The doctor leaned over Jitamber Singh Bedi and inserted the needle of the injection into his eyeball. Jitamber had a blockage in his vein that was causing his eyesight to cloud up. Vision problems are a side effect of diabetes. Like eighty-eight percent of truck drivers, Jitamber Singh Bedi too had Type 2 diabetes.
In order to operate a commercial vehicle on the road, a driver must be able to prove they are maintaining stable blood sugars. Jitamber medical exam report is part of his driving record. It is filed electronically by the Medical Examiner (ME) with the US Department of Transportation (DOT) bi-annually. Any drop in health indices would mean he loses his license or at best, gets recertified every year.
Over half of all long haul truck drivers suffer from hypertension and/or diabetes. These comorbidities put them at a higher risk for COVID.
“Sedentary lifestyle and erratic sleep gets you, if bad food on the road doesn’t,” says Jitamber Singh Bedi. “Sitting for ten hours a day for ten days at a stretch, the truck driver is a sitting duck for diseases like diabetes. And when they do take a break it is easy to pull out a cigarette.”
“At every rest stop I ended up smoking,” says Jitamber.
Irregular eating habits and dehydration further strain the system. Jitamber is always worried about taking restroom breaks and therefore restricts the intake of fluids and food which can lead to the taxi cab syndrome. The inability of drivers to relieve themselves regularly throughout the workday leads to voiding dysfunction, infertility, urolithiasis, bladder cancer, and urinary infections as compared with nonprofessional drivers wrote Alon Y Mass, MD, David S Goldfarb, MD, and Ojas Shah, MD. from the Department of Urology, NYU Langone Medical Center. Paid by the mile, every restroom stop costs precious time.
“Sssssslow suicide behind the wheel,” says Jitamber, “with the pandemic that could take a quick turn for the worst.”
Jitamber graduated from Mayo College, where he went to school with the sons of India’s upper classes, princes, and nobles. After immigrating to the US, he worked for ten years as the Assistant Manager, Special Reporter and Editor for India Post, a California publication. Jitamber started driving a truck in the US in 2012.
He still maintains his A1 license to drive a truck and is married to Lisa, a librarian at the county library. Jitamber is on his wife’s medical plan. Kaiser is their health insurer. Kaiser, a California company, has agreements with other providers to provide coverage all over the US thinks Jitamber. He does not really know how his health insurance will play out if he falls sick on the road.
Raman Dhillon of the North American Punjabi Trucking Association (NAPTA) has negotiated a health plan that truckers can buy into. Portability of insurance plans from one state to the other has been a bottleneck to seamless healthcare access. NAPTA wants to ensure that the trucker has access to pharmacy anywhere and medication can be prescribed to and picked up by the driver from the pharmacy closest to him.
President Trump’s Emergency Order in the face of the COVID pandemic opened up anywhere anytime access to healthcare.
Anywhere Anytime Access
Of the 1.5 million truck drivers on US highways, says the Punjab Truck Association, about 150,000 Punjabis are working in the trucking industry. The South Asian gene makes the Punjabi drivers more vulnerable to acute myocardial infarction (MI). Studies by UCSF, Stanford and El Camino hospital’s South Asia Heart Center, show that heart disease strikes South Asians at a younger age and more malignantly than the general population. “South Asians represent approximately 17 percent of the world’s population – yet they account for 60 percent of the world’s heart disease patients,” says Anita Sathe of the South Asian Heart Center which runs a program to help South Asians manage their heart risk.
The ability to access and monitor healthcare on the road is crucial to the health of Punjabi truckers.
COVID-19 opened the door for truckers to access technology-based ubiquitous healthcare. Under the 1135 waiver authority and Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, the incorporation of telemedicine into routine medical care on a temporary and emergency basis, has lightened the burden on truckers. The waiver has loosened former requirements that the patient and provider be in the same state or that the patient must be in physician shortage areas to access telemedicine; so a doctor in New York now can be reimbursed for consulting with a patient out of California.
The rule that a new patient could not use telehealth and must have an established relationship with the doctor has been relaxed as have some of the HIPAA requirements like data transfer and storage. The new criteria allow the use of tablets or smartphones, so a driver can call a nearby doctor from his smartphone. However, all calls must be video calls; audio-only calls may not be made.
“From March 6, 2020, a range of providers, such as doctors, nurse practitioners, clinical psychologists, and licensed clinical social workers, offered telehealth to all patients,” says Apexon Healthcare executive Siva Sundar. “Meeting the doctor through zoom or Facetime has become the norm for everyone during the quarantine.”
Telemedicine and walk-in medical clinics located at truck stops and Pilot and Flying J Travel Centers proliferated with the advent of COVID. For the sake of the truckers, these new rules must outlast the pandemic and become the new normal.
Checking For Sugar On The Road
Jitamber Singh Bedi would find it useful to wear body sensors that alert him, his family, and his doctor to potentially serious changes in his health status.
Continuous glucose monitoring devices to monitor the driver’s blood sugar – motivates healthy behaviors says Rajeev Sehgal, Jitamber’s classmate from Mayo College, who has been wearing the Dexcom 6 device for over 6 months. “In the same way that wearing a Fitbit can be motivational for meeting daily fitness goals, real-time monitoring of blood sugar levels might reinforce good behaviors around eating and exercise,” he says.
The tiny sensor he wears on his stomach sends real-time reading of his blood sugar levels to his phone every 5 minutes. “It is extremely comfortable to wear. I can swim with it. I change the device every ten days,” says Sehgal who highly advocates its use by drivers. The device allows quick remedial actions for timely diabetes management and the information can be kept private or shared with family members when the driver is on the road.
If the sensor indicates high sugar and blood pressure levels, the trucker can consult with a doctor by teleconference over Facetime. If they’ve embarked on a trip without getting a refill or forgetting to pack their meds Telemedicine can get them their meds at a pharmacy close to where they are.
“At present, the sensor is prescribed and covered by insurance for people who have uncontrolled type 2 diabetes but it should be authorized for truck drivers who are managing their diabetes,” says Sehgal.
Monitoring blood sugar levels on the go will allow the trucker to take immediate remedial action. A brisk walk could fix a spike in blood sugar levels following a sugary lunch or in case of a drop in sugar levels, a quick pop of sugar will prevent deterioration in vision like the one Jitamber had to face. A year ago he noticed he couldn’t read street signs. Retinal vein occlusion and macular edema caused big brown blobs to float in front of his eyes. After a series of shots at regular intervals, Dr. An Ngoc Huynh, MD at Kaiser Irwindale California declared his vision to be 20:25.
“The main thing I want to better understand is, how different things I do affect my glucose levels,” says Jitamber. “I will track my blood sugar levels to see how it responds to food, sleep, and exercise. Fasting, exercise, stress, or sleep can be tweaked to get the marker to the right place. Precision in targeting our health issues can prevent shots in eyeballs,” said Jitamber.
Read other articles in this series:
Ritu Marwah wrote this series while participating in the USC Center for Health Journalism‘s California Fellowship.
