I'm a long-time user.
I've watched DailyKos grow from a small group of political junkies into a vast, diverse community.
Over the past five years, I've read any number of GBCW diaries. I've never understood why anyone writes them.
This diary is just the opposite.
I nearly died this past Saturday morning, and I'm ever so glad that I didn't, and that I'll have years of future DailyKos blogging to participate in.
Like about 50 million of my fellow Americans, I have been without healthcare insurance for years; in my case, since about 1997.
It wasn't that I didn't want healthcare insurance, I simply never worked a position that supplied it (Administrative Assistant positions, mostly). Additionally, I never made enough money at my jobs to buy insurance on the open market. My max pay was $16 an hour, for about 9 months, but mostly it's been $8.50 to $12.00 an hour since 1996, and the monthly premiums would have meant losing my house or not eating. Not really an option, you know?
When I lost my last job, in June of 2009, I applied for Medicaid, but in WA State as an adult, if you don't have any "qualifying person" (a child) you aren't eligible.
So, like millions of others, I just hoped I wouldn't have a catastrophic medical event which would send me to the ER/Hospital and ring up a bill higher than the value of my house.
Foolish? Yes, but what other choice was there?
I also bear blame, because I could have taken better care of myself and lost weight, although I did give up a 15 year cigarette habit in 2002 and have stayed "quit" ever since.
But without the care of a primary care physician, for at least annual checkups and standard blood tests, my health deteriorated over the past decade.
I used to play billards, and to be honest, I paid my rent for a couple of years sharking pool. But about three or four years ago, I'd gotten to the point where playing a game of pool left me sweaty and fatigued.
I thought it was just my fat ass making me tired - and it was, in part. But mostly it was the evolution of the state of my cardiac system.
So Saturday morning I ended up in a local hospital - for what I thought was likely a peptic ulcer caused by overuse of ibuprofen to treat dental pain which I couldn't afford to see a dentist to treat.
I'd had three entire days of increasing pain and no more than an hour of sleep at a time by 5 am on Saturday. I was at the end of my rope, and after sitting in my living room for an hour googling symptoms and having the internal conversation with myself about the possibility of losing my home to a massive ER bill - I finally chose to seek medical care no matter the cost.
It was the single smartest thing that I've ever done.
Less than ten minutes after arriving at the ER I started having a heart attack.
The ER cardiologist couldn't be sure it was cardiac and not gastric, because of my symptoms (I'd been burping and belching non-stop since waking on Wed morning). But he advised an angiogram to be sure.
Turns out, I had a 100% blockage in a coronary artery. Which, in hind sight, explains why I'd been doing less and less for the last five years. As the blockage increased, so too did my fatigue from less and less effort.
The crazy thing is, I've always had bad luck. Seriously. I'm a prime candidate of proof of Murphy's Law. I guess I was just saving up my entire life for one huge moment of good luck.
Because if I hadn't gone to the ER, I'd probably be dead now. The cardiologist who oversaw my care said there's no better place to have a heart attack than an ER, especially one in a hospital with a first-class Cardiac care unit.
So, instead of my children and sisters preparing a funeral this week, I'm sitting here telling my sad tale to you, with a tiny bit of twisted metal holding my coronary artery open.
My good luck was two-fold. Because I have no money (my unemployment ran out the week of June 4th), and my house is worth a shit-ton less than it was two years ago, I qualified for a 100% charity program at the hospital. I tell you, when the financial services person came to my hospital room and told me that I wouldn't have a massive bill to pay, I nearly had another heart attack!
The worst thing is, my story is not unique in any way, except that most people in my situation either refuse to go for care and suffer a terminal event, or get saddled with a bill so high they have to file bankruptcy afterwards.
It's insane.
Instead of providing universal preventative care at the Federal level, which would save untold lives and (likely) hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade or so, our fucking politicians just keep bullshitting the rest of us that they're "doing the best they can".
The PPACA was a step in a new direction - but it was a half-assed step that isn't going to fix what is wrong with healthcare in America, because it totally failed to address the real problem. Which is that this country can afford to take care of it's people's health, or it can continue to pretend that it's sane and moral to put a bloody profit margin above the health of The People.
There is no logical or sane reason to allow a totally useless industry (the private, for-profit, healthcare insurance companies) to skim money from the system that should be spent on actual medical care.
In addition, why don't some Democrats start asking, loudly, why it's OK to legally prevent Medicare from negotiating the price of medications from big Pharma, when the damned Republicans continue to insist that Medicare can't continue because it costs too much?
It's likely, now that I've got future medical bills (about $250-$300 a month in prescription medications and regular cardiology visits from here on out), I'll qualify for a Medicaid program called "Medically Needy".
One more stupid process. Instead of providing me with relatively inexpensive, primary and preventative care for the past ten years, now the state will be taking on my expensive post-heart attack cardiac care (mostly the cost of medications).
So I'm still alive, and I'm back - but it'll be a while before I'm back up to speed and ranting like I want to, and like all of us need to in these perilous times.
I've missed you all, and your stories and diatribes and tales of woe and wonder. I've missed weeks and weeks of Animal Nuz (has Daisy taken a pot shot or two at Michelle Bachmann yet???). I missed most of what looks like the end of Anthony Weiner's political career (are there any male politicians who aren't willing to throw away a perfectly good career over some stupid sex?). I've left a project that Markos gave me unfinished, and that has really been weighing on my mind.
But for now, I'm simply happy to still be alive and with (one hopes) all of my facilties.
So if anyone was wondering what happened to me this spring, and why I haven't been around, now you know - and hopefully, now you understand the title, because the only way they'll keep me from Orange Territory is if they carry me out in a box.
5:50 AM PT: Thanks for all the well-wishes people, I'm really touched by the comments. But I've gotta get some sleep, so I'll have to read the rest of them later this afternoon.
And please, let my story be a guide for those in similar circumstances - if you even think you might be having a heart attack or other serious medical event, go to the ER.
It just might save your life, and we need everyone of us Liberals and Progressives to fight the good fight against the Lying of the Right (as Mary Scott O'Connor used to say).