Health Care Reform

The day started pretty much the same way it started all days that June in 1992: I got on my bike to ride to campus for summer school. This time I wasn't able to make it to campus, though, as after the first hill I had to stop. I was dizzy, short of breath, and my heart was beating like mad. I coasted into The James, my favorite watering hole and my then place of employment, to rest before trying again. I didn't get to the end of the block. I called a cab and went to the hospital.

I told the woman at Reception that my heart was beating very quickly and that I was dizzy. She asked for my insurance card, and I told her I didn't have insurance. She told me they only took people with health insurance. So, I went to the lobby pay-phone (early 90's, no cell phones), looked up hospitals in the Yellow Pages (no Google) and began calling around to see who would take me. A nurse who'd been near Reception came up to me while I was on the phone, took my wrist and felt my pulse. Within seconds she was leading me into a room. I said I didn't have insurance and she said they'd worry about that later. The vacant room was soon filled with dreamy medical types and tubes and wires. I remember looking at the white tiled ceiling and wondering if I was going to die. I didn't but it was a close call.

The doctor told me that my heart had jumped to 220 beats a minute and that had I not been young and physically active, I could have died. Heart Arrhythmia. Said I had a good heart. A cardiologist would later explain that these things sometimes happen to young men and that he saw no reason for me to expect it to happen again. As such, he recommended that I never disclose this incident on any medical forms because it would be seen as a heart-related pre-existing condition and no insurance company would take me. The only thing worse to them would be cancer, he said.

Almost two months later I would crash on my bicycle one night and wake up in the hospital to a nurse picking gravel out of my arm and hands. I broke my arm, wrist, and a finger. To this day, I still don't know what happened and I only have limited use of my arm. In any event the resulting medical bills were too much for an uninsured student to handle, so I moved back home. The James employees had a fundraiser that paid for the ambulance bill. They were good folk.

I don't know the specifics of the proposed health care reform legislation because I don't base my knowledge of issues on what FOX News or Sarah "Hotty Moose Killer" Palin have to say. Nor has anyone consulted me. All I know is that my experience tells me what we have doesn't work and our health care system needs a major overhaul. I have employer-sponsored health care now, but there are millions who aren't so lucky. That ain't right. I'm willing to pay a bit more if it means my neighbor's kids can get medical attention when they need it. As a society, we have a responsibility not only to ourselves and our families but also to those less fortunate. At one point in my life, I was one of those less fortunates and had it not been for one nurse who basically said, "Fuck it," who knows if I'd been writing this today.