So, I woke up Christmas morning and had trouble walking. My left leg was all tingly, numb and heavy. Figured out eventually that it wasn't just the leg -- it was everything on my left side from face to toes.
I delayed telling anyone ("must have bunged up my back") or doing anything -- didn't want to worry the kids, wanted to avoid medical bills -- in the hopes that it would just go away after I slept a little more.
By the next day, it wasn't any better. The kids were gone, back on their way to Texas, so I wouldn't mess up their holiday. I called a friend who took me into the emergency room (I don't have a "primary care physician").
It was, indeed, a stroke.
Fortunately, a fairly minor stroke. I was very lucky. Mostly sensory, with only slight motor impacts; a thrombosis, not an embolism. I was released two days later and am now limping about the apartment with considerable grace and panache.
This will cost:
- emergency room admission
- CAT scan
- 3 days hospitalization
- MRI
- echo-cardiogram
- X-rays
- ultrasound (carotid arteries)
- prescriptions (blood pressure, aspirin, cholesterol)
- follow-up doctor visits
Now, I do have health insurance, of a sort, through work. Big deductibles, partial payments, elaborate hoops. I figure I'll owe something in the mid-thousands.
See, I don't make much money. When I was unemployed three years ago, I ran up huge credit card debts. I've been steadily (and sacrificially) paying those bills down over the last two years. I was just starting to see daylight (another 18 months and I would have been debt free) but now . . .
the bills haven't come yet, but I already know what the effect will be: more debt slavery for prodigal. More months of kowtowing to the Owner of Me, Citibank. I must embrace my Inner Serfdom.
Debt slavery. That's what I got for Christmas.
And I have to stop smoking.
Shit.
No wonder I'm cranky.