Break a leg ... if you want to be seen by a doctor

Bernie Sanders is shining a light on what's ailing this country, and in no small way. Every other civilized country, he shouts, has universal healthcare.

This is one reason I'm looking forward to starting studies in London, the National Health Service which also includes dental. Sure, I'll pay a small fee with my student visa, but it will be worth it.

For these past several years have nearly killed me.

Let me back up.

It was 2008. I was making a decent salary as a Manhattan editor of a bioinformatics newsletter, which when I left, seemed to be an okay decision. I was pretty happy there, but it wasn't a perfect fit, and who expects the Spanish Inquisition? I'd already lined up suitors before I walked out the door, juggling five freelance assignments those first two weeks alone. On a trip to Prague that year, I thought, 'Who ARE these people who are struggling?' I really couldn't relate.

Yes, it was a chore keeping my health insurance at over $400 a month, but I told everyone the pain would last six months tops. I even cavalierly told an Unemployment Department worker that I didn't need any special handouts for older workers. I did not need advice.

But then the recession hit.

By 2011 things weren't so rosy. I was on food stamps and Medicaid and freelancing my buns off, not always getting paid what I wanted anymore or getting as many clients. Every job interview had an air of a pathetic stink. I jumped for joy on the big sale, a Scientific American or an AARP magazine, but it wasn't paying the rent (by itself.)

Now I've been on Medicaid, called Husky D, for several years. I am almost at the point where I no longer qualify for it, but I still do. I have had a few great experiences, notably the luck of the draw with my eye doctor, but it's been misery for my poor leg.

After injuring it just below the knee in May of last year, I ended up seeing a less-than-sensitive ortho near my home here along the Connecticut shoreline. When I sought a second opinion, I was unable to get in right away at Yale. I ended up having my case reviewed by them, but was told it would take six months of "conservative therapy" before they could see me.

I had physical therapy but not as much as I needed.

Had I broken my leg, I'd be being seen regularly by an orthopedic doc. After all, in an overcrowded system, the biggest fires have to be put out first. What's an orange-sized bone bruise with accompanying numbness?

Part of the knee is still swollen and red (from blood.) If I walk too much, it's smarting - like knives pushing from inside. Sometimes, though, I am happy just to feel anything on the knee. My foot doctor, who was kind enough to also look at my knee, explained that nerves very slowly regenerate ... but it will.

The sad thing, though, is I am not able to find a doctor to see me about this. Over 95 percent of the ortho specialists here in my area will not accept Husky D patients.

I write for top tier publications, tutor English as a Second Language and even reading to a sweet seven-year-old Autistic boy. I am a tax-paying, law abiding, 54-year-old M.A. candidate to King's College in London and I can't be seen by an ortho here in my county.

What.

The.

Hell.

I'm counting the days til I'm on that plane. I don't expect all will be rosy, but I do expect that the stigma of not having an overpriced health plan will have been something I left across the pond.

I do not blame Yale for not seeing me for six months (which is less now), but a system which, frankly, sucks in a way I never dreamt possible the day I walked out that door of my Manhattan job.

I only hope that my leg isn't the worse for it. I have a long way to go in this life, and I'd hate to think the crippled medical system had also crippled me.