You may remember this from a few weeks ago. There was one more reason that I didn’t say there why I was so angry at them.

I was still angry the next day. This had to stop. It felt imperative that I take that stress and put it on the shoulders where it belonged so that actual changes for the better could happen, and so I googled, found the name of the chief medical officer, printed out my words from that blog post and slapped a Forever stamp on it and felt, walking away from my mailbox, like the world had been lifted off me.

But before I put it out there, I dithered, I thought, I decided that, no, they need to know; I didn’t put in any details, hey, let them go look it up. I’m sure they did.

I added that a medical error there had widowed G years before.

I did not say a stunning, egregious error that made me gasp out loud when I heard what they’d done–that any reasonable person, medical background or not, would too.

They weren’t going to take my friend G away from me too.

G got a phone call from that chief medical officer: an abject apology and a concern for her well-being and a promise to look into their procedures. Then, “I got a call from Sacramento!” G laughed; she told me of her initial confusion at being told a grievance had been filed. She knew she hadn’t.

“No, it was filed on your behalf,” they said, and she told me, “I knew instantly who had done it.” She thanked me, wondering out loud if she shouldn’t have done so herself.

But she’s a nice person who doesn’t like to complain.

I’m a nice person who doesn’t like to complain.

But I sure can if my friends need me to stick up for them. It was so necessary.  She told them that day that she had not just me but two other people lined up in advance in case there was any problem, but they would have none of it. She was bullied that day.

And I was paying it forward for all of you who bombarded Caremark when they refused to process my Humira prescription with life in the balance two years ago; thank you forever for that.

“They all came back clear!” All the biopsies. All the worry.  And now she is finally free to go ahead and have the other surgery that will make her well.

At Kaiser.