Anyroads

Healthcare Will Be the Death of Me

This is something I haven’t talked about much, even though it’s taken up over 20 months of my life at this point. I guess I’ve just been hanging in this limbo space of being sick, and without any solution on the horizon, it seemed like pointless complaining to talk much about it (except with close friends, of course — a girl needs to vent).

Last week I finally got a diagnosis, and it’s not even that this thing is wrapping up that’s making me feel like talking about it, but the fact that if we didn’t have such a janky healthcare system, none of this would have even happened. I can barely process everything that went down over the past two years, let alone the reason for it.

Basically, I got food poisoning, twice in two weeks, while my immune system was low. Between a vitamin D deficiency and a sudden obsession with those dehydrated mangoes they have at trader joe’s (is anyone else completely infatuated with those thing? Because I ate like, a bag a day, no joke), my body was just waiting for some nasty to come along and rip it to shreds.

A month into trying to fend off whatever I got, a two-month spiral of stress kicked into full force. I thought I was going home for my best friend’s wedding, but instead I watched my grandfather die a truly misery-laced death as cancer suddenly blossomed throughout his body in a matter of weeks. My mom got there half a day after he passed away, and the thought of her finding out in the middle of an airport, alone, on the phone, had me bursting into tears months after I absorbed the loss of my grandfather and the whole part of my life he took with him.

Between his death and the funeral I moved to Portland, which involved driving from New York to LA with a friend within 57 hours. If this is something you’re considering doing, I advise against it. A lot. Anyway, there was a lot of stress and traveling and crying and awfulness, and before I knew it, I had some kind of endless food poisoning gut problem, had lost 30 lbs overnight, and had no idea what to do after several doctors threw their hands up (a couple of tests and these guys were already bored with me). I remember sitting in my car in Portland, sobbing because I felt like Alice in Wonderland — shrinking and shrinking until I would disappear, and nothing I could do about it.

Eventually a naturopath helped me with some enzymes and probiotics, which I’m pretty sure kept me from being hospitalized for malnutrition, since I was absorbing zero nutrients from my food. I spent the first 4 months of my life in Portland mostly in bed, weak and disoriented. The amount of times I’ve cancelled plans over the past 2 years is obscene. The first six months of this whole thing were riddled with insane anxiety attacks, and I’ve sunk almost all of my savings into paying for medical bills and food.

Oh, right, food. I can’t even… listen. I couldn’t process anything slightly complicated. Which ruled out gluten, dairy, soy and sugar. That’s pretty much everything edible, right there. I’ve missed two birthday cakes, two Halloweens, and I’m pretty sure my low point was the three months in the fall of ‘10 when I lost all interest in boys and fantasized only about a bowl of mac n cheese (oh God, CHEESE).

Last May it looked like I would be fine soon. My naturopath had seemingly found the cause of everything and I was taking herbal supplements to smooth out symptoms. I spent months getting acupuncture treatments, which, aside from making me feel way better, also made me feel incredibly stoned (I would go to the park and stare at trees or spend hours in the grocery store after a treatment, only to go home and crave Van Morrison like it was my job to play Moondance ten times in a row). My energy came back and I even worked on a film shoot in August. Which, in turn, had me dying in bed for a month just to recover.

Somehow I got insurance in LA, went to see a gastroenterologist, who put me through months and months of tests, including a colonoscopy that left a scar on my psyche forevermore. Finally, after all other avenues were exhausted, I did a test measuring bacterial levels in my small intestine.

This is where my head explodes. All of this, ALL OF IT, was because of a bacterial overgrowth in my small intestine. A totally basic problem that should go away after a couple weeks of anti-biotics. Do you see where I’m going with this yet?

First of all, if it wasn’t so impossible to be insured in this country, I could have gone to a doctor when I lived in New York (where I was working at the time, and paid taxes on the paychecks I received, mind you), and first got food poisoning. When I got to Oregon, no one would let me subscribe to an insurance plan, because I had a pre-existing condition (since I’d had gut issues for over 3 weeks) - which is something Obamacare is going to make illegal once that clause kicks in a couple of years from now, and it can’t happen soon enough.

But the best part is, now that I finally have a diagnosis and a prescription, my insurance (which includes pharmacy coverage) doesn’t want to cover it. So far my meds have been delayed a week, just waiting for the paperwork to possibly go through, so that I only have to pay 50% of the cost, because this particular 2 week course of antibiotics costs:

$800

Did your head just explode? Let’s start a club.

Listen. On the one hand, the past 20 months have been immensely transformative. I don’t feel like I’ve spent them sick, I feel like I’ve gone through a process and am the better for it, in the long run. I also feel like it has helped me deal with and purge a lot of difficult issues and changes I’ve had to deal with, on a personal level.

But good lord, this is a minor infection and the healthcare system continuously made it more and more difficult to take care of. I could have been a functional member of society this whole time. And I’m young, with a minor health issue. What happens to people with cancer? What happens to people with other serious issues?

The truth is, when you’re sick, people don’t want to hear about it. No one wants to hear about suffering or pain, because it reminds them how susceptible they could be to it. If you fall off the face of the earth for 4 months, only a handful of people notice and care (some friends will fly or drive 1000 miles to visit you, and those friends are keepers). We don’t listen enough when our friends have to deal with these things, let alone when strangers do, in the big picture.

I don’t really have a conclusion, to be honest. It just sucks. It’s a terrible system, and it blows my mind when people get so mad at Obama (or Clinton, if you rewind a decade) for trying to improve it. I’m a middle class white girl whose parents can afford to help, and who had a savings account to rely on, and I still got screwed. What happens to someone without those resources, and why do we let that happen?

For now, all I know is that once I can exercise again without everything imploding, I’m totally getting a trampoline.