I ask because I’ve just been “diagnosed” with a chronic illness (YMMV. Second opinions, yay! 🙄), and I am not kidding when I say that the public healthcare system where I am IS TRYING TO TAKE OVER MY LIFE…
Monthly treatments, for the rest of my life (not gonna happen), blood tests every month, MRIs every 3 months, specialist appointments every 4-6, “compulsory” flu and coof injections, etc, etc, etc…
Some of that I may put up with (if it helps). Some I will not.
But I just wonder… Can they actually force me?? This isn’t America, I know (it’s Aus. Aus is fucked.), but… Surely it’s my choice, right, unless they can prove I’m “not of sound mind”..? Surely..?!?
More scared of losing my freedoms than the fucking disease, tbh. By a long shot…
Oh shit dude, I replied and didn't even read the username to see that it was you posting.
I wouldn't worry about the "sound mind" part.
If they really wanted to push things, they would have to request a third party "capacity assessment". But these are usually reserved for the elderly with dementia or people who are mentally disabled.
My neigbour is constantly traveling around doing these assessments. They must be pretty boilerplate as he's a marriage counselor with no medical or psychiatric training.
Yeah...
My parents went feral when I told them I wouldn't be requesting my doctors to have specific "family meetings" with them to address my medical care going forward (lol, they see these people every few weeks - they'll just gossip behind my back anyway)...
"You wouldn't do that to your (nonexistent) wife!", my dad says... To which I, kindly as possible, attempted to explain that would NOT be the same situation, lol...
And then when I refused, subsequently, to allow them to attend my appointments, they blamed it on my being "nervous about the treatment" (which I wasn't)...
Fucking insane, dude...
Anyway, cheers. I'm looking to move state (again), very soon. I feel like they'll have a hard time getting someone to, as you say, do that assessment by proxy, when I'm something like 1500 fucking miles away, lol...
I feel like that would be a fairly easy court battle, you'd like to think, if it came down to it, and I wasn't even living in the same state!
But I'm seriously not joking when I say that is something they would honestly try, lol. They're fucking nuts.
Sidenote: it's very murky here how nurses and reception staff defer to the doctors...
My parents both used medical privilege to get themselves into the hospital ward to "see me", even though I specifically did not want them to. And used that same "privilege" to get around various coof protocols re visitors, even though they don't actually work in the public system (which is where I was)...
Everything about this experience has been deeply murky, which makes me think... Medical care here could only possibly work that way because the catchment is so small, and everyone knows everyone. Like, I dunno, Rhode Island in the US, maybe, or even... Alaska? Or the Maritime Provinces in Canada..?
I dunno man, it's just very... Weird.
I had that before when my parents managed to get themselves admitted to my accommodation, multiple times, in two different cities, without my permission. One time, at Uni, Dad even manged to get the campus to allow him to stay the night, in my room, WITHOUT ME THERE, AND without my permission... And that was in a DIFFERENT state, where they weren't even "known"...
I fucking wish Australia (and Australians, perhaps more importantly) respected privacy and personal space more, y'know..? But anyway... :-/
Hey man, just wanted to say cheers for all your help and advice (again). It’s just hit me really hard, just now (all of this. I’ll just blame the meds, though, for making me “emotional”), and my sense of humour is… Temporarily depleted.
I guess I’ll come back at this when I’ve recovered a bit more from “your whole life has changed, now, mwahaha” hell week, but yeah, I need to… Have a think about what exactly I’m gonna do from here, now, I think, lol… 😑
Thanks again.
Also, I just found out that my state has some of the highest rates of [rare disease] in the entire fucking world…
That really makes me angry, because maybe if I just… Didn’t move back to this place, I might not have developed this… 😞
Anyway, too late now, I suppose…
I didn’t know. Of course I didn’t know…