I Am So Popular: Take My Uterus-- Please!
Editor’s note: The views expressed in I Am So Popular are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook or beliefs of anyone else in the IST network.
In March 1997 a doctor said to me, “Your jeans are going to fit a lot better once we get that out.”
So tactful.
The that to which he referred was a cyst-morphing-into-a-tumor that had wrapped itself around my left ovary. This was discovered at a post-abortion checkup. I paid cash for the abortion. The removal of both the tumor, which as it turned out had malignant cells in it, and the ovary (the two could not be disentangled) were covered by insurance. Luckily, I required no chemo or radiation. I don’t recall that my jeans fit any different when all was said and done.
You’d think having insurance then was a good thing. Not exactly. In a sense, this is what bankrupted me a few years later. Because, as it happened, the abortion, tumor, and surgery not being enough of a shitstorm to knock me all the way down, I happened to be going through a divorce at the time, too. So?
Well, since I was going through a divorce, and since I was still covered by my estranged husband’s insurance, the discovery of the tumor meant that I had what the insurance industry terms a pre-existing condition. Thus, I was uninsurable with one exception. Legally, I was entitled to continue using my ex’s plan, thanks to a thing called COBRA. Which, let me boil it down, meant that to keep the insurance—which I very much needed to do in case full blown cancer showed up—I had to shell out around $500 per month.
Back then, I didn’t have the kind of good, steady work I do now. I was raising a kid on my own. $500 was an assload of money to come up with monthly. So I stopped paying my credit card bills. Which then amassed radical interest. Which then put me into such a hole that I could not dig my way out no matter how hard I tried, no matter how good my intent. Which is how I found myself bankrupt. But I was alive, and I was tumor free, and those were very good things.
I couldn’t keep up with COBRA forever and eventually found myself without insurance. This didn’t seem like a huge deal. As a self-employed type, I’ve been uninsured the majority of my adult life. By then I was pretty sure the cancer threat was at bay. And I come from a long line of ridiculously healthy people. Don’t get me wrong, we do have our fair share of ailments. But so far, touch wood, the catastrophic stuff has mostly left us alone.
My income was small enough then that my son alternately qualified for CHIP and Medicaid. Actually, his first trip down Medicaid Lane occurred his very first day on the planet. He nearly died during his homebirth, an birth option I chose for a number of reasons, one being that, yes, I was uninsured. He wound up in NICU for nearly a week, leaving taxpayers to foot the hefty bill.
I never felt good about that and I never forgot about it and I have, in the seventeen years since, done what I can to give back and help other uninsured kids. Which is why, for his third birthday, we threw a benefit featuring Don Walser and a cash bar and sent all of our donations to the Children’s Hospital. And which is also why, for the past three years, I put out a calendar featuring naked musicians to help defray medical expenses for kids in need.
Somewhere in here, I want to throw in a bit about how, having experienced Medicaid and low cost clinics, I can say that some of these places really do treat you like you’re an idiot just because you don’t have money. One time, I took my son for a checkup and was handed a pamphlet informing me that it was my duty as his parent to extol the virtues of monogamy, marriage, and the need for him to either embrace Judaism or Christianity. When I tried to report this to the Medicaid office, because really, people, it is not okay to tell medical clients whom they may or may not fuck and what they may or may not worship, I got dumped into a labyrinth so complex I finally gave up.
When it comes to healthcare, I don’t operate on the karma system to try to prove some big point about how we’re all taken care of. Actually, I just do what I can and hope for the best. So far, I’ve been damn lucky. When my foot gave out a few years ago, and I was stuck with a cane and a handicap parking tag and the knowledge that my daily long walks were a thing of the past, I cried for awhile, took up swimming, and wished I had insurance for surgery.
Then, miracle, an altruistic podiatrist in Chicago, friend of a friend, offered to correct my foot surgically and waive his fee. I still needed to pay travel expenses, and take time off from work, and pay for the doctor’s assistants. So my friends threw a big party and raised money to cover those expenses. And, to save more money still, the operation occurred in a surgical suite—the sort more used for cosmetic surgery than foot restructuring—and without general anesthesia. What this means is, they used a local. What that means is, once the twilighting stuff they used to knock me out to stick a big needle in my foot wore off, I woke up mid-surgery to the sound of a saw cutting into my foot. Pretty cool.
