I have health insurance. And I just realized this fact for myself last Monday afternoon.

These last few months of green-tea induced midnight rendezvous with orange piles of paper scattered about my home and office. All these late nights and airports and talking and PowerPoint presentations and baggage claim terminals. Swim lessons and sewing class had finally taken its toll. Over 600 emails later (not even including Facebook, text messages or Gmail), I was exhausted and the proverbial chickens were coming home to roost.

I woke up early morning with a sore throat and I guess I didn’t as much wake up with the sore throat, but I knew I had it all night because I couldn’t really sleep. I was always sort of still awake, wired from the last cup of jasmine green tea, Carrie’s favorite. Less caffeine so I can’t stay up as long off it. The Peet’s Gunpowder Green Tea is like crack.

Then I started coughing a wet, snotty nose, mucous-y kind of cough (@6 AM) that caught my attention, coupled with the fact that it kept me up. I immediately didn’t feel good. No slow onset of symptoms.

I thought “I should go see the doctor today”. And I could do that.

I hadn’t accessed my health benefits in over…I honestly can’t remember and I just started keeping a file of this stuff. My memory only lasts as long as the paper trail.

I didn’t even really realize I had healthcare, I mean really had healthcare until I walked in the Kaiser Fabiola building and stood in line to check in (and make my co-pay) with a 75 year old white women and a middle-aged Pinay couple that looked like they were from Pacifica. The gentlemen obviously really didn’t want to be there and definitely didn’t want his wife (or his sister) broadcasting his medical diagnosis over the cell phone to her sister (or his wife) as we all waited to take our pee tests.

I swiped my card and 15 dollars later I was in the doctors office, after the what-has-now-become usual battery of tests. Blood pressure cool. Heart still beating. No fever. I can’t forget to mention that I hadn’t been to the doctor is soooo long, that I was even wearing a little blue mask, to help keep all the germs to myself and not get anyone else sick.

At the hospital.

Isn’t everyone sick here? No wonder everyone was looking at me like I was a SARS-infected, horse-swine flu sickened member of the Taliban: I’m the only person wearing a surgical mask that’s not in surgery at the moment. People didn’t even want to get in the elevator with me. My doctor stood a nice other-side-of-the room distance from me. He only got close enough to check my heartbeat and look inside of my freshly Q-tipped ears. I wonder I pushed all the wax to the back and he could see it all stacked up back there but wouldn’t even tell me?

I left Kaiser medical facilities with some codeine-infused cough syrup cocktail and a doctor’s note, just in case I couldn’t work. I didn’t want to infect anyone in the office. Really, I didn’t go to work so that everyone else wouldn’t get sick and then they wouldn’t be able go to work either. Not fun, staying at home on the couch playing Video games and drinking tea and cough syrup straight out the bottle. My mini-sick vacation.

Let’ s not forget this little insurance factor. $10 dollar medicine, $15 dollar co-pays and I get to see the doctor. I even get to choose them from a cool website that encourages me to THRIVE (like LIVE without the L and add a “THR”). I can check my medical records and be apart of my health care and preventative maintenance. And this was my first time even going to the doctor in over (damn) two too many years.

I had to imagine what it would be like to not be able to go to the website and make an appointment and see my chubby, Caucasian cherubic cheeked doctor. I had the privilege of waiting in line and for them to call me and see and talk to me and ask me “what can I do for you?” and take my money. It almost didn’t’ feel right for me to be able to get some cough syrup when there untreated patients of a wider range of maladies that go without treatment on a regular basis.

Shouldn’t I have to suffer too? And I’m totally not Catholic. Well, maybe a little bit, but its just because their clergy are so, how should I say it, “party oriented”.

…So after I took my 2^nd dose of cough syrup. It really hit me. I had insurance and there were millions who did not or were underinsured and they couldn’t even get a taste of this nasty ass cough syrup if they wanted to. And here I was, all employed and fully insured and not being healthy and not REALLY understanding that fact until RIGHT NOW. The CNN conversation was a dull roar and the newspapers are too understaffed to really write about it (right?) and people talk about it, but unless you go to the doctor (or can’t go to the doctor), you might not really understand it.

Yet…stay tuned for [Part Duex]

Tags: healthcare

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