It's different when you know you can't see a doctor.
I know I can't trust the insurer my job uses to provide coverage for its employees. It lied about why it was raising its rates, blaming the Affordable Care Act, which sadly doesn't mandate that insurers not be able to raise their rates.
Yet I was in tremendous pain for months, maybe years. How's that working out for you, America?
KosAbility is a community diary series posted at 5 PM ET every Sunday and Wednesday by volunteer diarists. This is a gathering place for people who are living with disabilities, who love someone with a disability, or who want to know more about the issues surrounding this topic. There are two parts to each diary. First, a volunteer diarist will offer their specific knowledge and insight about a topic they know intimately. Then, readers are invited to comment on what they've read and/or ask general questions about disabilities, share something they've learned, tell bad jokes, post photos, or rage about the unfairness of their situation. Our only rule is to be kind; trolls will be spayed or neutered.
I do not regret choosing not to pay for insurance that would not have helped me in this situation, anyway. I do regret that so much of my government and my fellow Americans would rather have me suffer horrific pain than give me low-cost access to health care.
So it all begain with a rusty screw driving itself into my right hip. Well, that's what it felt like. Scraping and hurting so much I could hardly think. And I did what millions of the 99% have to do in this country; go to work anyway. Take OTC painkillers when it gets bad enough (and trust me, it does). Don't sleep on that side, even though it's the side that you get the best rest on. When you wake up in the night due to pain, even if it's 3-4 nights a week, you get up and take pain meds, and pray to every God you can think of that this time, they actually work and help you sleep.
Your pain becomes an entity, like a snake, always waiting to bite you. To ward it off, you do strange rituals, like always keeping your purse against your right side in the car, because otherwise It Might Hurt when the belt digs into your hip. You find ways to do your job standing up to help give your hip a tiny break. You smile and say to people asking you why you're limping that you don't know, gosh, you're doing just fine!
Because otherwise, they might tell your employer you can't work. And you can't have that, even if your head is barely above water with this job, because you know you won't find another.
In the middle of all this, of course, my mind played tricks on me. I can't count the days I was left in tears, wondering if my hip were broken, or if I had arthritis, or something worse. Two of my relatives have had cancer...could I have cancer? Or could I have something even more awful, something I just don't know about because I'm not a doctor?
Well, things came to a head and my husband told me that I had to get medical help. And I am lucky. I have a federally funded clinic less than an hour away. They got me medication that helped (after giving me medication I was allergic to, first). They diagnosed me with bursitis, which isn't great, but sure isn't cancer. They had an orthopedic specialist see me whose first remark after she saw what was wrong with me was "You have bursitis. Don't worry. We can fix this." I'm sleeping through the night and the old snake in the grass is mostly gone.
But while that is helpful, that's not the issue. Even with my great imagination, or terrifying imagination, I can't imagine doing what the specialist recommended, taking two whole weeks of vacation to rest my hip and make me much better. I can't imagine actually being able to go to a doctor immediately at the onset of my pain. I have still incurred medical bills even with the discount at the clinic which it will be very hard for me to pay. And I still don't know if I'll ever go back if this happens again.
Is this the country you thought you lived in? It wasn't for me. While I am very proud of myself for all the hard work I've done despite my pain, including going to a town hall this summer that wound up on Countdown and organizing with Rebuilding the American Dream, I am still angry that I HAD to do all that work because my government doesn't care enough about me to enroll all of us in Medicare. I am angry that significant portions of my government want to end Medicare. And enable hospitals to decide to kill me rather than give me a life-saving abortion. And are dinking around with stupid austerity nonsense when people are becoming disabled and dying for lack of access to medical care and financial support for their needs. Not their wants, their NEEDS.
Even with the Occupy movements (and Gods bless you, you keep on doing what you do so well), I can't imagine a world where I could realistically take a two-week vacation. Or a four-week vacation, still standard in most of the sane developed world. I can't imagine going to a doctor when I get sick. I can't imagine my husband, who's been out of work for over four years, finding a job.
And that's sick. We have to save our country. I came to that conclusion this past summer, like hundreds of thousands of us did, apparently. The politicians sure as hell won't do it for us. Even some of our fellow citizens, drunk on Rush and Foxilla, won't help us...yesterday at our Rebuild rally, 4-5 morans across the street started yelling at us that we were "ignorant Communists." Right...we're the ignorant ones.
I'm not sure we're going to be able to do it. I'm really not. I hope we can. I do. I have met some wonderful people here and in real life during this whole American justice summer/fall, and I want our country to do right by us. By the people who can't even get to a federally funded clinic. By those trapped in jobs they hate because of benefits or simply the economic downturn. By those kept from working because they won't do unpaid labor. By students who can't afford to pay off their debts and can't find jobs.
Gods bless those who embody the true spirit of America. The healers who show true kindness, the fellow sufferers who help encourage us to go on, the Prophets in the streets screaming "Something is wrong here! Terribly wrong!" Let Justice roll down like waters, and Righteousness like a neverending stream.
Because I'm getting better. For now. But you may not be. And even I, with my comparative advantages, had to be forced to go see a doctor because I was scared it would bankrupt us. No one should fear that. NO ONE.
Gods bless you. And Gods bless the United States of America, bleeding and broken as it is. You are beautiful. You are superheroes. And so am I.