Because Zombies Are Less Scary Than Cancer

The best and worst things happen when you start a crowdfunding campaign to help a friend with a medical-bill-induced financial crisis.

[Disclaimer: I know this is just a thing in the USA, and really nowhere else. In this country, the word "Cancer" is synonymous with the word "bankruptcy". We do our best to squeak on by, and in the process, learn a lot about people. Here are some things I have learned.]

The Best: People who don't even know your friend, who are just good people wanting to help, chip in a buck or two, saying, "I don't know your friend but I see she's important to you." Or people who do know your friend chip in surprisingly large amounts and it's a little overwhelming. Things like that.

The Worst: People become super-judge-y about how money is being used. Don't get me wrong, I'm judge-y too. Very. But what would I do with that money? One dinner out. I can eat at home one night.

• Example: My friends have cable and are worried about getting their cable shut off. I hate cable. Haaaaaaaate cable. Hate-hate. But you know what? My friend is stuck on her sick ass at home alone all damn day, not able to work and bored out of her mind. She's not particularly internet savvy--Netflix is like a super complicated, novel thing to her, and she doesn't know what a Roku is. She's drifting in and out of lucidity (on four different painkillers...good grief...). I'll raise $100 so you can have your one comfort for thirty days, even though I want Comcast to burn to the ground (once innocent employees have left the building, of course). What's it to me? Not a damn thing. Next.

The Other: Wow, it's complicated. I mean, promotion is an easy thing for me--the task of getting the word out about a thing is second nature. I can write that shit all day. I don't have a platform to speak of these days, though. I keep my friends list purposely short on Facebook, assume all my Twitter followers are bots, and apply both of those problems to my Instagram. Probably 20 actual humans I touch base with on a regular basis. I am not yet at the stage where I am tweeting celebrities and asking them to share my Beggin' Click, but...it's on the radar.

Looking at you, Norman Reedus.

Why Norman Reedus? Because my friend has fucking cable, and zombies are her comfort. Zombies are less scary than cancer.

It's the navigation of all of the good and the bad that makes it so complicated. You have people giving you money, and you're so grateful--you can't say enough things to express how grateful you are. At the same time you have people who aren't going to budge, and you wonder how much effort to put into them (probably none is a good amount), and you're strategizing how much or how little to talk about it on your Facebook or your Twitter.

What's the tipping point of annoyance in your small circle of acquaintances? If you go past the tipping point, what will happen? Lifetime ban from social media?

I should be so lucky.

And then you have the people who feel like they need to give you a little sermon before telling you no. The ones who don't agree with your friend's "lifestyle" (a 25+ year stable relationship with one person) because she is gay, or that ones that question how they will spend the money because they don't seem particularly good with money.

Let's not forget the ones who, since nothing bad has ever happened to them, personally, figure your friend should have just planned better so they would be ready for the upheaval that cancer brings.

Sure.  Should have just...planned better.

Meanwhile, my friend and her partner are about to lose the house, so her (wealthy) parents sent her a greeting card saying they "feel so helpless" and tucked in a $50 gift card to Olive Garden, because that's how fucking tone deaf they are.

It's weird.

Money is weird, people are weird, and people are really fucking weird about money.

PS: Don't get sick.

Anyway...someday my friend and her partner are going to have themselves a fine, celebratory meal at Olive Garden. We'll laugh about her crazy parents and there will be much eye rolling and probably wine and stuff. Until then...let's see if my bullshit can pull them through.

You know the drill...help if you can, and thank you, fair human. Or zombie. Either/or. I don't judge.

Remember That Old Cartoon With a Picture of a Tombstone With the Inscription, "I told you I was sick!"?

This morning, I drove my best friend to an "urgent medical care visit". Those are the words I texted my boss to tell him I would be a little late.

"Urgent medical care visit" should be taken to mean, "my friend has no insurance, no primary physician, no money, and gets her medical care from the urgent care and/or Emergency Room, depending on the severity of the situation in question."

The fact that I drove her would indicate it's serious, and the place we went to was the ER.


There is so much to talk about, here. Just soooo much.


Beyond the cost of care in this country, there is the issue of medical literacy, and the fact that my friend is the caretaker in her household. She also has an unsympathetic employer.

If you are wondering how it got to "serious", please re-read that last last sentence.

For months, she has been experiencing pain. MONTHS. But her unsympathetic boss needed her. so she took pills and went to work, and her partner needed her, so she hunched over the sink and washed the stupid dishes.

