File Under: "Why America Needs Universal Health Care."

 Just in case someone tries to convince you that "things are back to normal":

When the pandemic started, Tomeka Kimbrough-Hilson knew she had a small growth inside her uterus. She was first diagnosed with uterine fibroids back in 2006 and had been able to have the non-cancerous mass removed through outpatient laser surgery. Over the years, she'd also been able to manage her symptoms with medication and changes in her lifestyle.

But when those symptoms – a bloated belly, irregular periods, nausea – returned in 2020, Kimbrough-Hilson was unable to get an appointment with a specialist.

"March 27th came and everything got shut down," says Kimbrough-Hilson, 47, of Stone Mountain, Georgia. "I wasn't at the tier of care that needed [immediate attention], because of all the precautions that had to be taken."

But even after the lockdown in spring of 2020 was lifted, Kimbrough-Hilson, a mother of five who works in the health insurance industry, was unable to see a gynecologist.

She left message after message with providers. But her calls went unreturned, or providers were booked for months at end. "I couldn't get the appointments," she says. "I couldn't follow up."

These days, her belly is swollen, and she says she often feels fatigued and nauseous: "It makes me want to throw up a lot."

She also struggled to get appointments for other members of her family. Her 14-year-old daughter underwent brain surgery before the pandemic, but then couldn't get follow-up appointments until recently.

Kimbrough-Hilson's family's experience isn't uncommon, according to a new poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Among households that had a serious illness in the past year, one in five respondents said they had trouble accessing care during the pandemic.

That's a "staggering" number of people unable to access care, says Mary Findling, the assistant director of the Harvard Opinion Research Program. "From a health and a good care standpoint, that's just too high."