Hey teabaggers! I've got your death panels right here!
Raul Carranza is a disability activist in San Diego. Here's how California's budget cuts, engendered by the repukes' obstinate refusal to raise taxes, affect him:
http://raulcarranza.org/stop-the-cuts/just-breathe/
I was supposed to blog about managed care today, but I’m not going to do that. Instead, I want to tell you about my Saturday.
Due to the cuts that I had to make to my nursing care, the only person with me that day was my dad. The problem with this is that my brother and I are in different rooms. That means that my dad has to run between rooms when one of us needs something. So we set up a system. When I need something, I call the house phone using skype, if it’s a real emergency, Otherwise, I speak into a baby monitor that he puts on my shoulder....
It started with a very loud wheezing around 6pm. Phlegm was blocking my airway. I could tell it was in my airway because of the distinct vibrations I felt every time I took a breath. I could also tell the exact position of the phlegm and I knew that suctioning (taking a catheter, sticking it down my trach and sucking the phlegm out) wasn’t going to help. The path the catheter had to take was such that it bypassed the actual position of the phlegm, which was on the bottom left side of the trach. It didn’t matter how many times my dad suctioned me (it was 6, I counted), he was never going to get the phlegm out. What I needed to do was change the trach all together. The problem was that my dad was the only person there, you need to two people to change the trach....
I don’t know how many of you know what it’s like to not have the ability to breathe properly for an extended period of time, so let me tell you. Imagine that you’re breathing through a straw. All the air that you breathe has to go through that little opening at the bottom of the straw. Now, what if that opening is blocked and you can only get half the air that you were getting before? Naturally, you are going to struggle, but there’s nothing you can do. You just have to wait it out and hope that it doesn’t get any worse. So that’s what I did. I sat, in my bed, wheezing and intently staring at the clock. It was 10:50 pm, but it might as well have been 8 pm again. It felt like it’d never end. I watched as the clock turned from 10:58 to 10:59 and finally to 11:00.
= new reply since forum marked as read
personally signed off on over 100 alone, and signed the legislature into law which gave the accountant power of life and death, over the family or doctor ...
When Medi-Cal cut Raul Carranza’s round-the-clock nursing care, the paralyzed student feared for his future. “Please join us so we can stop these cuts and save not only my life, but thousands of others,” Carranza said at the time, organizing rallies in an effort to restore in-home healthcare services.
But now Carranza is in a hospital fighting for his life. He was taken to the Thornton UCSD hospital Wednesday night, suffering fluid in his lungs, difficulty breathing and low oxygen.
“This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t had my nursing hours cut,” said Carranza, who cannot walk, move his arms, eat or even breath on his own due to Muscular Dystrophy.
