On February 22, 2024, the Faculty of Arts, together with the Department of Narrative Medicine, the Colombian Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Columbia Global, hosted a screening of the 2023 documentary. If dreams were lightning: Rural medical crisis. The 25-minute film chronicles the trials of several patients in the rural American South who seek medical care in response to rising insurance premiums and widespread hospital closures. Prior to the screening, Ramin Bahrani (CC '96), professor of film in the College of Arts, who is the screenwriter and director of the film, and Wafaa El-Sadr, professor in the College of Epidemiology and Medicine, who is also executive vice president of Columbia Global, spoke. A discussion was held with.
Sarah Cole, interim dean of the School of Arts and Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature, gave opening remarks, calling the film “astonishingly effective and disturbing.” Although it is a short time, the whole world will be opened to many viewers. ”
Hospital closures and health wagons in the southern region
Bahrani, who is Iranian, grew up in North Carolina.at that time If the dream was lightning––The song, named after a lyric from John Prine's “Angel from Montgomery,” came to Bahrani while researching hospital closures. During his childhood, he often accompanied his father, a doctor. If the dream was lightning is dedicated to clinics and hospitals in remote areas of North Carolina and Virginia. When Bahrani came across Healthwagon in his reading, he decided the subject was worth exploring in documentary form.
“When hospitals close, communities are left to fend for themselves. For many, mobile clinics are the only solution,” reads the on-screen blurb in the first five minutes of the film. Masu.
Health Wagon is a nonprofit organization that operates with mobile units in poverty-stricken central Appalachia. If the dream was lightning It features an outpost managed by the organization's president and CEO, the ebullient Dr. Teresa Tyson, and its clinical director, Dr. Paula Hill Collins, who both portray their close-knit friendship on screen. speaks lyrically. “It helps when we're both standing there together,” Hill-Collins says in the film. “It doesn't make you as tired.”
Bahrani described his first encounter with them: Their performance is part of the way they raise funds for their work. They had great chemistry. Since Health Wagon was founded by Sister Bernadette “Bernie” Kenney in 1980, it has generated funds and built a substantial network of patients, some of whom are interview subjects for Bahrani and his crew. Some patients became
This nonprofit organization does not charge for its services and relies entirely on donations from individuals, foundations, and corporations. A sign on the mobile unit asking patrons to make donations prompted El-Sadr to ask Bahrani and others how doctors could avoid giving in to despair. “Part of it is how they were raised,” Bahrani replied. “Women in these communities are very strong. They tend to do a lot of things.”
Reflecting on how Tyson and Hill-Collins have effectively connected with the community, El-Sadr said, “For doctors like me, this event is a reminder that we have forgotten the distinction between medicine and medicine. “It highlights the possibilities.”
The serious nature of health insurance costs
In one scene in the documentary, a man in camouflage suits sits next to a woman in bed, hiding under a colorful snowflake-patterned blanket. Their background is empty except for a turquoise wall and his one hanging cross. The couple is introduced as Danny Sturgill and Melanie Sturgill. Due to exorbitant health insurance premiums, Danny is left to care for Melanie, who is bedridden after suffering five strokes caused by a pituitary tumor. Danny previously had good health insurance from his job as a meter reader, but was forced to quit to care for his wife.
“We can't do the things of this world. We go fishing, camping, going to Dollywood, things like that. So we're living,” Danny says. , Melanie smiles next to me. He added that if you were to have a medical emergency, you would either die or be completely financially ruined by hospital bills. On screen, Bahrani mentions a fantasy shared by Danny of Melanie getting up and walking again. In response, Danny takes a deep breath and begins to cry. “I would give everything I have and everything I've ever had to see this,” he says, sobbing.
The camera then moves to another wall in the Sturgill house, and an on-screen statement explains that three months after the interview, Danny unexpectedly and brutally murdered Melanie. In the next shot, another statement is made. “In prison, Danny will finally have access to something that has eluded him so far: medical care.”
