Beds line the emergency room hallways, patients sit wounded and unattended; even the pharmacies refuse to service late entries.
One such incident could have meant the difference between life and death for one Fresno man who due to doctor/patient confidentiality will remain nameless.
Running behind, one man desperately pounds at the pharmacy door in order to obtain his heart medication.
With a long weekend ahead, admission to this run down pharmacy could be the key to this mans survival.
“I was running behind” he stated between breaths. With the doors locked at 12 P.M., (University Medical Center (UMC) pharmacy policy) there is only a four hour window for patrons to wait the lines and receive their medication
Upon entrance, the man frantically scrambled to the nearest window only to be shunned away with the heavy slam of a service window.
Thanks to the remnants of common decency, the clerk at the next window kindly filled his prescription. “I don’t know what I would have done” the man went on to state.
In the emergency room of Community Hospital of Fresno, patients wait hours upon hours to be assisted.
This reporter had the unpleasant opportunity to sit in on the deplorable conditions and experienced what the patrons experience first hand.
While sitting and waiting to be seen, bed-bound, hallway-mate, Caesar Gutierrez waited nearly 5 hours to simply use the restroom while overcoming the pains and shakes of alcohol withdrawals.
After hours of waiting, Gutierrez could not wait any longer and took things into his own hands literally and metaphorically and urinated over the side of his bed and onto the walkway.
Caesar was immediately chastised and put back on hold, after battling the stinging pains of withdrawals he had had enough and returned to the streets.
These are not third world countries or issues that only the “poor” are forced to deal with.
These are issues that each and every student here on campus faces as well as any other individual working for the city, government, or any individual lacking in adequate healthcare.
The deplorable conditions of the Community Medical Center and UMC are the institutions where students and staff will be “taken care of”.
Lacking healthcare is not an issue common only to Fresno or even California; FCC simply acts as a microcosm of America as a whole.
Being the land of freedom and opportunity is simply not making up to our lacking healthcare systems.
According to a recent study done by the U.S. Census Bureau, 47 million of Americans are uninsured.
In California, 180,000 are uninsured, and thanks to good ole’ George W. Bush and his veto of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, twenty percent of the uninsured population are children.
