My chicken-fatty lump was removed today.  Let's analyze this shall we?

In the States, there are the lucky ones who are covered by health insurance through work and have few expenses and great treatment.  There are those who fall so low down on the income scale that they have some sort of free coverage, (at least I hope).  Then there are the millions of unlucky bastards who have to pay seriously hefty monthly bills to prevent losing the farm.  We have see it from all sides.  Our last few years in Maine I was covered by a good insurance through the school.  GP and Grace however were not.  As GP was working as a consultant at that time we had to pay $10,000 a year for coverage with a $15,000 deductible and lots of out of pocket expenses. (It may have cost $15,000 with $10,000 deductible?  I remember the total it would have cost us in case of serious illness or injury was over $25,000).  Basically I was working to pay for their health insurance.  That really sucks.

Here we pay zilch each month;  nothing for meds or gp doctor visits;  25 euro for a specialist and 35 for surgery.  Over 65 and under 18, unemployed and refugees pay 0.  Yes taxes are high but not that much higher than what we have been paying in the U.S..   All those poor wretches who come by the hundreds on boats to the coast of Italy every day?  My taxes are paying for them to be treated medically.  Italy is going broke.  But for humanitarian reasons.

Now for the actual experience and the difference between private and Italian socialized medicine. 

About 10 years ago I had this thing removed for the first time.  Sister D and Grace took me to Dr. Miller in his very nice BBH office across the road from the hospital.  I had first visited my gp who had set up the appointment for me, time and date assured.  I had no wait and was escorted into his examining room where he did his out patient "surgeries".  That is in quotation marks because it took less than 1/2 an hour, start to finish and I didn't feel a thing.  He was assisted by a nurse and we all chatted pleasantly while he very gently gave me locals for the pain, made a tiny incision, took out the mass and sewed me back up.  A completely benign experience in every sense of the word. 

But it came back which led me to today.  Just getting here was a trial.  There was a visit to my gp who sent me to a specialist.  The specialist, whose office is in the bowels of a city-sized hospital in the city, said he'd remove it but I couldn't schedule the date as I needed certain "documents".  I had to make an appointment to make an appointment.  I shit you not.  Unfortunately this was at the time I had my 2 month flu and the day of my first appointment I had a high fever and had to cancel.  That threw everything onto the back burner for the doctor and the hospital and it took GP 3 months of telephone calls to finally get me scheduled.  We cancelled everything else on the calendar to ensure I got this done and headed out 2 hours before my appointment.  I was scheduled for 11:00 and we got to the hospital at 9 after dropping Grace at school.  GP had to come with me because this hospital is like a warren.  We asked at the information desk near the entrance where we had to go and she sent us to the first floor where we wandered around a bit and finally asked a nurse for directions.  She sent us to the second floor where we found a secretary who took my info and handed me a paper to give to someone.  I didn't understand who.  Then she said to sit in the waiting room.  Fortunately I had a book.  A long one.  An hour and a half later GP went to see what was going on.  The squeaky wheel is very relevant in Italy.  A nurse came right in and sent us back to the first floor to day-surgery.  We found a secretary there who took the paper the woman upstairs had given me, made some derogatory comment and ripped it up.  Then she re-registered me and gave me a new paper to give to someone and sent us to another waiting room.  Another hour later GP stopped a nurse walking by and asked what the situation was.  Squeaky wheel.  They came for me soon after.  This time I was taken to a surgery prep room where they gave me a hospital robe, a cap and little paper booties.  And they had me take off all my jewelry.  I wasn't going in for brain surgery for God's sake, just a two inch bump on my leg!  As it was the outer room for the operating room the air was on and it was freezing so they wrapped me up and told me to wait.  Again.  And this time I didn't have my book.  Another 45 minutes or more passed with nurses coming in and out constantly.  Two of them completely ignored me.   I called them the bitch twins because they looked alike, scowled and purposely never even looked my way!  Two were quite nice and checked on me and smiled.  The rest, and there were many, were neither one way nor the other.  Finally I asked how much longer it would be because I had to pick my daughter up from school at 3:30.  Squeaky wheel again.  They had me in the operating room in 5 minutes.  Here is where thing really started getting unusual.  At any one time there were at least 7 people milling about in there.  3 of them, the doctor, his assistant and another helper nurse were there for me.  The others were sorting through paperwork, going in and out of a post-op room next door, holding the doctor's cell up to his ear, and generally being noisy and busy.  I was the last surgery of the day, being the least urgent, and they had all sorts of loose ends to tie up.  It was a complete madhouse.  It was also a real operating room with the big round lamp over the bed, a drip by my side, (just in case), a blood pressure cuff on my arm, (just in case), and everyone masked and capped.  I was in a sea of green.  Thankfully there was a lot to distract me because gentle this doctor was not!  He jabbed me with a needle about 20 times that felt as big as a turkey baster and then sliced and pulled and chopped for half an hour.  He complained about the scar tissue being difficult to cut through and asked twice for different scissors and I could hear him cutting!  Every few minutes I felt a jab that hurt like hell in some area where evidently the numbing medication hadn't reached.   He was pulling so hard at one point he almost had my leg off the table.  I'm terrified that when I get the bandages off I'll have some gruesome Frankenstein-like scar.  He never addressed me at all and when it was over I expected a slap on the butt and for him to yell out "NEXT!".  But one of my nice nurses got me through the crowd and back to my clothes and made sure I was alright.  Time in 9:00; time out, 2:30. 

I have to go back to see the surgeon on Friday to have the stitches out.  Wish me luck.  xxoo me