I’ve followed Ross Gittins now for 45 years as he’s delivered high quality common sense economics to the readers of The Sydney Morning Herald & The Age. Days after I turned 18 I was delighted to be able to lure him into a pub and buy him a beer. It was surreal. I was in my school uniform toasting my economics hero with alcohol. Anyway both saddened and relieved to hear of the health hell that Ross has been going through. He’s come out the other side, alive but frail.
Gittins has written about it himself in a remarkable piece in The Age. It’s worth reading in full. What follows are the bits that stuck with me.
It started with his teeth
While on a cruise up the Danube, Gittins got an infection that spread via his teeth to his heart. By the time the cruise reached Vienna he was in hospital. He insisted on flying home. Back in Sydney, a German surgeon and two others spent eight hours rebuilding his heart in what has a 30 per cent failure rate. His heart stopped maybe five times after the operation. He spent 44 days in ICU when most patients spend fewer than four.
The lesson here is blunt. Look after your teeth. An oral infection travelling to the heart sounds like something from a medical textbook you’d never read. Gittins now cleans his teeth and gums more diligently than ever before. This is also a reminder that in Australia dental care is not covered by Medicare. It should be as bad teeth can lead to all sorts of serious health problems as Ross demonstrates
Get travel insurance
This one barely needs saying but it always bears repeating. Gittins fell seriously ill on a cruise in Europe. Had he not been able to fly home (against medical advice, as it turned out) and had he required the full scope of treatment overseas, the financial consequences would have been catastrophic on top of the medical ones. Travel insurance is not optional. It is the cheapest important thing you will ever buy.
The nurses
Gittins is generous in his praise of the doctors who saved his life. But his observations about nurses are the ones that hit hardest. He describes university-educated professionals whose desire to care for people lets the government underpay them. He notes the politeness, the constant introductions, the asking of permission before every procedure, the endless “sorry, Ross” every time he winced at a needle.
His wife and daughter spent many hours at his bedside during the worst of it, not knowing if he’d make it. They speak highly of the consideration the nurses gave them, particularly a couple of male nurses who went beyond what duty required.
Gittins frames it simply: we have a wonderful health system, and much of that is due to the commitment of our nurses and the skill of our doctors.
The system’s rough edges
It wasn’t all praise. Gittins, ever the economist, noticed the friction. Specialists optimising for their own domain without anyone coordinating the total package. Two blood thinners prescribed simultaneously that caused internal bleeding (one of them, aspirin, had to be removed before he could begin rehab). An anonymous doctor later put aspirin back on his list without checking the history. A broken venetian blind examined by two maintenance men who left without a word and never returned.
These aren’t complaints. They’re the observations of someone who spent five months inside the machine and has the professional instinct to notice where it creaks. The division of labour that makes modern medicine extraordinary is the same force that makes coordination hard.
Alive but changed
Gittins lost 20 kilograms, his sense of taste, his skin tone, most of his muscle and his ability to walk unassisted. He now wears leg braces and uses a walking frame. He acquired peripheral neuropathy from blood supply issues during his long sedation. He went from seven pills a day to roughly double, now delivered in a Webster-pak.
He’s 78 and says the episode took five months but aged him much more than that.
Gittins has been writing economics columns since 1978. He has an uncommon ability to explain complex policy in plain language without dumbing it down. That he turned the same clarity on his own medical ordeal makes this one of the most useful things he’s written. Not because it’s economics. Because it’s a reminder that health is the asset that underwrites every other plan you’ve ever made.
Look after your teeth. Buy travel insurance. And if you get the chance, thank a nurse.
Sources:
- Ross Gittins spent 44 days in ICU and almost died. This is his story (theage.com.au)