The road to hell is paved with insurance claims

WARNING: This (very long) post contains some rather graphic, albeit humorously pathetic, material. If you're short on time, or averse to bathroom references, bodily functions, or negativity against the franchise that is the American Health Care Machine, you might want to skip this one.

+++++

Remember last year when I landed in the hospital for four days with the mother of all asthma attacks? I drove myself to the ER that time, as I'd done twice before during such incidents.

Last week, however, I didn't even have time to do that. About five minutes into what I thought was "routine" tightness in my chest resulting from any number of possible environmental and/or physical triggers (can't say for sure which one), I was on my front porch, gasping for air, and begging the 911 operator to send an ambulance. The operator was having trouble understanding me (more on that later), and at that point I thought to myself, "this is it. This is the story that everyone reads about in the paper, the asthmatic who had an attack, didn't get attention in time, and died." The very thought was enough to send me into bodily-function failure, and I, well, I crapped myself. As if standing on my porch, leaning over the railing, shaking, and hoarsely shouting "HURRY!" weren't enough, I had to do it with a full diaper, too. Lovely.

A neighbor on the next street heard my cries and shouted over the fence asking if I needed help. Now, all right, I don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I'm certain that under the circumstances he simply misjudged, but honestly - you have a neighbor who is desperately gasping for air and panting "asthma....help...hurry..." into a phone while hanging over a railing...I think it's pretty obvious she needs help. And if that weren't enough, he called 911 (who had, by this time, figured out what I was saying and dispatched the ambulance) and told them I looked to be "about 45" and then also misinterpreted the situation as some sort of domestic dispute, which is why, as I later found out, the police showed up. Wow. Scratch that guy off the summer BBQ party list.

So...I suppose I should back up a bit and tell the story from the beginning, to shed just a little more light on things. About 10 minutes after I got home from work, I started feeling tight in my chest. I took a hit off my inhaler and went on my way. After a few minutes I was feeling even worse, so I sat down to give myself a nebulizer treatment. After that was done, I still felt no relief. I took another hit off the inhaler and started worrying that this was going to grow up to be an exacerbation. I thought some fresh air might help, so I went outside. Within 30 seconds I felt as if my lungs were made of wood, and it became clear that I needed medical attention. I started feeling dizzy and out of control. I came back inside, grabbed my phone and my wallet, and went back outside and called 911. This is the moment at which I thought I was going to die...

"911, what's your emergency?"
"Asthma...help...asthma...help..."
"You're having trouble breathing, ma'am?"
"YES! Asthma! Attack!"
"Ma'am what is your address?"
"Eight....teen..."
"Eight, what street?"
"No! Eight...teen...Hoyer"

Now, "Hoyer" came out more like a loud whisper, which is all I could get out at that point. If I tried to talk any louder, it was even more broken and incomprehensible. So "Hoyer" came out like "HOE...Yer."

The operator didn't understand. She kept telling me to speak up, I kept telling her I couldn't. Had this woman (a) never taken a call from an asthma patient before and (b) not familiarized herself with the streets of Buffalo? In all fairness, my street is tiny, but when you're dying and someone is prolonging the agony, you tend to not cut them so much slack. We went through just about every word that rhymes with "Hoyer" - even with me spelling it out - until she finally got it, and by the end I was barking, "HURRY! PLEASE HURRY!"

Insert neighbor guy here.

After calling 911 as well, the guy came over with his dog. I cried out, "OH NO!" which prompted him to say, "Oh, don't worry, she won't hurt you!" I didn't have the breath or the energy (or the desire) to explain to him that my interjection was not due to a fear of his little dog, but rather because at that very moment, I lost control of my bodily functions, and didn't want him to come near me. And since I'd never met this guy before, even if I could talk I didn't really feel comfortable saying, "Hi, how are ya? My name's Deedee. Your dog is cute, and I would pet her if it weren't for the fact that I can't breathe, can't move, and I just crapped my pants." Sure, it'd make for some great storytelling in the future, but not exactly how I wanted to waste what little air I was able to take in.

I'm really being hard on this guy, I know, but when you hear what he said to me next, you'll completely understand.

"You're about 45, is that right? Because that's what I told them."

Yes, yes, I know. It was chaotic. I was in the throes of an attack. He was across the street. I was bent over and he couldn't see my face. And everyone knows that all fat women are about 45.

I just looked at him and said, "I'm 37" in a voice that more or less sounded like my head might start rotating. He stepped back. Where the hell was that god damned ambulance??

