Tag Archives: multiple sclerosis

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My Struggle With Three Simple Words

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How are you?

Just three words.

Just three words silence my voice but incubate my thoughts.

The responses I want to give get caught in my throat as I open my mouth to speak; I gag wordlessly without any outward signs of panic; I feel a glass wall erect itself to support and contain my stoicism while I suffocate.

The words I want to use expand in my chest like air being pushed into an empty balloon, threatening to leak out of my mouth in a jumble of hot air and exhaustion.

WordItOut-word-cloud-1464630

Usually I manage to push aside the wordlump in my throat so I can still breathe and respond in a socially acceptable way. I say polite things, or I say I’m not ok and try to change the subject.

Or I stand there awkwardly, ashamed and lime-lighted, drowning in my reality until I realize someone is waiting for my next move. Continue reading My Struggle With Three Simple Words →

Advocacy, Arthritis, chronic disease, chronic pain, Invisible disease, Patient Advocacy

There Are Worse Things Than Cancer

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This will anger a lot of you.

It angers me, too. Likely because we don’t think about what we don’t already think about – that is, what we already know to be true. We’re good as humans at remaining steadfast in our knowledge of, well, what we already know. If you believe something to be true and then you are exposed to new information that may invalidate or challenge what you know, you can be thrown off your rocker.  Ignorance is bliss, but in no way is it a ticket out of learning and having your eyes opened. Sometimes growth – learning – hurts. A lot. And makes you angry.

That being said, are you ready to get angry? Ready or not… Continue reading There Are Worse Things Than Cancer →

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The Affordable Care Act is Not Affordable for Me

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My previous post, The Work of Being a Professional Patient, needed a second chapter. There’s more to that broken system than simply being an unpaid professional patient.  In addition to the phone calls, meetings, emails – the legwork of managing our healthcare as chronic disease patients – there’s a lot of money involved, and a lot of it flows out of the pockets of people who can’t afford the care they need.

The system is broken.

It is a system designed for healthy people to get catastrophically sick and go from there. A system that punishes people for being sick but provides no support to keep them from getting sick.  Only $251 is spent per capita on public health measures aimed at proactively preventing illness.

The American healthcare system pads the wallets of health insurance and big pharma companies and often doctors and nurses too, then forces patients to do their work for them. America, land of the sick, home of the outsourced labor in our own back yards: people paying corporations a big chunk of their income for the privilege of managing their own healthcare.

Privilege is a dangerous word. I’m privileged? to be chronically ill and I pay over 10% of my monthly budget on my healthcare premium alone, after the assistance of the federal subsidy intended to keep my rates within my income limits. This does not include my out of pocket expenses on doctor visit copays, prescription copays, over the counter NSAIDs, heating pads, and various treatments to manage side effects of either medication or illness. Continue reading The Affordable Care Act is Not Affordable for Me →

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The Work of a Professional Patient

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I don’t get paid for this but it’s my job.

Ironically, I pay others for the work I do. You may need to read that twice to let it sink in. I pay health insurance companies, doctors, and pharmacists to do a job that I actually do because they don’t – or can’t. Though it’s not on my resume, I’m a Professional Patient. I make the phone calls when I catch the mistakes because no one else has the time. I make the phone calls when my doctor doesn’t know what my other doctor said, even though they share a computer system. I call to make sure my prescription is filled on time. I call to make sure my insurance company will cover a service because it’s not clearly stated in my plan information. I call to challenge billing errors and then I call to follow up at least three times before it’s settled.   Continue reading The Work of a Professional Patient →