Partly because I haven’t blogged for a while, partly for posterity, and partly because it’s semi-relevant, I’d thought I’d cover real quickly my week in and out of the hospital, my recovery, and the resultant bills.

If you haven’t caught any of my Twitter Tots lately, I’ll catch you up real quickly. My favorite abscess (the discovery of which was chronicled back in June of 2007 — still a pretty sweet read) decided to get infected again. Unlike last time, when I didn’t know it was an infection and “toughed” it out until the infection literally exploded, I knew what was up this time and sought medical attention.

I was in denial at first; the abscess can get irritated from time to time, and it will swell a bit and hurt, but it generally goes away in a couple days. I was really banking on the fact that it was just irritated and not infected — since infection costs me money — and I lost my bet. The pain started to get really unbearable, it became obvious that this wasn’t going to just go away, so I called in sick to work and started making some calls.

I don’t have a doctor. I don’t even know how to get a doctor. I don’t even know what it means to “have a doctor.” I don’t even really know what you’re supposed to do if you’re sick. So I started making calls to A: hopefully get some advice of what to do and B: shop around for a place that could handle my infection without financially destroying us. I didn’t find either, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The first place I called was the hospital down the street from me. Close is nice, since driving is almost completely out of the question when the entire bottom half of your spine feels like it’s trying to punish you for your sins. The woman on the other end of the line told me they only have emergency services, which I didn’t want to do, and when I asked her about financial assistance, she told me you have to put $150 down to establish credit with the hospital, before they consider you for reduced-cost treatment. So you have to pay cash down to prove you have no money? I asked her if there were any other places in the area that didn’t have such stupid policies, and she gave me the numbers to a couple clinics. The clinics were really no help, either, and nobody could advise me on my next move. It was extremely discouraging. One person suggested Zoomcare, a sort of healthcare convenience store that was near me, that also had accessible prices. I called them, scheduled an appointment for 20 minutes in the future, and drove myself down there (I had no other choice).

The doctor there was very nice and very helpful, but basically told me there was nothing she could do in-house. Antibiotics weren’t going to do anything at this point, she explained, and I needed an I&D (incision & drainage, a term I would hear a lot over the next several days). She was a lot more concerned about the infection than I was, saying I looked pale and she was worried if I put it off for much longer that it could start wreaking havoc on my blood. She set up an appointment for me with a surgeon that would perform the I&D, and sent me on my way. Since it was a couple hours away, she called in a prescription for a painkiller for me, and even waived the charges for seeing her. I got home and was about to head down to the pharmacy to pick up my pills when the surgeon’s office called and told me he had called in sick for the day. What? I had a sheet with a couple other surgeons’ names on it, so I called the next in line, but wasn’t able to schedule same-day attention. Maybe I didn’t properly articulate the severity of the problem? They scheduled me for the next day for a “consultation,” which meant that an actual I&D could be days off. This wasn’t going to work for me (the doctor at Zoomcare had used the term “septic,” which you really shouldn’t throw around, because it freaks girlfriends out), and Nina talked me into emergency services at the hospital down the street, despite my bitching about what it was going to cost us. Believe me, I’ve nearly paid off one of my credit cards, am poised to start hitting my second one pretty hard, am slowly climbing out of debt, and am pretty much willing to risk a little blood infection to keep things that way. Bitter about plunging myself back into debt when I was just about to get my head above the water, we drove to the hospital to get me cut and pumped full of drugs.

I hate hospitals, by the way. I hate how they smell. I hate how they’re lit. I hate how they sound. I hate that they’re full of sick people. I also hate needles, and short of a few skateboarding mishaps, I’ve also never volunteered myself to be incised. The procedure was pretty straightforward. They injected a local anesthetic into the infection (if not the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced, at least in my top three, and between the first time I suffered this infection and hyperextending my knee skateboarding, I have a hell of a top three), slit me with a scalpel and sucked a bunch of nasty fluid out of my back. They packed the (sizable) cavity with gauze, slapped a bandage on me, handed me a stack of paperwork, and sent me on my way. They told me to come back the next day to make sure it was continuing to drain properly, and to ensure I’d be in debt for the next 5 years, instead of 3. There was a slight complication when I returned the next day.