As I started to fade out, I heard the sirens. A firetruck and a police car were the first to arrive. What the hell? My house wasn't on fire, my fucking lungs were. The firemen ran up on the porch and put an oxygen mask on me. This was NOT a good idea. When you have an asthma attack, you feel as if you're suffocating -- because you are. There is no air moving through, in or out. The LAST thing you want is something on your face. Normally in the hospital they put a cannula under your nose, but I guess it's different in on-the-go situations. So I started to panic some more, clutching and pulling and scratching at the mask. There were faces. Lots of faces. And voices. I handed someone my wallet. I started to cry. I begged them to help me. I told them I couldn't breathe. They told me I could, but that I had to calm down for it to happen. I heard someone say, "You're breathing, ma'am, you ARE breathing, you're just not doing it well. Hang in there, hang on..." and two men picked me up under my armpits and put me on a stretcher. In the upright-seated position I felt like I had a three-ton weight crushing my chest, and I panicked again. "Icantbreatheicantbreatheohmygodicantbreathe..."

Every bump felt like another blow to my chest, and when they lifted me up into the ambulance, the only thing that kept me from believing I was going to die was the face of the paramedic waiting inside. I was glad it was a woman. I was already full of injury and insult; I didn't need more self-consciousness heaped on top of that. I was immediately stuck with an IV full of steroids and someone put a nebulizer mouthpiece between my lips. I breathed rapidly, watching the long puffs of steam curl out from the other side. Inoutinoutinoutinout...

I kept trying to sign to the paramedic, hoping she knew ASL, because it would have made communication a little easier. Between the fact that my normally bad hearing was made worse by the stress and the background noise, and having a mouthpiece firmly clamped in my teeth, communication wasn't going well. Eventually I was able to breathe well enough to take the mouthpiece out and answer her questions. Within fifteen minutes I was pumped full of steroids and breathing well enough that I could say full sentences, refuse a ride to the hospital, and apologize for pooping my pants (which, mercifully, the ambulance staff dismissed as something they see all the time). And in half an hour I was laughing and cracking jokes. (Come on now, did you really think I could sit in an ambulance after a near-death experience with shorts full of shit and NOT find some humor in it? If you did, then you don't know me very well).

After close to an hour, my peak flows were back up and I could breathe again, and I was exhausted. They let me out, and I went back into the house. Crisis averted, my life spared. But instead of feeling relieved, I felt angry. Betrayed. Gypped. I should have gone to the hospital, but you know what stopped me? Partly, it was my messy house and my pets. I didn't want to leave them for an unknown amount of time with no caregiver. I had one rat, in fact, who was dying. I couldn't leave her. I didn't want to subject someone to navigating the minefield of my mess. I didn't want to arrive at the hospital in poopy pants. I didn't want to miss school or work. It's the end of the semester, and I'd never catch up if I missed any classes.

But mainly, I didn't want to go because I didn't have the money. I'm still paying off last year's hospital bills, and with my summer tuition and possible graduate school looming in the near future, I simply couldn't afford another several thousand dollars. I do have health insurance, but it only covers so much. And this is what pissed me off.

Here it is, people:

There is something fundamentally wrong with a country that makes its citizens choose between their credit ratings and their lives.

If you've ever seen Michael Moore's "Sicko," then you know. And even if you hate Mr. Moore, even if you think he's an egotistical spin doctor with an agenda, you cannot deny there is truth to his mission. I have lived it, over and over again. I have scrimped and pinched for it. I have ruined my credit rating with it, I have filed bankruptcy against it, and I have subsisted on ramen noodles in its name.

This. Is. Wrong.

Now I'm sitting here, battling the side effects of the medication that keeps me breathing, and wondering where the vicious cycle ends. Does it end when I get better insurance? When the privatization of health care ends? When I make more money? When it finally gets to be too much and the ambulance doesn't get there fast enough? Or when I claw my own eyes out while climbing the walls hopped up on corticosteroids? When?

I didn't want to turn this into a political entry, honestly, but the more I think about this, the more I realize that I am just one in MILLIONS who has to face choices like this EVERY DAY, it makes me livid. It makes me want to do something. It makes me angry, and it makes me ashamed to be an American. I'm not saying I'd want to live anywhere else (if only Ireland didn't have that pesky left-side driving weirdness...) but it breaks my heart that I live in a place where people are forced to choose between money and life on a regular basis. And I just can't believe that more people aren't up in arms about this.

We should be revolting! CEOs of the health insurance companies are the new tea. Throw them overboard! Hope that they can't swim, and then tell them they need to cough up a year's salary in order to buy the little Styrofoam ring that will save their lives. Fuck them!

There is most certainly a special layer of hell reserved for the health insurance folks, and I take comfort in believing that these assholes will be eternally subjected to every single illness they have ever forced the "little people" to live with (and die from), and will be made to do nothing but decipher claim forms forever and beyond while they struggle to breathe through acrid hell-fire smoke, waiting for the ambulance that will never get there in time.

But in the meantime, I sit here stewing, wondering what I can do, trying not to let the anger overshadow my joy and relief at having made it through my experience with nothing more than a few scars on my lungs and a dramatic story to tell.

I just hope my luck doesn't run out.