I work online. I watch on Twitter as issues rise and fall with public popularity and as an editorial team we discuss the merits of covering a story.
Of finding an angle, or making it applicable to our audience.
I’m interested in health and food, fitness and life stories. I have a weird interest in people. I would love to work writing autobiographies while talking all day, but for now, I’m privileged when people let me into their lives.
In the two years that I’ve worked with Her.ie, I’ve met some incredible people.
The one thing that always strikes me is their strength. It’s usually the common theme in the human condition that strikes me on a daily basis.
When people tend to talk about their illness, struggles with health or just dark times in their lives, it’s usually in reflection.
They’ve come through the tough time and they’re helping create awareness. To let people know, they’re not alone.
This evening, while I strolled through Twitter, an open letter on the Irish Times caught my eye.
Marese Hickey in Clontarf doesn’t have the comfort of writing in the past. She’s looking after her mother, an elderly woman of 90 years old, who had the same battle of most Irish families looking for a medical card.
In the letter, she writes:
‘Last year it took me four months to get my 90-year-old mother’s medical card issued, and last November I asked the public health nurse to try to get a chiropody appointment for my mother.’
While it’s unnerving to think a lady of that age would be left waiting so long, you’d be forgiven for thinking, that at least now she was sorted.
She had a medical card. She had applied through a system, waited her time, and surely now she was entitled to a chiropody service.
However, Marese comments that while she was waiting for her mother’s appointment, she asked the nurse for an update.
She was given a fax of the letter sent to the HSE on November 11th last year. On the letter was a sticker on it saying that it could not be processed without the expiry date of the medical card.
Surely, this is a mistake? One date that could be told over a telephone call.
Marese, being proactive, decided to ring the office to update the records online. She wrote about the incident too:
‘I rang yesterday to give them the expiry date over the phone, only to be told that it would have to be posted to them instead. I asked, “That’s in spite of the fact that you are sitting in front of the computer and it is only four digits, and it’s for a 90-year-old woman who has been waiting since November even though you had my mobile phone number and could have got it from me three months ago?” The answer was, “Yes.”’
If you want to read the whole letter, it’s available in the letters section of the Irish Times here, but if I’m honest that was enough for me to feel anger.
Real, personal, shocked anger.
Having gone through three hospital illnesses with my parents and grandmother, I’m tired of hearing that there’s a healthcare crisis.
My father got sick in 1998. It’s 2016 and 18 years later, people sit on chairs in A&E for days on end, and hospitals have waiting lists for beds, routine procedures and basic referrals that can range from months to years.
And here’s the thing… Nobody has the answer.
There has been five governments I have lived through, with empty promises, and no solution.
I don’t need a miracle, I just need to see a change. Some move towards an equal healthcare system.
I need to know that good, honest people who pay taxes will go to a hospital A&E and get treated.
Our nurses and doctors are some of the most incredibly dedicated staff in this country, why make a tough job even more difficult?
Nobody applies for a medical card without needing the support. The forms are long, complicated and invasive.
You wait weeks for a response, and when you think you’ll finally receive a service you’ve long-waited for, it must be amongst one of the greatest reliefs to every mother, father, son or daughter looking for a basic right.
For access to healthcare. To watch a loved one break free from discomfort or pain.
Marese Hickey had to make her mother’s personal plight public, just to prove a point.
That one of the biggest issues facing Irish families won’t make it into most candidates’ election manifestos. It’s not easy to sell a long-term plan that won’t have an immediate effect.
But at least, it would be a start.
I’ll be opening my door countless times to politicians over the coming weeks.
I’ll ask a question. One that might not affect me today or tomorrow, but it will eventually.
‘When can we be promised healthcare changes that can make a real difference?’
If I get sick, I’d like to think I can go to a hospital where staff are respected, beds are available and ‘going private’ isn’t the only way I get seen by a specialist.
Call me an idealist, but I don’t think your health should be subjective to your bank balance.
If one of my local politicians have a plan to improve healthcare, and make a real change, they’ll get my number one vote.
You can leave the lip service at the door.