Wanna know why she has no insurance? Well, they needed the money for day to day living, so, no, her needs were secondary and would have to wait until they were doing better. (Note: she is in a same sex, unmarried household and I'm not sure if her partner has insurance or if the partner's employer offers to domestic partners, I just know my friend doesn't have medical insurance)

No Primary Care Physician? Same. Can't be all "going to the doctor for my annual check-up/pap/mammogram" because who the hell has that kind of time and money? That's where they're at. These are real choices that real people are making every day.


Now...as I said, there is a lot to unpack here. My friend is not blameless. I have been hassling her for a while now to get health insurance. It's offered at her work, it's just so damned expensive and the combination of Sticker Shock and I'm Not Worthy has kept her from getting health insurance. I have NO idea what they were doing regarding the "individual mandate" requiring people to get health insurance, but, even though she has been at the same job for well over 10 years, she has not purchased a health insurance plan. That's Issue Number One. I completely understand WHY she doesn't want to shell out the money because it's a lot for an hourly worker. I just wish she would.

It's...a luxury item, health insurance. But it's like you are a person who doesn't carry a purse but you buy a new Louis Vuitton bag every couple months. That's how she looks at it, and how a lot of people do (and...they're not wrong on the price point). It's just something that doesn't seem practical, until...one day you are forced to produce the financial equivalent of a couple dozen Louis Vuitton bags all in one day instead of buying them slowly over time. My friend would have a lot less anxiety about seeking care if she knew, for example, that if she had insurance, even the low cost insurance, that she would get an annual checkup included with that every year. How valuable are annual visits? Very. You and the doctor have those conversations, and things come up, and you say something like, "well, I don't think it's anything, but it hurts when I _____" and your doctor says, "That's interesting. I would like to test you for ____" and you discover a very treatable condition that's a 5 dollar prescription instead of a 5 THOUSAND dollar ER visit down the road.

Spend the savings on a Louis Vuitton bag.


Issue Number 2. Urgent Care, ER, urgent care, ER, urgent care, ER, blah, blah, blah, on an endless cycle of trying to put out a raging fire via bucket brigade. If you have a Primary Care Physician, and you see them once a year, there is a nice record of your stats somewhere, someone to coordinate care, and a less expensive place to go when (still little) things pop up.

"I really should see someone for that. Oh wait! I have someone!" That doesn't make going to the doctor less of a pain-in-the wherever-your-pain-is, but it's less painful than the ER bill.


Issue Number 3, the elephant in the room: It's expensive. Getting sick in this country can and will bankrupt you. I think we all know this and don't need to go into too much detail but if you want to know a big part of the reason why my friend delayed care until she absolutely could not stand the pain another minute, you can look to the fact that to her, even the lower price points are too much--can't afford it, period.


Now, we're going to talk about medical literacy, and we'll call it Issue Number 4. Little, dumb stuff like, if you get antibiotics, take ALL of your antibiotics, even after you start to feel better. Or, great big stuff, like, every growth/mass/shadow on an image isn't cancer, and even if it is, many of them are "easily" treatable and have good survival rates. There is a lot of "I don't want to know" going on in this situation, and, honestly, a lot of denial. My friend has it in her mind that this is a "They're just gonna figure it out and give me a pill" kind of illness, when in reality, based on what I know about the situation, the medicine required may be surgical in nature. While I am personally not afraid of surgery, the thought of it utterly terrifies her. There are a multitude of complicated reasons why it's frightening to her. Some of them are legitimate, some not, but you can bet front and center is the price tag.

Issue Number 5: Why do you keep missing work? Your department is a mess! That's an actual thing that was texted to my friend. "(Department) is a mess!" like it's her fault. My friend doesn't run the place, is not a manager of people and does not decide who covers things in anyone's absence--that's the manager. Guess who complained about the department being a mess? That manager. The one who is in charge of that and all of the other departments. So first of all, fuck that bitch. Second, my friend is a prime example of a worker with an employer who does not give a rats ass about them--hourly wage earner who, if she doesn't work, doesn't get paid, even after years and years of loyalty. No breaks for you, not a hint of compassion. She has a boss who, instead of saying "sorry this is happening" is texting my friend the company attendance policy and trying to shame her for calling in sick "wrong" while she was sitting in the passenger seat of my car on the way to the emergency room. Nobody gives a fuck about the attendance policy when they are crying and hugging me at a stoplight on the way to the hospital, Karen, so save it.

Also, fuck that bitch.

Meanwhile, my boss? A notorious, cranky, curmudgeon? My boss? When I told him I was going to be late because I was running my friend to the ER, he said, "Drive safe and thank you for helping others in need."

Now...my employer would replace me in about 5.26 days if need be, but at least they are not full-on pricks about it in the interim.

