Gifts
Sunday, December 21 2008
Since I zoned out on the last Grand Rounds theme, I feel like maybe I should take this one a little more seriously and talk about gifts – specifically, the most important gift I’ve ever gotten. That gift is money.
If you’re looking for a gift to give the sick person in your life, money is hard to beat. Whether it’s premiums, co-pays, COBRA, uncovered expenses, out-of-pocket or out-of-network, there’s always something that needs money. That’s the thing about most health care spending: nobody’s spending on their health. Health is cheap – it’s being sick that’s expensive. I, for one, couldn’t tell you how much I’ve spent on my ‘health’.
And though I wish I could say I earned what I spent, I didn’t. Call it a gift of God, chance, or genetics, but I was born to parents whose careers earned them a lot of money. And they’ve given some of it to me – more than I deserve. Without them, I would never have been able to afford my COBRA payments while I looked for a job after college, nor after I lost that job and had to find another. I would never have been able to afford the nearly $10,000 in out-of-pocket expenses from my in-network, covered, pre-approved surgery a few years ago. Without their generosity, I would almost certainly be some combination of broke and broken.
So, prosaic as it may seem, mommy and daddy’s money has been a tremendous gift to me. I am constantly aware of this fact, and constantly grateful. My life has taken some amazing and wonderful turns, few of which would have been possible were I forced to pay for my illness. Even were I suddenly wealthy, I could never really pay them back in full.
Awareness of my situation – and that not every sick person enjoys the luxury of wealthy progenitors – is a big part of why I’ve carved out this tiny sliver of the Web. There are too many sick people out there who are broke or broken, or fear they will be, and who simply aren’t being heard in all the clamor over health care. I don’t claim to speak for them, only to speak about my own experience and perspective – but it’s a least a voice, saying what might otherwise stay unsaid.
I don’t get paid for this blog. I don’t accept ads and I don’t plan to, and in fact I pay (not much) for the hosting and domain name. This is my meager, piddling, wholly insufficient way of trying to pay forward what gifts I have. If you are one of the millions of chronically ill people in the US, I hope I am speaking to your experience. If you aren’t, I hope you’re learning what it’s like to be sick in this country.
Posting will be slow for the next couple weeks, partly because of the holidays, but also because I plan to take advantage of the lull to redesign and upgrade this blog. There’ll be some new features, new links, maybe a new look, but still no ads. This is, such as it is, my gift to you.
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