It Could Have Been Me

I’m writing this on a beautiful spring afternoon in Huntsville, just 5 days after a series of horrific tornadoes tore through my state.  Tuscaloosa, the town I grew up in, suffered a huge gash.  I’m told I wouldn’t recognize the landscape I knew so well.  So many people– even children– are suddenly, unexpectedly and heartbreakingly dead.  The blog piece I drafted last week and meant to post a few days ago seems inadequate to our shared shock and grief.

Last Wednesday, I woke up to sirens and wondered if  I would be able to drive down to Destin as planned, to attend our annual Alabama pediatric meeting.  During the gap between fronts at 8 am, I decided to make a run for the coast– I succeeded in outpacing the storm by a couple of hours all the way south.  Around Montgomery, a radio announcer casually said “there’s a tornado on the ground in downtown Huntsville” and returned to the music– frightened and imagining my husband in his downtown office, I pulled off the road to call him.  He was fine, in the basement of the courthouse, and the announcer was wrong.  It wasn’t until I got to Florida that I found out about Tuscaloosa.

The pediatric meeting was wonderful, with many excellent speakers.  I learned several new things that I hope will help my patients.  But the whole time, between every talk and well into the night, I frantically tried to learn what had happened to my loved ones.  My father and stepmother were fine.  I was able to find many of my Tuscaloosa friends on Facebook, even those who had lost their homes.  I clicked repeatedly on the hyperlinks titled “Names of the Dead,” dreading what I might find.  I watched the news, and I cried.

The storms passed.  Online, between images of the twisters and the damage, I began to see photos of people coming forward to help– rescuing the injured, comforting the newly homeless, bringing food and water.  Even in surrounding areas with no damage, strangers seemed kinder.  The hotel desk clerk hugged me.  Drivers slowed to let me merge, instead of rushing forward at the sight of my turn signal.  In the grocery store lines, many let others go ahead of them.  We quit watering our lawns and washing our cars to save precious water for the thirsty.  I expected this– we always seem to locate our better selves after disaster.  After awhile of course, we forget.  We get back to “normal.” Still, every time, I am grateful to find our ability to care for one another remains intact, despite being so often underused.

Here’s what I didn’t hear, not even once:  I didn’t hear anyone say a victim of the tornado was undeserving of help.  I didn’t hear anyone asked if they had heeded the warning sirens, before being pulled from the wreckage.  I didn’t see anyone turned away from the food lines because they had chosen to live in a trailer or because they could have stockpiled food and didn’t.  I didn’t hear anyone ask why these devastated people had lived in Alabama anyway, knowing tornadoes were possible.  And I didn’t notice volunteers checking citizenship papers before offering help.

I heard only “how can I help?” and “it doesn’t matter that I lost my house/stuff/car when others lost their lives.’”  I heard “it could have been me.”

Can you imagine what would happen if we treated each other with the same compassion when it comes to healthcare?  More than 300 people died this week in the storms– more than 45,000 die every year because they can’t afford to go to the doctor.  Sure, some of them could have gotten insurance and didn’t, just the way some of us keep making dinner upstairs when the sirens go off.   We could choose to let that go, knowing we are human and thus prone to error. 

Forget for a few minutes about the details of how we would do it– single payer, private insurance, whatever.  It isn’t an impossible dream.  We share our resources to educate our country’s children and to build safe highways for anyone to use.  And other developed countries have even applied this principle to their healthcare systems.  But first we have to decide we matter to each other– not just after bad weather but all the time.

What if we just quit asking or telling sick people what they had done to cause their own trouble?  Let other people into the line ahead of us sometimes?  Counted our blessings?  Didn’t complain about sharing some of our stuff, to save others’ lives?  Conserved our resources out of concern for others?  What if we only said “how can I help?”  What if we really understood that “it could have been me?”