You know that feeling when you stand up too quickly and all the blood rushes from your head? I had that feeling constantly, like I was juuuuust on the brink of passing out, but something was keeping me upright and conscious. I attributed it to not having eaten much for two days, having been bed-ridden for over 24 hours and suddenly getting up and moving around, and being full of antibiotics and painkillers. They were afraid that my blood had been contaminated by the infection, and despite my resistance, I soon found myself hooked up to an IV, full of needles, and surrounded by a “team.” Being surrounded by a “team” in a hospital is absolutely terrifying, but all I could think about was what this was all going to cost me. Every person that walked into that room to attend to me in any way, any tool or device they used on me, all have pricetags, and I was more overwhelmed with my wild guesses at the final tab than I was over the fact that I potentially had bad blood running through my body.

Every single doctor and nurse I spoke to seemed confused. “Why don’t you get the surgery to correct this?” Right, hindsight is 20/20. Had I known this was going to be a recurring issue, I’d have gotten corrective surgery when I worked at Yahoo, the only time I’ve ever had insurance. Assuming, of course, that they wouldn’t have considered my abscess a preexisting condition and actually let me get the operation. Oh, and assuming Yahoo would have allowed me to take time off for such a thing, when they were working me about 50 hours a week minimum and were in the middle of their “vacation freeze.” But I don’t work at Yahoo anymore. I work full time and I don’t have insurance, just like 9 out of 10 schmucks I know, so my plan is “deal with it” and hope that regular trips to the emergency room are limited to once every couple years.

They drew blood, ran a bunch of tests, and streamed a couple liters of saline into me. The tests came back okay, they unpacked and repacked my abscess, and sent me home. I was instructed to return the next day, probably to prove I could still walk, and so they could once again ensure that my wound was draining properly. My last visit was more of the same, more unpacking and repacking of the cavity in my back, and this time I was given the option of returning. I could continue coming back every day to get my packing changed, or I could talk my girlfriend into it. I opted for the latter, providing plenty of romantic “us” time for me and Nina.

Of course, I missed a week of work. I returned the following Monday, despite the fact that I was bleeding/draining into an absorbent bandage on my back, because I couldn’t afford to miss any more work, and because if I missed much more, my employer probably wouldn’t have much incentive to keep me around when there are plenty of equally qualified, healthier candidates available to replace me. Despite looking pale, I assured my manager that I’d make it through the day, but had skipped my pain pills so I could drive, and was still full of antibiotics, which basically make you feel carsick all day, unless you’re also taking pills for nausea, which I had run out of the day before. At noon, a fellow employee said I looked like an extra from Twilight, and my manager suggested I go home. I returned on Tuesday still bleeding, but having finished my antibiotics prescription, I no longer felt sick. I sat in really awkward, uncomfortable positions for the rest of my 32 hours of work.

This week I’m draining so little it’s almost socially acceptable, but work is still an unbelievable chore with an open incision on your butt. The bills came in and we owe about $3000 for the temporary correction of my genetic defect, we applied for financial assistance through the hospital and we’ll pay what we can. But this is what really irks me. I didn’t get dealt such a bad hand. I’m, for the most part, a pretty healthy guy. Sure, Nina and I live check to check and have a fair amount of debt, but we’re making things work, and I can still buy a piece of camera equipment here and there, or go out for drinks from time to time. I don’t really have it that bad. But $3000 is a lot of money, and it’s only because of this one bad card in my hand — a cyst — and it’s not because of a poor lifestyle decision on my part. Okay, sure, I could accept responsibility for being born with the fucking thing, and sure, maybe in a couple years I could pay off the three grand. But what if it decides to fill up again in two weeks, before I can pay off the first bill? What if next time it DOES infect my bloodstream, and the procedure required to correct it costs several times that?

