The Chaff

Sunday, November 14th, 2004

Offline a bit

Well, I meant to post this yesterday, but I decided to take my roommate to the emergency room instead. Some kind of intestinal bug knocked her down and got her badly dehydrated. She’s home now and drinking fluids and holding down applesauce, cuddling on the couch getting some kitty therapy.

Upcoming posts will be one more abortion story, then the next koolaid remedy post will be about single mothers and divorce.

But first, a quick rant about health insurance. I think every single congressman who doesn’t support universal health coverage needs to sit by a loved one’s bedside weighing their obvious agony against the reality that you simply can’t afford to take them to the emergency room. Fortunately, my roommate does have insurance, so I didn’t have to face that difficult decision. But I have had to face it before.

My husband and I were both part time instructors at one of Pres. Bush’s well-loved community colleges. As part time faculty, we had no insurance. My husband has asthma. More than once, I’ve sat beside him in the dead of night, massaging his chest and dosing him with Primatene, praying that his lips didn’t start turning blue this time. And more than once, we’ve pulled out the high-interest credit card and dragged him into the emergency room. We’re still paying that card down, by the way, ten years later.

But until you’ve made that vigil, until you’ve watched your family and friends suffer and wept in sympathy because you couldn’t afford to help them, until you’ve begged the universe to give you a break just this once and let them pass this crisis with just over the counter meds, you have no right to tell me there is no heal care crisis in this country.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 14th, 2004 at 2:39 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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