Dear Colleague:
On July 4th, after working the night shift in the Emergency Department, Dr. D.G. had a right ventricular hemorrhage with subcortical ischemic changes. He is currently in [the medical ICU] awaiting transfer to [a prominent local rehab center].
Mrs. G was recently informed that D’s insurance does not include benefits for inpatient rehabilitative services. This news follows a difficult financial year for the G family; D has also been supporting his brother’s family due to metastatic disease as a result of stomach cancer. His brother died three months ago.
Because D is now considered uninsured, [the rehab center] is requiring $60,000 prior to D’s transfer. We have requested donations from numerous sources including Saint Joseph’s Mercy Foundation, but no one source has the availability of the entire amount.
We would like to ask for your help in the form of a donation as soon as possible. The sooner D can begin rehabilitation the better chance he has for a positive outcome.
I talked about this a bit in an entry a few weeks ago, but again, when you're working in a hospital with sick people every day, mortality is all at once distant and immediate. Morbidity and human frailty are all around us, but at the same time, the very fact of its constancy makes it fade into the background. It's just the scene that you're in, but seemingly, it's never you.
But it could be. It could be you. It could be me. It could be your co-worker, your friends, you family. I've met this doctor several times (the Emergency Department and the Anesthesia Department, as you can imagine, have more than just a glancing interface) and this doctor is not old, maybe just ten years older than I. The day of his stroke, he wasn't feeling well. But he came in to do his job anyway. See the letter above: "...after working the night shift in the Emergency Department..." He came in to do his job anyway. Maybe he shouldn't have, but was the job he was trained to do, the duty he was called on to provide, which was to take care of sick people.
Now let's help take care of him.
Here's how.
(I apologize that this is so cumbersome as I'm not the one who set this up, but I'm told you're to click "Donate Online" --> "General Donation" --> "Other Fund" --> "Physicians in Need of Medical Care" and help however you can. And please pass this link around to anyone who you think may be interested.)
Thanks everyone. And have a good weekend.