Healthcare

Lately I’m walking through life numb. I go through my daily routines, my adulting to-do lists and I am completely separate from my emotions.

I wake up, have a cup of coffee and hope my pain level will be helped by a dose of caffeine. When I’ve finished my coffee and my pain is the same, being disconnected from hope is better than dealing with the let down. Some might call this depression, but I call it survival.

But this disconnection I enjoy is slowly fading in the wake of anxiety. My civil right to health care, your civil right to health care, is being threatened. My brain can’t stop spinning out in anxious trains of thought. I feel the knots in my stomach, chest, and heart getting bigger, more complex and heavier. This administration has my husband and I afraid for so many reasons, but the repeal of the ACA in site is profoundly devastating. I know I’m not alone in that I have lost faith in my country and its elected officials. They are supposed to do what is just and in our citizen’s best interest. They are supposed to protect us.

Repealing the ACA has consequences we cannot foresee and the ones we can are depraved. 20 million people have been helped by this imperfect system. The entire medical system, from doctor appointments to insurance companies is an imperfect system, but we are entitled access to it. There are copious amounts of people that don’t even realize they themselves benefit from Obamacare. People who complain that healthcare costs are soaring should realize this doesn’t help solve that problem, it only amplifies it. People say you can’t put a price on your health, but those of us who have lost our health know just how much it costs to live with disease. Not just the financial cost, but the emotional, physical, and mental costs as well.

I know I’m not the only one that searches for a doctor in network when there is a new diagnosis to treat. I know I’m not the only one that thinks how much it costs to call an ambulance and opts for driving to the emergency room instead. I know I’m not the only one that cannot have children due to their medical issues and even if I could, probably would not, because all my extra money goes to paying hospital/doctor bills and prescriptions. I know I am not the only one that relies on medication on a daily basis. I know I’m not the only one that would go bankrupt without health insurance and physically cannot work. I know I am not the only one that without health insurance would suffer in unthinkable, inhumane ways, and lose my will, my stubbornness to get through each day. This is my community and I fear for everyone that is apart of it. Even those who are fortunate enough to not be apart of this community; I fear for them too. Not only because everyone deserves access to healthcare, but because you never know if and when the day will come that you will join our community. No one thinks about access to affordable, quality healthcare until it becomes a necessity and by that point, you’ll be terrified to live without it.