Insurance and Other Crap

I haven't written a post in over five years. I started this blog to help integrate all the things I was feeling after going through cancer. Now that I am going through it again I need help integrating all the feelings while going through cancer. All the things I thought I knew but I obviously did not or I wouldn't be in this particular place in my life right now. And there is no sense in going back and blaming myself for not taking better care of myself or for not hearing every word every doctor said to me for the last ten years. That accomplishes nothing. It only serves to make me feel bad and I cannot afford self-pity right now (or ever really.) I told my best friend, last night, that I didn't think I could write any longer because I had spent the last several years in seminary and it had trained my brain to write with words that the majority of people have never heard before. It makes me one of the gatekeepers of knowledge. Keeping people out by speaking in a foreign language. And that saddened me deeply. I did not want to write long winding sentences replete with commas and semi colons - ten lines long. I wanted to write short, pithy sentences that accurately relayed what I felt even if it had to use curse words to do it. So I decided to return to the blog and see what would come out. Today I am receiving chemotherapy. A three to four hour treatment. I am bored having forgotten my headphones at home and unable to play a movie or watch another repeat episode of The Blacklist. I am coughing like I have smoked a pack a day for ten years and ricola and warm tea with honey are not helping rather I think it is ultimately making it worse. I am waiting for them to put in the Benadryl so hopefully the phlegm and mucus will dry up and I will be able to get a good sleep. I feel at the mercy of people doing things to me rather than me doing them for myself. The only thing I can do myself is to write and to put my heart pillow, which has a little pocket in the back of it for my black tourmaline crystal, next to me. That's all I've got right now, and it's enough - for right now. Doctors don't like to give you a prognosis because what if they are wrong? And all Drs. really want to do it save your life, especially surgeons. And if I was a fully cognizant idealist right now I would want them to do it for purely altruistic reasons. But because I am so very sick at this moment (not in terms of symptoms - I feel fine) but in terms of the actual diagnosis, I don't care whether they have an altruistic bone in their body. I just want them to fix this. And I can be proactive, by eating well and getting enough sleep and doing my yoga for cancer yoga and meditations that I have on Gaiam.com. But all of that doesn't change one fundamental fact: I have cancer and I will have to rely on the generosity of others and quite frankly the sheer selfishness of my surgeon's not wanting to fail. I want to be in a boat being steered by a very strong and sure navigator who has traversed these waters before. Presently I am not with that courageous sea-farer.I an with oar-person has relegated me to. And present fact is really the point of this post. Insurance in this country sucks. Because I have two part-time jobs as opposed to one full time job I had to search for and pay for my own health insurance. And I researched. One thing I am really good at! And came up with a good insurance who participated with all my doctors and had great prescription drug coverage and no co-pays. It was heaven, for one year and then 45 was elected and everyone lost their shit and started raising prices and cutting benefits. I was almost priced out of my wonderful health insurance. Then I got sick and realized that all the money I was putting into that insurance for the last few days did not afford me the best healthcare when I needed it most. My poor primary care physician (PCP) called and faxed and texted this insurance company but still an immovable wall. I called and faxed and texted and was told that the highest person I could speak to was the supervisor on the customer service floor. Really? No one who made and decisions? Not one? Why am I telling you all of this information about my sickness and my insurance woes? Because that is the best way I can, right now, shed light on this hellish healthcare system that we have. And yes, there are far more important thing happening in the world right now, not the least of these being the "First Lady's" bullshit: "Be Best," campaign which is so broad it is toothless. There are #MeToo campaigns and Russian inquiries and a man in the White House who is perhaps the world's greatest john/sex trafficker. I get it. And today my problem is with the healthcare system that is not interested in curing anything as much as throwing drugs at it at an exorbitantly high price. I thought I knew better. I thought I was doing all the right things but my due diligence was not diligent enough. So, please be grateful for your health if you have it (if you don't I am praying for you) and for your healthcare, if it works and other little thing that brings you joy today. Feel joy! Today I have joy because none of the people I am sharing the infusion suite with are throwing things at me for coughing every 30 seconds. It's the little crap.