Is That a Lesion?

Navigating the waters of the uninsured has turned me into the most disturbing kind of hypochondriac--my husband’s sinus pressure is really a festering infection that will pop his eye out of its socket; the black spot on my molar is a day away from sending me into septic shock; every little sniffle is the first step on the way to pneumonia.

“But Christine!” you say. “You live in San Francisco! Public health care and hippy-dippy herbalists abound!” And you’d be right. I used Planned Parenthood as an idiot teenager to gain access to birth control, and it cost practically nothing. Like five bucks. But I walked in to PP a month ago and was told that I should be able to afford almost $400 to have a strange doctor invade me with a cold speculum. I exist in a gray area that isn’t quite poor enough for assistance and can’t afford to dole out the cash for private health coverage. Birth control, full price: $80 a month. Asthma meds, over the counter, which don’t work that well: $100 a month. Every time my husband rides his bike to or from work I have to pray that he doesn’t get hit by a car, because a broken limb would mean us moving in with my in-laws. In Fresno.

So while we try to save up a few extra bucks to join the Healthy SF program, I’m convinced I shouldn’t leave my house for fear of contracting an insidious bacterial strain of the disease du jour—swine flu, rickets, scurvy, whatever. What if I get shingles? Or scoliosis? What if Brandon’s tennis elbow is really a tumor? What if everything we hope isn’t a tumor IS a tumor? So as politicians worry about abortion getting federal money and wealthy insurance companies going broke, there are people like me who slip through the cracks. Public health care must exist, if only so I can go outside for a walk without worrying that I’ll get hit by a car and get parked in a hallway at SF General.