In my previous blog post I wrote that Dickinson, North Dakota is a prison work camp because I keep getting stopped by the Police.  In the past two years, I have been stopped by the Police in Dickinson, more than in my entire previous forty-eight years of life.

Another reason why Dickinson, North Dakota is a prison work camp, is because of the lack of medical care.

In 2014-2015, the old St. Joseph’s Hospital in downtown Dickinson was closed and the new St. Alexius Hospital on the west side of Dickinson was opened.  Though the new St. Alexius Hospital cost approximately $75-$100 million to construct, it is an empty shell, a facade, and a sham, in several different ways.

For instance, if anyone with a serious medical condition arrives at the new St. Alexius Hospital in Dickinson, the hospital staff won’t hesitate to put that patient on the 100 mile, $40,000 helicopter ride to Bismarck, because they know that they aren’t capable of handling this patient with the medical staff and equipment that they have here.  Knowing this, many people in southwest North Dakota travel directly to Bismarck in an emergency, even though Dickinson is 100 miles closer.

What is wrong with the new St. Alexius Hospital, the equipment, and the medical staff?  This great big sprawling facade of a building, was meant to be a monument to the Catholic Church, just like a cathedral.  Rather than using the construction money for necessity, functionality, and efficiency in a medical building, they built a great big hollow temple monument.

The great big sprawling empty facade St. Alexius Hospital besides being a monument to the Catholic Church, was also a jobs program for the Catholic Church.  “Good Catholics” from the Catholic School system were awarded administrative jobs, though they held no degree in business administration, nor healthcare.  Nurses, who had nasty dispositions and an unfriendly manner, who would never be hired elsewhere, filled most of the nursing positions at the St. Alexius Hospital because they were local Catholics.

Medical Doctors, who can see what Dickinson is like, see what the St. Alexius Hospital administrators are like, and see what the St. Alexius Hospital nurses are like, take a pass on working in Dickinson, unless they have gotten into trouble elsewhere and don’t have any choices left.  Even the medical doctors with a troubled past don’t stay in Dickinson very long.

Most local people in Dickinson know better than to go to the St. Alexius Hospital in Dickinson.  They choose to go to Bismarck if they think that have something seriously wrong, or they go to Sanford Health in Dickinson if they think that their condition is not a severe emergency that requires driving to Bismarck.

Even though the medical staff, nurses, and doctors at Sanford Health are at a much higher professional level than the Catholic jobs-program staff at the St. Alexius Hospital, Sanford Health is a get-em-in and get-em-out quick type of operation, not at all like seeing a traditional family practice medical doctor who wants to know and understand his patients.

When I have needed medical care in Dickinson, I have found that I was shit-out-of-luck.  When I had a sudden, fast growing mole appear on my back, which looked and acted like a carcinoma, I couldn’t get an appointment with a dermatologist in North Dakota, not even in Bismarck, any sooner than six months.  I had to drive 750 miles one-way to Idaho in order to see a dermatologist the following week, who examined this mole, and froze it off for $100.

I have had severe allergy attacks in North Dakota, where my eyes swell shut and are so sensitive to light that I can not see.  I explained to the medical doctor that I saw at the Sanford Health clinic that my allergy attacks are so severe, that I thought that I needed something like epinephrine, which people who are allergic to bee stings use.

This young lady medical doctor was working as a “locum tenens”, a temporary doctor used to fill a staff shortage.  Her home was in Florida.  She didn’t understand what I was saying, she didn’t know what I was talking about, and she prescribed me some useless medication that didn’t work, that cost over $200 to cover only one or two allergy attacks.  She made some remark about “when I see my primary care physician”, because she was too young and dumb to know that this is it, this is all that there is in North Dakota, this visit with her is all the medical care that I am going to get in North Dakota.

Last week, I had an allergy attack that was so bad, not only did my eyes swell shut to where I could not see, I began to have trouble breathing, and I didn’t know if I was going to die.  In a panic because I began to not be able to breathe, I was about to call an ambulance, but I didn’t want to go to the St. Alexius Hospital because those fucking ham-fisted, fat, scowling, battle-axe, bitch Catholic women would only make it worse.  Stupid fuckers would take my blood and try to make me have a CT-scan or MRI, just to pay for their machine, even though I was having an allergic reaction.