Recent events found me spending more time than usual at a local hospital. The experience has me reconsidering the importance of patient advocacy, insurance limits driving the decisions about patient care, communication among doctors, patients, and family, and of course, theatre. I am not a doctor, nor a patient and in this situation; I am family only by good fortune. Further, I have no insurance, save for the benefits afforded me at the local Veterans Administration by virtue of my military service decades ago, so the only subject I can comment on is theatre and how it relates to healthcare. Turns out it’s important.
A member of my fiancée’s extended family related his experience of a catastrophic work accident and his good luck with regards to where it happened. The geographical “where” can be more important than the physiological “where.” His injury was horrific; shattered vertebrae, stretched nerves, continuing loss of feeling below the knees, a gait reminiscent of Fred Sanford – but at least it happened in a geographic area, a large East Coast city, with some of the best medical care available.
The effect one’s zip code has on one’s prospects for quality education, employment, and other significant life outcomes, is a topic much in the national conversation. Access to medical care is on that list as well, but few patients realize this and fewer still bother to ask why. My fiancée’s cousin, discouraged by the quality of care available to him when he returned to rural California, did ask. He directed his questions toward one of his customers, a woman who educates future nurses, and one of the factors she stressed is the availability of fine dining and a thriving cultural scene.
It makes sense. If you have managed to become a doctor, it has been at great cost. You spent a fortune on your education and a huge chunk of your youth, and it is likely that the cost to your social life, at least to my eyes, has been unacceptable. I went out on the weekends a lot during high school and when you consider that I was not an athlete, nor an ASB President (like our editor), it becomes clear that I had a much better social life than I had any right to. I also had consistently mediocre grades. My classmates who actually read The Scarlet Letter have every right to insist on quality dining and entertainment. I am merely suggesting that we as a nation should make the trappings of the good life available in every hamlet across the land. Dining seems to be the easier nut to crack. Entertainment ...that is proving tougher.
Part of the problem is that stressing the benefits of theatre in philosophical or sociological terms is pretty much preaching to the choir. And the members of that choir are already contributing – or more likely, they’re broke. Theatre practitioners have to start reaching those who aren’t in the choir and the even larger segment of the population that doesn’t even know the church exists. For these heathens, messages about theatre’s ability to address life’s big questions aren’t going to work. But, get them thinking about their children. Get them thinking about their children’s health and how it may hinge on the proximity of a decent production of The Glass Menagerie. Do that, and you have a basis for something more powerful and to the point.
Theater: It’s a Matter of Life and Death!
| Copyright © 2018 by James Knudsen |
Our esteemed Loneliest Liberal admits that he isn't a doctor, or a patient, or medically insured beyond VA benefits, but we are all aware that he knows a great deal about theatre, including something very important about theatre that none of us suspected. Read his column today, be amazed, and then nod in agreement that he has made a very, very good point about the availability of medical care in America.
ReplyDeleteWith the cut back in Medicaid small towns are losing what few doctors and hospitals they had.
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