The Freedom Of An Empty Cup

Jackie’s message is one we’ve heard a thousand times, yet maybe we need to re-hear it from time to time. I got real sick this spring. I was trying to muddle through, balancing job and time and everything. Doctors kept kicking the can down the road. There was a lot of “you have to wait 2 weeks for the results to come in and then another week before I read the results. Then I’ll schedule a follow up… how does six weeks from next October sound to you?”

One day I was thinking “this ain’t getting better”, and then the darker thoughts intruded; “how many ‘six week delays’ do I have in me?” Back at work it was the same old shit but it was piling up and my heart hasn’t been in it. I saw how they acted during COVID (especially HR) and I can never feel the same again. It simply is what it is.

I did something I’m still kinda’ shocked about. I changed everything.

I don’t want to spew personal stuff so I won’t offer details. Suffice to say I did the one thing most people don’t do. I dedicated 100% of my efforts to getting healthy.

I went at it with hammer and tongs. The first part was to overcome foot dragging. Every doctor’s office that said “I’ll get back to you in 3 weeks” got a steady barrage of calls. “If you’re too busy, who isn’t? Give me a referral to someone who can attend to this now.” I pestered schedulers and labs. “If you can’t do that lab test for a month, who can? Where are they?”

The second part was geographic blinders. I think most patients will only go to the most convenient medical location, I made it clear that I would go anywhere anytime and do so gladly. I wanted quality treatment and I wanted it now. No half assing and no excess delays. “Location X is booked up for months? What about location Y? Can you schedule me there? I don’t care how far it is. I have a truck and I’m still healthy enough to drive it.”

The third part was financial. Money is only good for the things you can buy with it. Also, I live like a pauper even when well employed… so I had emergency savings. One must remember what savings are for. Also, I have good insurance for which I pay mightily but, of course, they’re not the final say. The incentive of insurance is to draw things out as long as possible. I wasn’t putting up with it. People treat insurance like “daddy” instead of “a thing for which I paid”. I hassled whomever needed hassling. “You haven’t gotten insurance pre-approval? You expect that to take a couple weeks or more? Let me call insurance. I’ll get an answer or *die trying.” (*Possibly literally). Many times I asked “how much does it cost without insurance?” (Usually the answer is terrifying, but not always.) And I indeed burned cash like I didn’t care; “The co-pay is how much? You don’t really know if it’s necessary? Fuck it, I’ll pay.”

For a few meds that got held up I just plain bought them with real American dollar bills. This baffled the pharmacist but I was a bulldog. “Med X isn’t covered? Oh, you’re waiting to have insurance approve? It’ll take how long to hear back? That’s bullshit, how much does it cost with real money?” Here’s a shocker. We always hear about lifesaving medicine A or B that costs thousands of dollars a month and that’s tragic, but it doesn’t go that way all the time. I had a few medicines that insurance held up that were “old”. There’s one (I’m not saying which one) that was something like a $10 co-pay but insurance was being a bitch about it. The dr. had changed my dosage and insurance was like “you too recently refilled at the old dosage so you will just have to wait”. Turns out it was $10 co-pay or something like $13 if I paid cash. I handed the pharmacist a $20 bill. She looked at me like I was the biggest drug dealer in the county, but I got my meds. I’ve also driven dozens or hundreds of miles from Pharmacy A (which is sold out) to Pharmacy B (which isn’t). This is apparently something nobody else does.

Did it work? Yeah, kinda’. I was in very bad shape. Now I’m “shaky but recovering”. Well worth it!

Everything else? Ignored. No boat. No squirrels. No camping. The lawn looks like shit. My vehicles need an oil change. Not much motorcycle riding. I cancelled an important family trip. I chose to empty my cup and do just the thing that needs doing. No regrets.

Could I have done it all while juggling the old job and keeping politely to the insurance and medical monopoly timeline? No. I’m not sure if I’d have died. Maybe? Probably not. Unquestionably, the ensuing months would’ve been torture. I certainly wouldn’t be doing as well as I am in the time it took to get here.

We all say “health is everything” but our actions don’t show that. We treat health like it’s one of a dozen equally important things. I’m just sayin’.

There’s a second part to this story.

When I was a kid, my mom was captain of the volunteer emergency squad. She had a pager back when such things were rare and cell phones didn’t exist. She and several other (EMTs?) arranged schedules such that there would always be a crew of people “on call”. They’d be at home or in town but near their pager and near the firehouse (where the ambulance was parked). During “on call” hours if the pager went off shit got real. Mom would stampede for the car (often practically running over her clueless son).

As far as I know, she never got paid a penny. I don’t know how many lives she saved. I don’t know how many times the ambulance arrived too late. I only know that pager went off and I’d dive for cover. And I’d be proud of my mom.

Some calls were short. Some dipshit fell in a ditch and broke a leg; transport to the hospital and be back at home before dinner is too cold. Other calls were longer… much sadder. Farm implement accidents, car collisions, housefires, etc… Mom would come home worn out. She’d have either succeeded or not at what was surely one hell of a experience. She didn’t share the details with me, but of course I heard various stories. Ambulance crews see shit that horror movies wouldn’t show.

The thing I learned is that all things are relative. My mom, God bless her, was calibrated according to a baseline I can’t quite imagine. I’d come to her with a skinned knee and she’d be like “That’s not so bad, last Tuesday old man Wilson had his leg ripped in half. Here’s a band aid.”

She wasn’t wrong. Eventually I just figured out where the bandaids were and took care of things myself. Is that not part of growing up? It just was a thing; one does not come to mom with skinned knees and paper cuts when she recently witnessed some dude wrapped around an unshielded PTO.

So too with my illness. It was fuckin’ serious to me. Terrifying, painful, possibly final… and a thing that made me drop all other plans and activities. Yet it don’t mean shit to anyone else. And I get that. The people at a hospitals I went to have seen things. For that matter, so have millions of others. We (all of us) are surrounded by people that faced worse. My situation was not a heart attack. I didn’t get lung cancer. No appendages got ripped off. I expect to be my regular self (full recovery!) though it’ll take as long as it takes.

“That’s nothing. Here’s a band aid.”

It makes me laugh. God trained me at age nine for what’s hitting me now. I humbly know that my little tempest in a teapot is nothing. I browbeat some doctors and labs until it was figured out, then I scampered off and fully dedicated myself to recovery. Easy peasy.

For everyone, and especially the many of you are dealing with shit far more serious than this particular blogger, I wish you well.

A.C.

P.S. And put a shield on the fucking PTO!