The D & The V
With summer coming to an end, the next week I started my final school year. It was back to too early mornings, and too late nights, and since entering my late 20s, I’ve noticed my body changing. I’ve gone from operating on two hours of sleep, eating whatever I wanted without gaining weight, and having kids with no real visible body changes, to yawning at 6pm, deadly hangovers after only 3 glasses of wine, and two scoots to get off the couch. It was time to get my body moving again. I decided to get a volleyball team together, the Big Dig Lovers, and joined a Monday night league, where 3 losses and 13 bruises later, I would learn how out of shape I really was.
I was in so much pain afterwards, that I decided to call one of my closest friends, Abigail, to plan my funeral. Abigail is 23, a grad student, and has a boyfriend on the other side of the world. She met him in college and he was in the National Guard. They fell in love, and while, in their fantasy he would never get deployed, the reality was in January, he got orders, a passport, and a one-way ticket to hell. She answered the phone on the first ring, and to my surprise, she was in some pain of her own. Come to find out, she had a UTI. It had been two days since her symptoms started and when I asked why she hadn’t gone to the doctor, she gave the answer that is all too relatable... she had no insurance, and no way to pay for medication.
I couldn’t help but think about the other 250,000 women in Kansas City, and moreover, the 168 million women in America. How many of them were walking around with funky, itchy vaginas because they didn’t have access to healthcare? Of course, it goes beyond the vagina. As I sat there listening to her list all the home remedies she would try to feel better, I thought about the last time I had even gone to see my primary care provider. I’m clearly out of shape, I drink, socially smoke, hardly exercise, and I’m pushing 30. How many of the 330 million people in America have no accessible healthcare? Even with access, how many of us are letting months and years go by without so much as a checkup, because we can’t afford copays or needed medical procedures. How many people die every year trying to get themselves to the hospital to avoid a $2,000 ambulance ride? Now I’m not talking about a free-for-all, but there’s got to be some system better than paying thousands of dollars a year for insurance you don’t use, while the people who need it hold cold towels to their genitals to be able to make it through the night. The next day, she got on Teledoc, and was able to find a doctor who would give her the antibiotics, and send her on her way back to a perfect pussy.
