| This one image of my youth
fails to escape me, it lingers in my brain as if by
revisiting me, it will teach me something that I have
yet to learn. I am 10 years old, waiting for the school
bus on one of those frigid mornings when your breath
comes out of your mouth in a white frost before your
words do. As there has been no rain, there is no snow
on the ground. I wait patiently at the designated bus
stop with one other freezing student. The bus is late
and the discomfort of my rumbling chest rivals my frozen
fingers and toes. I bop up and down and rub my mittened
hands together, attempting to get warm. Although my
parents always told me that 90 percent of our body's
heat escapes through our heads, my wool hat is not doing
its job. Finally, after I experienced several earthquake-like
tremors inside my chest and my body was the temperature
of an icicle, I see the yellow beacon in the form of
a school bus at the bottom of the hill, making its way
up to me.
The door slides open and I step into the overheated
bus, my chest still rumbling but my outside body beginning
its 15-minute thaw on the way to school. In class that
day, I will hold my breath as best I can until my body
cannot take it any longer and my coughing fit will begin
once again. At this point the teacher kindly asks me
to step outside to drink some water from the fountain.
I do so.
The whole hold-it-in-till-you-burst analogy is still
a metaphor for my entire life, the details of which
I will get into in another essay.
And now, 20 years later, I feel it coming back: the
rumbling of the chest; the intense coughing that results
from my still holding back that hacking cough, because
the coughs are so intense and constant that I physically
can feel my lungs bruising. The coughing attacks are
extreme and they are painful. Although the winters of
my present home in San Francisco are much milder than
the Northeast winters of Philadelphia where I grew up,
this town does get a chill in the air during the winter
months.
We recently realized that it was not strategically
wise to put the head of our bed just underneath our
bedroom window. Although the daytime sunlight is perfect
for reading in bed, the nighttime chill penetrates through
our windows right onto our exposed heads. Last night
must have been extra windy, as the breeze through our
window physically woke me up — it was that cold.
My body was nice and warm, snug up next to his, the
majority of my body bundled in layers of blankets. Yet
my exposed neck and head quickly were becoming icicles.
I nestled my body closer to his, pulled my blanket up
to my neck so that only my head was exposed. I still
could not get back to sleep. The breeze through our
window made it feel like I was camping on the north
face of Everest.
It was so intolerable that I coaxed my tired body out
of bed, dug through my ready-to-go camping backpack,
and pulled out the warmest winter hat I own. Once I
pulled it over my head and resettled myself in the bed
next to him, I was finally able to go back to sleep.
Yet the chest rumbling continues today and it has been
sticking around for weeks. You better believe that I
will be sleeping with my fleece camping hat on my head
until I get better.
My bronchitis concerns me, as I do not have health
insurance and I have not had my body insured for years.
What does it say about the priorities of a country,
of a society, that legally requires your automobile
be insured but not your physical body?
In my opinion it speaks volumes. I am one of millions
of Americans who fall victim to this major shortcoming
in my fine country's priorities. My Toyota Tacoma pickup
is fully insured, because the law in California requires
it to be so. If you are driving and get pulled over
and the kindly officer checks your vehicle information
and you are uninsured, you will find yourself with a
suspended license. Then, unless you are one of those
renegade souls who drives around on a suspended license,
when you eventually do get coverage your insurance rates
will have tripled due to the suspended license incident.
So, while our cars are snug, secure and insured, there
is no state law requiring that one insure their own
body. There is something clearly wrong with this picture.
We are an insurance-obsessed country, with everything
around us able to be insured from our car (auto insurance)
to all of our earthly possessions (renters or homeowners
insurance) to our body while we are still alive (health
insurance) and our body once we are dead (life insurance).
The whole concept of life insurance, of someone making
a buck off your death, simply sickens me. Only in America.
I guess I can understand why it would be useful if you
were a parent and you want you ensure that your children
will not become finically destitute if you die an untimely
death. Yet doesn't the whole life insurance premise
seem inherently wrong on so many levels? Let us not
forget about the countless life insurance scandals that
occur each year, where the benefactor of the life insurance
policy (usually a spouse) will either hire a thug or
find a way to creatively off the person with the insurance
to reap the benefits from the policy. What a sick, sick
animal humans can be.
