Envying Job continues

Part 26 The double-edged light of day


“To Our Children’s Children’s Children” by the Moody Blues is an uplifting and inspiring CD to listen to on a sunny cold morning driving to your radiation session. Don’t let the sunshine fool you, though. It doesn’t always brighten a mood. Sometimes the crystal clarity of the new day is a jarring reminder that your previous night’s dreams and fantasies are just that – dreams and fantasies. It is easy to let the dark cloak the reality of the light that I must now face. I try the eggs this morning, but they don’t work. Dropping Brooke off at Kathy’s house is pleasant, though, and now with some music (and, even though it has awakened me to reality, a beautiful day) I find that I feel alright. At the center, I weigh in, finding that my weight has dropped to 168, and because my blood pressure has dropped too low, I am unable to get my shot. This is a double- edged sword (or should I say, needle?). I am relieved to not be stabbed again in the stomach with the ever present chance of throbbing bee sting afterward. But I am also scared that without these shots my salivary glands could be irreparably damaged. It is bad enough now that I am temporarily resorting to tube feeding, but my sights are set to return to normal eating as soon as I can. I will need functioning salivary glands to do this.



Part 27 Some observations about health care, and the $834 shot


I have been watching the politicians duke it out in the debate over health care reform. President Obama is intent on leaving an improved system as a hallmark of his presidency even as he is attacked for his idealistic “something for everyone” policies on medicine. The Republicans want free enterprise to solve the problem and take everyone in its arms. Right, I think, like how the Enron leaders took care of their shareholders, and how the Wall Street brokers sold customers a pile of empty promises while raking in the profits.
I know one thing. I look over a statement of charges for my treatments. On the sheet is a billing for the cost of one (just one) of my shots for my salivary gland stimulation. $834. The shock of the amount manages to make me grimace and laugh out loud simultaneously. If that isn’t enough to convince you of the insanity of health costs, I don’t know what is. Most real people are incapable of facing up to such outrageous bills and living to tell about them. It is true that if you have great coverage, your insurance company will pick up whatever part of the tab is left over after the facility writes off the rest (as they inevitably will, realizing that nobody really finds this remotely acceptable or humorous at any level). But having done this, they will simply pass the expenses right back to us in the form of higher premiums and higher out-of-pocket ceilings. And what about those without medical coverage at all? They crumble under the weight of these costs and blow away. It is amazing how real all this gets when you are the patient and you see things from this side of health.