So last week, about 3 a.m. going into Friday morning, I was on the floor of Warren’s bathroom, head in the toilet, bawling my eyes out, praying to a god I haven’t believed in for over twenty years to please make the pain stop. This was my answer to a fantasy I had, one that involved going to ER and getting shot up with morphine. But I couldn’t do that. Because I don’t have insurance. Instead, we opted for at home remedies—too much Advil, a heating pad on my back, and an unsuccessful attempt to vomit out the white pain crashing through me. (To his credit, Warren attempted an assist, standing behind me and singing Phil Collins’ songs to try to induce vomiting.)
The source of this pain is a uterus full of fibroids. So once a month—sometimes more sometimes less courtesy of a pre-menopausal short-circuiting of my cycle—I am literally doubled over in agony. There are measures I can take to try to ease this pain. There is acupuncture. There are herbs. There are supplements. There is—oh how I hate this with all my heart—the giving up of dairy and caffeine, the very two only food items (coffee and cream) that sustained me through my second divorce.
There is also a little procedure called a hysterectomy. Being a feminist who believes women are overly surger-ized, and having some hippie leanings that make me want to embrace natural healing, I have to say that the idea of an elective hysterectomy is not one I thought I’d ever embrace. But then came the Night of the Phil Collins Sing-a-Long. I am not, will not, absolutely refuse to go through this scenario monthly for the next ten years (at least). I won’t.
But then, here we are again—no insurance. And even if I got insurance now, the condition is, once again, pre-existing, my premiums would be through the roof, my deductible a catastrophic $5000 and, even then, they wouldn’t pay for what I need.
Warren’s offered to do a variation of tooth-string-doorknob removal, one that involves his pickup truck and a bungee cord and my innards. He has also wished out loud that he might win the lottery—first thing he’d do, he says, is get that thing taken out.
This wish had the happy effect of reminding me that, back in 2006, when I was married for a second time, my incredibly fucked up, most dysfunctional of all time (un)blended family qualified as finalists (only to be uninvited at the last minute) to be on a reality show that I cannot name because I signed a piece of paper saying they could sue me for $7 million dollars if I do. Let’s just say that, for part of our audition, we each had to say what we’d do with the prize money. And my son, Mr. Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Mr. Medicaid, Mr. CHIP, wished only for enough cash to get his then-girlfriend much needed knee surgery. Yes, she, too, was uninsured.
I don’t know the solution. I don’t believe the candidates and their alleged health cost solutions. I’m not bellyaching, Poor me, somebody have pity on me. I’m just saying that, even now, even making money, I still can’t afford insurance coverage.
So I’m thinking about making a cardboard sign, Will Work for Hysterectomy and loitering outside renowned ob/gyn clinics around town. Or maybe selling t-shirts that say I Helped Spike Get Her Girl Parts Yanked. (Any takers?) For now, I’m just going to take on a pile of extra work and start saving up to pay cash-on-the-barrelhead for what I need.
And for the rest of you uninsured folks? Seriously? Don’t totally despair. There actually are places in town that can help you get low cost insurance or mental health care if you’re a musician, cheap mammograms (to quote my friend Molly Ivins, who died of breast cancer: Get. The. Damn. Mammogram), and good folks at places like People’s Community Clinic that can hook you up. And the city offers a MAP card to low income uninsured folks, too—I used to have one—that will at least knock a few bucks off the exorbitant cost of healthcare.
And everybody? Favor please? Next time you hear there’s a benefit to raise money to help somebody in crisis out? Go drop a couple of bucks in the jar.
Spike Gillespie will remain popular no matter how many parts she has removed. She blogs regularly for LaunchPad Coworking and at www.spikeg.com. She is also head mistress for the Dick Monologues. Next show is August 27th and you can email her at spike@spikeg.com to reserve seats.
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