LAST DAYS; KAISER PERMANENTE

     Don't worry, this is not about the Armageddon, although, for me - its close. OK, I admit, I'm pretty self-absorbed. Everything is fine, some change for the worse is to be expected time to time in life. Taka found a new job, the one that will pay better, so - why should I complain? One thing only: the change of medical insurance. 
     Its not even about us getting back into the hands of the Kaiser Permanente. The Americans all will know about that medical insurance giant. Are the people outside the United States familiar with it? I met it some twenty two years ago, when, a few months after coming back from Africa, I began to have unexplained fever. Even though I told my greenhorn doctor that I was in Africa, he spent two months sending me for all kinds of tests, except the ones for the infectious diseases. Two months later, the fever stopped and never came back. I never found out, what it was.
     When I became pregnant with Hanah, I moved to New York. The Kaiser couldn't transfer my records from there to California when I moved back home, for a year and a half! They sent me to see a high risk pregnancy specialist, who took scans upon scans of my unborn child. He looked a little agitated while checking the results in front of me, so I asked, what he saw. "The baby is too small, with a big belly!" - he said. Hanah was born lo-o-ong and skinny. 
     The next encounter was a little more dramatic. Now I was pregnant with Sonny. I began to bleed and went to the Keiser Emergency Room. We spent many fruitless hours there, when I was taken to their Imaging department. I still remember the technician who did the test on me. His name was Kats (like cats) and he looked exactly like a cat: with popped out round eyes behind the round glasses with huge lenses. After subjecting me to a very humiliating procedure, he declared that I either lost a baby or was never pregnant. My husband changed medical insurances a couple of days later, and I was able to go to another doctor, who, upon examining me, found me three weeks pregnant. What was that about, I wondered. Did the blasted Kats look at the wrong picture? Did that other high pregnancy specialist?

     I went through many things with the Kaiser, from being forgotten in the waiting room to a doctor telling me that I depressed her by talking about my sicknesses, to being sent to a wrong part of the clinic while having an agonizing foot pain. I've been happy all these years, free from the Kaiser's arbitrary, mistakes ridden system. And now I'm back.These are the last few days before our insurance changes.
     Like I said, although you, who are reading these complaints, might not believe me, this isn't even about all the bad experiences that I've had with the Kaiser Permanente. 
     Its about having to leave the doctors that I'm used to, whom I trust and who invested years in trying to get me better. What will it be like from now on? I don't know. I just feel lousy about it!