowledge that profits come way before patients. Its the giant elephant in the room that everyone in healthcare doesnt want to acknowledge is real, but it is. And those of us that straddle the fence between patient and advocate and healthcare worker see more than people realize. Some Doctors, definitely not all,  are actually in it to give the best care possible. Those are rare.  Ive met a few good ones in my healthcare journey. But there seem to be more bad than good doctors at times. Those are the cover your ass first, do no harm second types. Avoid those at all costs. Just like a bad date when you feel things go south with your provider start looking. Be your own advocate. Its better to get out sooner than later. Ive had my instances where I stayed on as a patient out of loyalty to a doctor that i should have walked away from long before I did. But back to the elephant in the room. I was recently scheduled for a procedure that I needed to do. Thanks to me winning the genetic Lottery with crappy health conditions. What seems like it should be something so simple turns into a three-ring circus so quickly. Because after your doctor orders the test. Then you have to convince the insurance company that you actually need it and convince them to pay for it. Which sometimes just convincing an insurance company that a test is necessary is like banging your head against a brick wall. They care about their money much more than they do about your health or anything that you need. Essentially the Daddy Warbucks of healthcare. Sitting atop their big pile of money not really caring about the consequences that affect patient's lives on the daily. So then you finally get scheduled after jumping through the 10,000 Hoops that the insurance company requires and Straight Out The Gate the hospital that you will be holding the procedure at send you an estimate for an ungodly amount. Where they expect their money up front. Essentially pay up or go kick rocks.  We all know times are tight right now. I love how hospitals think we just have thousands of dollars just laying in the bank to give to them for necessary tests that we need for diseases we did not ask for.   At the root of it all the problem is greed and money.  No one is held accountable in this pyramid scheme of healthcare. The one thing that has absolutely graded on my nerves since day one and it is the one thing that we have had nailed in our brain as healthcare workers is that patients are considered customers not patients. Where is the humanity in healthcare? Why are we so concerned with profits and not more concerned about the reason this whole institution was started in the first place, to help people. Without patients you have nothing. Healthy people don't make Healthcare money.  People should not have to render themselves bankrupt just to afford to attempt to be their healthiest version of themselves. Until we pull the Veil on this whole smoke and mirrors routine that is the business of healthcare unfortunately nothing will change. Insurance companies need to be held accountable for outrageous pricing and hospitals need to keep it reasonable. But trying to make people take accountability in healthcare is a battle that won't be won anytime soon.  The motto of healthcare should not be Do no harm. The Motto should be accountability we have none. Morals nonexistent. Profits? Our number one priority.