Raccontando del calvario vissuto a causa di una infezione al fegato non prontamente diagnosticata, su The New York Review of Books lo storico Timothy Snyder riflette su come il sistema sanitario statunitense si ripercuota su ogni aspetto della vita dei cittadini producendo gli effetti più negativi soprattutto tra le fasce più vulnerabili della popolazione. L’autore sostiene che solo un’autentica sanità pubblica – e quindi il riconoscimento del diritto di ognuno all’assistenza sanitaria – potrà restituire serenità, uguaglianza e libertà al popolo americano. Il long form di Snyder è tratto e riadattato dal suo ultimo lavoro intitolato Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary.

I was in Germany when I got sick. Late at night in Munich on December 3, 2019, I was admitted to a hospital with abdominal pain and then released the next morning. In Connecticut, on December 15, I was admitted to the hospital for an appendectomy and released after less than twenty-four hours. In Florida on vacation, on December 23, I was admitted to the hospital for tingling and numbness in my hands and feet but released the following day. Then I began to feel worse, with a headache and growing fatigue.

On December 27, we decided to return to New Haven. I had not been satisfied with treatment in Florida, and I wanted to be home. But it was my wife, Marci, who had to make the decisions and do the work. On the morning of the twenty-eighth, she packed everything up and got our two kids ready to go. I was a burden. I had to lie down to rest after brushing my teeth and after putting on each article of clothing. Marci arranged for wheelchairs at the airports and got us where we needed to be.

At the Fort Myers airport I sat in a wheelchair with the children on a curb while she returned the rental car. As she remembers the journey, “You were fading from life on the flight.” At the Hartford airport she wheeled me from the plane straight to a friend’s car and then stayed with the kids to wait for the luggage. Our friend had not known what was happening; she looked at me in the wheelchair, said “What have they done?” in Polish, shook her head, and got me into the front seat. I lay down flat as she sped to New Haven, because my head hurt less that way.

I struggled to get admitted to the emergency room in New Haven. I had to use a wheelchair to get from the parking lot to the lobby of the emergency department. Another friend, a doctor, was waiting for me there. When I was admitted to the emergency room at midnight, I used the word malaise to describe my condition to the doctor. My head ached, my hands and feet tingled, I was coughing, and I could barely move. Every so often I was seized by tremors.

 

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