On the other hand, I don’t HAVE to pay that emergency bill. Hundreds or thousands of people get free healthcare every day, because if you walk in an emergency room, they have to treat you, and a lot of people just toss the bill when it comes, because really, who can afford this shit? Well just like the price of shoplifting is built into the cost of clothing, supporting those people is already built into the cost! You’re already footing the bill for those who can’t afford health insurance. And who comes up with these prices anyway? Here’s a quick aside, which you’re probably well aware of, but I’d just learned about it, because I’d never dealt with an insurance company before. The only thing I took advantage of while I was at Yahoo was my dental plan. Once. And it was after I quit. I realized I was still covered to the end of the month, so I ran in to get a cleaning before I got dropped. The dentist’s bill was a joke. $150 for the photos of my jaw. Right. The total bill came to $480 — to fucking scrape and buff my teeth — the insurance company said “Ehh, we’ll give you $300″ and the dentist said “Deal.” and wrote off the rest of the cost. They just pull these numbers out of their ass! Let’s say I’m a professional photographer, you’re a band, and you want promotional shots. You ask me how much a session costs and I say “That’s going to be $15,000.” You say “Look, I have $500.” and I agree. Well, what the fuck? What was that first number? Clearly my service has no real-world value other than “As much as I can soak you for.” So even if you ARE insured, the hospital says “One zillion dollars.” The insurance company says “Here’s .7 zillion.” and they shake hands and part ways. But if you’re not insured, they say, “Oh, here’s a special reduced rate. $3000, please.” and you say “I make $10 an hour.” and they say “Oh, I’m sorry, there must be a misunderstanding. $3000, please.” You, as an individual, don’t get to play their game. If you get too close to the healthcare industry/insurance industry circlejerk, you get it in the ass. Hard. And then your girlfriend has to pack it with gauze every night for two weeks.

I have two options: Pay it back. This is more debt than I’ve ever accrued in my life, by the way, except for the purchase of my car, which took me three years to pay off, and that was only because my dad paid off the loan and then I paid him back interest-free. Who knows how long it’d have taken otherwise. So what, I pay back a hundred dollars a month or something for 30 months, a doctor gets a nice new set of golf clubs, and everybody wins. Or I don’t pay it back. Because a hundred dollars a month is a lot to me, especially for the next three years. And because they can’t really do anything about it, and because it’s built into the cost and my three grand is actually probably paying for the last homeless guy that went into the emergency room because he was wasted and smashed his chin on a curb.

OR I pay nowhere near a hundred dollars a month. I pay… $20 or $30 dollars a month. Through taxes. For the rest of my viability as a member of the workforce, as does everybody else. And if I get promoted and I’m living a little more comfortably, it’s $60 or $70 a month. Or if I’m a CEO making more money than I know what to do with, it’s more yet. And not a single goddamn one of us ever has to be terrified about years of debt because their ass decided to fill up with pus. Nobody has to fucking worry about it. Not the 75 year old lady with a brain tumor, not the the 15 year old with leukemia, not the homeless guy that got wasted and busted his chin on the curb. Nobody has to fucking worry about it. Nobody has to worry about throwing away a bill, nobody has to put off care until they require emergency services, and nobody has to worry about carrying the deadbeat’s ass, because everybody’s in on it together and nobody gets left out in the cold. I don’t have to worry that if I get sick I’ll get laid off, because even if I do, I can still afford to get better, and I can actually get back on my feet. I live in Oregon. About 1/4 of my income is already taken out between state and federal taxes, but holy hell I would give up more of it in a heartbeat if I knew that if I was hit by a bus tomorrow it wouldn’t send me into debt for the rest of my life. I think that peace of mind is worth more to me than the actual care I’d receive.

I never hear anybody complain that their tax dollars are going toward police protection for total strangers. Nobody’s up in arms because the neighbor’s house caught fire and their tax dollars put it out, even though the neighbor was the idiot that left the frayed electric blanket on. Nobody cries “SOCIALISM!!” when they get their fucking mail every day or check out a book at the public library, or a retiree picks up pills at only a 500% markup instead of 3000%. And nobody complains that their tax dollars build roads that they may or may not even drive on. But somehow affordable healthcare — something that you’d THINK would be important to… everybody? — gets brought up, and it’s a goddamn call to arms because Obama is destroying America and the Democrats hate freedom and the government bought the banks and holy fuck ACORN is making coats out of aborted puppies for illegal immigrants. Have these people, I don’t know, EVER gotten sick? Have they never had a child get sick? Who the fuck are these people? If you can’t get behind creating some goddamn public-funded competition in a ridiculously runaway profiteering, gluttonous scam like the hospital/insurance circlejerk and provide a little relief for people that need healthcare and can’t afford it, you’re not just an idiot, you’re a fucking asshole, and I’m tired of paying taxes to deliver your fucking copy of The Wall Street Journal. Prick.