Category: Uncategorized

Tressimee Thompson was a teacher before the pandemic, but COVID made her and her husband reevaluate their family situation. She decided to showcase her talents at home as a proud stay-at-home mom to her four children to be more efficient. She’s still teaching, painting, reading, and doing arts and crafts, just with a smaller class.

Each of her children, three boys, and one girl, are uniquely different, and so have her experiences giving birth to them. Tressimee’s labor experience with her second son sticks out the most. Unfortunately, her gynecologist wasn’t available when she went into labor. So she just went to a hospital knowing she would be with an unfamiliar medical staff, but feeling she would get her needs met.

“Different hospitals treat people in different ways,” said Tressimee, a biology major and Jackson resident. “With my first son, I felt like I was heard when giving birth to him. It was an easy labor. My doctor listened to me. This time I didn’t know I could go to a different hospital. I did not know that I could get a different doctor. So, I just went to that hospital and did what they told me.”

They didn’t tell her much. The medical staff initially blew off her concerns of pressing labor and excruciating pain and left her in a room for what seemed forever to Tressimee. When the doctor finally checked her, Tressimee was four centimeters dilated and in nauseating pain.

“The pain was terrible,” said Tressimee, a Medicaid recipient. “They told me to lay down in the bed, and I couldn’t get up at all. But I would keep sneaking to the bathroom to squat just to get some relief. I’ve since learned it’s not good medically to lie down to have a baby. It’s better to be in a natural position.”

They gave Tressimee an epidural to cope with the pain. It lasted for a while, but the pain came back. They gave her another one, but it only numbed her legs. She was in a lot of pain, but she still wanted to document the moment by having her husband record the birth as they had previously done, but the hospital told the family they couldn’t.

“I was in labor for 17 hours,” Tressimee said. “I felt like I wasn’t heard at all during the process. They just really brushed me off. No sense of urgency. I never felt my health was a priority in the situation.”

Prayerfully, she was released from the hospital with her baby two days later, but some of the traumas of not being heard and some of the hardships of motherhood lingered. Depression crept in and dangerously turned into suicidal thoughts. The prolonged feeling of sadness and helplessness led Tressimee to her next agonizing medical experience.

She spoke with her OBGYN about therapy and counseling for the anxiety and the emotional and mental problems she was experiencing. He was supportive and referred her to a nurse practitioner. The nurse practitioner agreed with Tressimee about her depression but only wanted to entertain medications.

“I didn’t want to take it, but I did,” Tressimee said. “The first time I took it, I started shaking uncontrollably. I looked up the side effects, and tremors were a side effect. The nurse practitioner told me to come back if the medicine didn’t work, and she would prescribe me something else, not therapy.”

Tressimee never visited the nurse practitioner again. She dealt with her issues the best she could on her own. It was six years before she made it to therapy.

“I feel like if she would have recommended the therapy, then my anxiety wouldn’t be as bad as it is now,” Tressimee said. “I didn’t want medication. I wanted therapy. I wanted to talk through my issues and learn how to deal with them. I didn’t want to suppress my feelings. I wanted to move through them. I wanted help getting through those thoughts.”

Tressimee does not feel like most Medicaid providers are as professional as they should be. Many do what they want instead of listening to their patients. Medicaid should be held to a higher standard to ensure quality healthcare. They should work harder to tell people how to get well instead of just giving them medication.

“Not getting that therapy that I needed back in 2017 really affected me,” she said. “It affected the way I interacted with my kids. I didn’t want to play with them. I didn’t want to talk to them. I just wanted to lay in bed some days, not wanting to do anything. I couldn’t deal with life sometimes. I feel like the lawmakers should listen to us and know what we need. Put more laws into effect with insurance. Just listen to us.”

The beginning of 2019 began like most years for Terry MS resident Phyllis Lewis. She and her husband Derrick were enjoying their empty nest. Her two adult children had been out of the home living their own productive lives for a while now. She and Derrick worked and spent their free time traveling here and there, exploring, fishing, and dropping a coin or two at a casino in Shreveport, LA, which they like to frequent.

Phyllis, a medical biller, never had any health issues and rarely got sick. In 2019, she began feeling ill. Thinking it was the common cold or flu, Phyllis went to the clinic, and they told her nothing was wrong.

Soon after taking the medications, Phyllis began to get weak, so much so that she couldn’t walk or move around well. After a couple of days, she couldn’t move at all. She was stuck in bed, not even mobile enough to use her phone.

Her sister knew she wasn’t feeling well and grew concerned when she didn’t hear from her that day. She stopped by to check on her and found Phyllis lying still in the bed with a 101º fever. Her husband had to come home, carry her to the car, and take her to a hospital.

Phyllis stayed in the hospital for a week. Doctors told her she had prednisone-induced diabetes. Prednisone was one of the medications prescribed to Phyllis when she initially wasn’t feeling well, and they continued to give it to her when she came to the hospital to “taper her off.” However, the drug had raised her insulin levels and made it hard for her to function. It led to more problems down the road for Phyllis.

