When The System Isn’t Coming

Tonight, I sit in quiet contemplation wondering whether I take back the power I handed over to the medical system.

I say tonight, but that’s not really true. It’s morning. It’s almost 4:30 a.m., and I’ve been awake for over an hour. That’s what frustration does: it wakes you up early and refuses to let you back inside your own head.

I keep using the word power, and maybe that’s not quite right, but it’s close. What I’m really talking about is decision-making authority over my own body. Specifically, over one medical issue that’s been ignored, dismissed, and punted around for two solid months.

I’ve given the New Mexico medical system half a dozen chances since the accident. Probably more. And every time, I’ve hit the same wall: refusal to act, wrapped in excuses. One after another. At some point, you stop wondering whether the system will help you and start wondering whether you need to help yourself.

Since October 27, 2025, I’ve been walking around with between two and three cups of fluid trapped in a pocket on the inside of my left thigh. Gravity pulls it down toward my knee, but the bulk of it stays in the inner thigh. As soon as I got my computer back, I started researching it myself, and everything pointed to the same thing: a Morel-Lavallée lesion. The timing fits. The mechanism fits. The presentation fits.

It makes sense.

So of course, the response I got—from ICU nurses, from rehab staff, from clinic providers—was the same rehearsed line, delivered over and over like a prayer: “Your body will reabsorb it.”

Okay. But it hasn’t.

“It will.”

Flash forward to life after rehab. I needed a primary care physician, because apparently you don’t get to address medical problems without a designated gatekeeper. No PCP, no doors open. That’s how the system works, efficiently dumb and proudly inflexible.

I finally got an appointment at a clinic, hoping to establish care and deal with my knee and shoulder. Instead, the provider half-listened and somehow heard colonoscopy, diabetic eye exam, and lung cancer screening. I walked out with three referrals I had zero intention of following, and my knee was dismissed once again with the now-familiar phrase: “It’ll reabsorb.”

A week later, I tried urgent care. They told me they couldn’t do anything and suggested the ER. I told them it wasn’t an emergency and left. The next day, I went to a different urgent care. Same result. So fine, fuck it, I went to the ER.

Guess what I got?

The same bullshit. Discharged, told it would resolve, handed antibiotics “just in case,” and sent on my way.

Eventually, orthopedics entered the picture. For the first time, I saw someone who actually wanted to solve the problem. They ordered an MRI and told me to come back once it was done.

Cue the revolving door of bureaucracy.

One imaging center told me I couldn’t have an MRI because of my defibrillator and that I’d need to go to the hospital for their lower-power machine. I called the hospital. They told me cardiology would need to do pre- and post-device checks. I explained I’d just had one. Didn’t matter, outside the “window,” whatever the hell that means.

They said they’d call me.

This was the week before Christmas. In New Mexico, December is where productivity goes to die. Nobody called. I followed up. Same answer. They’ll call you.

So I contacted orthopedics again. They pivoted and ordered a CT scan instead.

“Don’t worry,” they said. “They’ll call you.”

It’s the end of December. Nobody is calling. That’s not cynicism, that’s pattern recognition.

And so here I sit, on Christmas Day, contemplating something I never expected to seriously consider: telling the entire medical system to fuck off, grabbing a syringe, and draining my own leg.

That’s where I’m at.

Not because I want to be reckless. Not because I’m ignoring risk. But because endless inaction becomes its own danger.

There’s a moment in prolonged recovery where compliance stops feeling like responsibility and starts feeling like surrender. Where being patient starts to look a lot like being abandoned. Where you realize the system is optimized for flowcharts and liability, not for urgency, not for edge cases, and certainly not for people who don’t quietly accept “just wait” as a plan.

This isn’t a manifesto. It’s not advice. It’s an honest snapshot of what happens when trust erodes slowly, appointment by appointment, excuse by excuse.

If the system won’t come, people start thinking about walking alone. And that’s the part nobody ever seems concerned about.