And finally....lets talk about what I personally think is the *other* elephant in the room, and that is...women don't take care of themselves. Women are taking care of others and when the shit hits us, we're all, "It's nothing," and you know what? The more you do that, the more people will take advantage of that. The more you work through pain, emotional or physical, the more your boss or your partner is gonna take advantage, and I don't say this to mean that they all do it on purpose, it's just a combination of women not wanting to be a bother and women wanting to be strong for their families and take care of their mates/children and those other individuals just riding along because for them, everything is fine. Everything is fine because we never let on that it's not until it's really, really bad. We're just like that. We joke around about "man flu" when a guy has a cold and goes to bed for three days, when what we should really being doing is exactly what our mates do. Oh, they may not be very good at taking care of us, or not as good as we are at taking care of them, but they will manage. Stop acting like you're the only one who can feed the household, or clean the kitchen. Take your rest when you need it! Let them crow all they want--if they're the type to complain about you being sick, then they'll find something to complain about when you're well, too--might as well go to the doctor, since they're going to complain, anyway...

So...an update. Since I started writing this, my friend has been admitted to a hospital. Bad news, right? Well, in this case, it's not. In this case, it's validation that this illness should be taken seriously, by her boss, her mate, and by my friend, too.

She's gonna half to sit there and...LET PEOPLE TAKE CARE OF HER.

The horror.

She's going to be on happy pain relievers and won't be able to think about how much it's going to cost her.

Good.

She's going to have medical staff tell her mate how to take care of her, and friends like me sending her flowers.

She's going to have a nice "I told you I was sick!" moment with her asshole manager.

Right now, that's my favorite part of this. Because fuck that bitch.

Impassioned

I was filling out a form yesterday and one of the questions asked why I thought (insert thing I do for money) was important.

The field allowed for 250 words.

Would you cringe at the idea of summarizing your work into a 250 word description? Or do you have a job that is "I do X" with no emotion attached to the process or the outcome?


I went for it.


I used 4 paragraphs, 231 words.


I won't re-post it here, because I work for somebody and as long as I am taking their money, those things are their business and not yours, but there was a tone to that response that I wondered and worried about, after I hit the "Submit" button.

I wondered if I was too emotional, to philosophical, or too...impassioned, in my response. I really laid it on thick, Mission Statement style, and sounded like some shitty corporate weasel trying to make everybody feel good about the work they do at the annual Town Hall webinar. It was a true emotion while I was writing it, but after I sent it I felt a little queasy, like I knew someone was going to read that and roll their eyes so hard they would need help getting their fact un-stuck (never forget your mother's warnings!).

On any given Tuesday *I* would be the one rolling my eyes at the things I said. I would have looked at that and thought, "Oh dear gawd, give me a break. Are there donuts?" and passed it off as, yes, just something people say to underlings in a corporate environment to make them feel like any of this shit matters.

Let me be clear: None of this shit matters. If I stopped doing the work I do, you would not notice. If I had the means, I would retreat to the cabin up north and happily work part time at the local bakery/sandwich shop (which is fantastic, by the way--softest bread, ever, and that bowl of chicken and wild rice soup will keep you warm for days) if they'd have me.


Then I'd be all excited about a job.

I mean, come on, it's bread!

You would notice if there was no more bread.


I do what I do because I have a knack and they pay me well and that's kind of it, which sounds like I couldn't care less, but here's the thing: I'm loyal as hell. I am! Truly. However...my loyalty to my work is actually just my loyalty to my philosophy of work, in general--the current employer is the most recent recipient of my work ethic.

In my roundabout way, that's my means of saying it is OK to have a nerdy, impassioned answer for why what you do is important. If you think your job is dumb, you're probably right. It's dumb. It's not your job that is important, it's why you do that particular thing the way you do it, that is important.

I have been thinking a lot about my job, lately, and how all I do is sit around all day, doing things badly because that's how my boss wants them done, and thinking everything we are doing is crap but, the boss is the boss so that's how we are doing it and stamping my name on this work is making me look like shit. Filling out that form reminded me that...well...it isn't me. I do care. I just...don't care about this current thing and allowing myself to stay stuck in this place is bad for me.

As Quentin Crisp said: “It's no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, 'Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.' By then, pigs will be your style.”

As it happens, my boss got a copy of all of our forms, though the boss wasn't the one asking the question. If he takes it as a hint to start a conversation about my future, that would be cool, and would inspire me to stick it out. If not, well...he's got a heads up that I need more. I'm impassioned, damn-it!

Maybe it will help him be less surprised when I ditch this gig and go bake bread in the woods.