Phyllis didn’t feel listened to her. Her doctor told her she would transfer her to another hospital for a specialist. Instead, the doctor discharged her after a week without any improvement.

After being discharged and unable to function, she decided to go to the hospital just two days later. However, doctors still had difficulty telling her what was wrong. She saw more than 20 doctors while at that hospital. On her seventh day in, one of the doctors diagnosed her with Adult Onset Still Disease, a very rare condition. Even with this diagnosis, Phyllis felt her concerns were still not being listened to because her symptoms (high blood pressure, kidney issues, fever) did not align with the doctor’s diagnosis.

Her concerns heightened because she felt doctors had given up looking for a solution. The diagnosis felt no better than not knowing because it led to no improvement in her condition. She had two more hospital visits before her issues seemed to subside. After her third hospital visit, she began to feel better. Flare-ups are not as bad as it was initially.

Phyllis is still looking for answers. What happened to her? What does she need to improve her condition? She desperately seeks a solution because she has hip issues. Namely, for the necrosis in her hip formed by medication she was prescribed and administered in the hospital.

Phyllis had hip replacement surgery but is still in pain. Moving around with constant pain from her shoulders to her feet is still challenging. She feels like she’s deteriorating.

Her desire to get rid of the pain has led her to see doctors in other cities like Chicago and St. Louis. Although Phyllis feels she has a better understanding, she still struggles to get the care needed when she returns home to Mississippi. A significant reason is that her Mississippi doctors are not hearing her, and when the out-of-state doctors consult them about her history, they insist that nothing is wrong and that she must be “crazy.”

Perpetuating the idea that a woman with a beautiful life and family would suddenly pretend to be sick and in pain is the only crazy thing about this message. Healthcare professionals have continuously dismissed Phyllis. Yet it happens every day. Black women are overlooked, called crazy, and sent home without answers.

Lauren began her freshman year of college in 2018. Unfortunately, it was the same year she had a terrible car accident. Her time in the hospital contributed to her academic suspension later in the year. It was a difficult and depressing school term.

While on suspension, Lauren started receiving enormous hospital bills. These payment requests would scare a 30-year-old professional. So, you can imagine how traumatizing and intimidating it was for 19-year-old Lauren.

With her academic career already in jeopardy, almost before it even started, she was on the fence about paying to go back to school and having to pay for hospital bills simultaneously or solely working to pay the bills off. She decided to do the latter. Even working full-time, it took three years to pay it off.

Lauren’s medical care took care of her physical injuries from the car accident, but the aftermath had a lasting mental impact. After paying off the debt, she was unsure what to do next. Being out of school for so long made her question if she could start all over again.

Lauren fell into a depressed state that she struggled with immensely. She was hesitant to get help for her sadness and confusion. Once she built the strength to talk to a professional, she felt her doctors did not take her seriously. It made it harder for her to express herself. The uncaring attitude of her doctors at a fragile time made her feel like she was pathetic. She started to internalize more and keep a lot of things to herself.

The sadness jarred Lauren’s memory of the stories she’d heard from her mother and grandmother. They had also sought care but did not receive it until the last minute. Unfortunately, having to experience such a poor bedside manner helped her relate to and understand the generational mistreatment she’d been hearing about for years. They choose to only seek medical help in emergencies because of it.

Isela has had a couple of accidents that have made things more complicated than they should be. She tried pushing through without help because she didn’t have health insurance. But as the pain and hardships worsened, she started to look for alternative treatments because of the steep costs of hospital bills.

One of Isela’s accidents required her to get medical staples that had to be removed sometime afterward. When she received the bill, the thought of getting more care throughout her healing process went out the window. Isla knew she wouldn’t be able to pay that bill, and because of it, the doctor would refuse to continue her visits without health insurance.

According to Mississippi Today, since 2014, states have had the option to expand Medicaid eligibility to adults, such as Isela, with incomes below 138 percent of the federal poverty level ($18,754 annually for an individual), with the federal government picking up no less than 90 percent of the cost. States have seen significant budget savings from Medicaid expansion because the federal contribution covers individuals and services previously covered with a lower matching rate or unmatched state funds.

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), enacted in early 2021, allows states newly expanding Medicaid to access enhanced federal matching funds for most of their non-expansion Medicaid populations. With the 90 percent matching rate for expansion adults established under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), ARPA strengthens the fiscal case for expansion. It’s a no-brainer for Isela, who sees healthcare as a fundamental human right that no one should be without.

Despite her voice not being heard by doctors, she hopes her story will be heard by others as a testament to the high costs of medical care, making it nearly impossible for those who don’t have health insurance to get the care they need. Isela urges lawmakers to consider extending benefits to those who need them most – needy families and single-parent families. Relieving the pain and suffering of Mississippians who cannot afford to get the care they need is the humane thing to do.