damn government, damn state healthcare, damn private health insurance, damn \”pre-existing conditions,\” damn gestapo pharmeceutical industries who make prescription medications so incredibly expensive, damn disease, damn doctors, damn money and the lack of it, damn laws, damn health history, just damn damn damn it all. fuck.
the paradox, the absolute paradox of healthcare, welfare, all of it. you need it to get back up on your feet, but once you get on it you become so dependent that there\’s no way of getting off without falling back down. no way, of course, unless you find a way to become stinking filthy rich. you get the doctors to fix you, they find a way but put you on medication for life, but \”it\’ll be okay, because state healthcare will pay for it.\” but you can\’t leave the state, because then you lose the healthcare. takes six months to get it in a new state.
if people like me had the money to pay $1500 in healthcare costs per month for six months, don\’t you think we\’d just buy the super premium private healthcare that covers pre-existing conditions in the first place? don\’t you think we\’d just pay for it out of pocket instead of turning to the state? if i had $1500 a month to throw toward healthcare, i wouldn\’t be so damn worried about trying to move out of here; i could afford rent, and healthcare, and car insurance, and food, and hell, maybe even some night life now and then — maybe i could even buy myself a goddamn CD for a change. yeah, i can save up for two months after a big burst of business, and buy a heavily discounted plane ticket to europe for two weeks, but the price of that is still one third of a month of healthcare. plus the cost of other living, and i don\’t live that extravangtly… i live on about $1000 a month, which is still under the poverty level. better than the $500 a month of two years ago, or the zero of the year before, but still, gimmie a break, this isn\’t glamorous. i\’m not trying to get botox or viagra here. i just want my goddamn hormones so that i don\’t bleed until anemic again. i want my allergy shots so that i don\’t keep getting pneumonia from bronchitis from allergies every year. i want my pain pills for when my back throws out, and my sleeping pills so that i don\’t operate on thirty minutes of sleep a day. why is this so much to ask? don\’t talk to me about the beauty of universal healthcare when state healthcare can\’t even get it right, when the NHS of the uk and canada work so poorly and let so many fall through the cracks.
and this new apartment, the one that was supposed to not be so cold in the winter… well in the day time, it\’s perfect: the southern exposure keeps the rooms almost hot while the sun is shining. once the sun dips below the horizon, the temperature drops severely and the central heat seems to do no good. the huge floor length windows, which let in all that wonderful warm light during the day, turned out to be horribly drafty at night. yet again, the cold, sunk completely into my flesh in the evening, penetrating into my bones. every night is another round of embarrassing pain and stiffness, hands and feet literally turning purple from the blood circulation shutting down. my chest hurts and my nose burns.
come morning, i can\’t get my ass out of bed until i\’ve soaked in the wonderful sun\’s rays for at least four hours to warm my poor bones and muscles back up. until then, i feel like molasses, like black pudding, like anything without form which cannot bring itself together to move. except unlike those, i hurt like a hymen being broken by a very large fist. without the sunshine, getting up is just as it was back in the days of high school and middle school, like last winter, and the winter before, and any other winter where i had to get out of bed in the morning: impossible. impossible in the cold. burrow under the covers and wait for the pain to subside in the warmth.
and the boyfriend, he says it\’s plenty warm in here — almost too warm. no space heater near the bed when he\’s around, no electric blanket, no heating pad. we argue over the layers of blankets, as they start out the night on me and then end up kicked off the bed by him while we sleep. cold. so cold at night. colder than scotland. colder than pittsburgh. too cold.
pissing my pants again during the day as i transition from the heated apartment to the less heated hallways, garage, car, or outdoors. i\’m too old/young to be pissing my pants. why the fuck does this happen? been going on for three years now. jesus christ. just jesus h fucking christ.
there\’s supposed to be some lesson i\’m supposed to learn from this, i\’m sure. there\’s some good here, somewhere. right? right? at least i have a home, at least i have a bed, at least i have a warm body to share it with, yes, yes, lucky, how lucky i am to have the luxury to complain, it\’s true. it is true. it is a luxury. there are worse things than being cold and pissing your pants in front of your boss, your lover, your landlord, the lady at the grocery store, and everyone else you come across in the winter. there are worse things than being cold and stuck in your cold, piss soaked pants. at least i can go home and take a shower and put on clean, warm pants… except right now, all my pants are soaked in pee, and it\’s too damn cold down in the laundry room to take care of them.
there are good arguments for moving to a hell hole like florida. this is one of them.
please, please tell me what the hell i am supposed to do with myself, because i can\’t for the life of me figure it out. i need a palm reader, my stars read, my cards discerned, something, anything, whatever it is, just point me toward a better way and i\’ll take it. cos i\’m lost, and i\’m starting to lose a serious amount of nice underwear to urine stains of the b vitamin complex yellow stinky variety.