Say I get mangled by a city bus or I become the unfortunate
victim of a city shooting or a terrorist attack. Say
I am still alive and I heroically limp my way to the
nearest hospital. There is a good chance that the emergency
room physicians will not even see me due to my lack
of health insurance. I very easily could lay there bleeding
to death in the waiting room of one of my fine country's
top-notch medical institutions. Yet there is not a damn
thing that the kindly nurse can do about it.
I can hear my gentle and kind readers saying aloud
while reading this, “Jessica, why don't you simply
buck up and get your body insured already?” Good
question. The answer is a simple one: The money is not
there. A basic health insurance policy costs at least
$100 per month and I am living a totally bare-bones
existence at the moment. I make enough money to pay
my bills — barely — and enough money to
eat — barely.
These days I do not even have enough money to go out
for an occasional beer or a movie. I have zero extra
cash to do anything that costs money, which basically
leaves me either a) at work or b) at home or c) occasionally
talking a walk, getting fresh air and looking in the
storefront windows at the urban luxuries that I couldn’t
dream of affording at the moment. Once a year I will
go to the "girl doctor" in the form of Planned
Parenthood, but that is all I seek in the form of medical
maintenance. I have not seen the dentist in forever.
Quite honestly, if it were not the law, my beloved pickup
would cruise these city streets as uninsured as my body
does.
I cannot help but be perplexed at the reality that
is my country, a country that clearly values the material
(our vehicles) over the human (our bodies). Something
feels dreadfully wrong with this picture, like we are
a culture rotten at its core with such money-hungry
values that we no longer can see the forest for the
trees.
For a second, I ask you gentle reader to unzoom and
look critically at what we value in our American lives.
Doesn't feel good, I know. Yet I do not live by the
premise that ignorance is bliss. Instead I prefer to
live by the adage, knowledge is power.
In the meantime, in fact as I write this, the rumbling
in my chest continues to build until it inevitably will
explode all over the cupped hands over my mouth. In
fact, that last sentence grossed me out so much that
I will go get a tissue instead ... there, much better.
I will eat well; take vitamin C supplements; and wear
my wool hat over my head each night to keep out the
cold, wet Pacific Ocean air. Right now I am running
with the whole invincible young scenario: I am young.
I am relatively healthy. I will be fine. Yet that logic
will not hold out forever. My body will age, as bodies
tend to do, and chances are I will need to see a doctor
eventually. In fact, right now would be nice. *cough*cough*
The bitter irony of this whole scenario is that I am
not too fond of Western medicine except as a Band-Aid
approach. Sure, when you break your leg or get mangled
from a city bus, Western medicine can stitch you up,
give you a prosthetic limb or two, and you will be on
your way. But for longer-term illnesses like the flu,
the common cold, and daily aches and pains, the take-a-pill-and-call-me-in-two-weeks
philosophy simply does not do it for me. I believe in
a more holistic approach to our bodies, where one integrates
physical activity with a positive mental outlook while
eating well to heal. Yet for when we need the medical
band aid, the quick fix, there is of course no substitute
for Western medicine.
I just hope this menacing cold does not turn into the
full blown bronchitis of my youth, because if I have
to go to the free clinic for an antibiotic (not Planned
Parenthood but the Haight Ashbury Free clinic), then
I am likely to pick up scabies in the lobby as I am
waiting to get the meds for my bronchitis. In the meantime,
I will be starting my sweaty yoga intensive this week,
as I know the dry heat will be good for my very moist
chest. As I nibble on vitamin C tablets and sip on echinachea
tea, I will no doubt keep applying for better work opportunities
so that I more adequately can pay my monthly bills and
eventually be able to splurge on health insurance. Moreover,
in the meantime I hope that I stay clear of buses and
stray bullets, menacingly steep stairs and, of course,
terrorists.
For
an archive of Jessica's columns, visit her archive page
at http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/martin/.
|
Advertisement