An agonizing, terrible, no good day

            I’ve tried my best to complete this blog post all day long. I just haven’t had any time to. My day started off with me waking up, and being told by my grandpa that my insurance was terminated. Excuse me, what?! A little back story here. December 23^rd, 2019 I got severely sick. I passed out in the middle of the night walking back from the bathroom, and had to go to the doctor early the next morning. While I was there they did a urine test, a pregnancy test, and they shot me up with some Phenergan. Turns out I had a virus, and I was severely dehydrated because I wasn’t able to keep anything down. I was so dehydrated that if I didn’t get fluids in me immediately I would need to be hooked up to an IV. One shot of nausea medicine later, I was being woken up by my grandma every hour, on the hour, to down some Gatorade, and sleep the day away. Flash forward to yesterday, I get a bill for $260 saying my insurance company hasn’t covered anything. While I was still asleep this morning my grandfather went to my doctor’s office, to make sure I remembered to update my insurance information when I was there in December. The nice receptionist lady ran the information through again, only for it to come up as insurance terminated. I wake up, and am just starting to chow down on a bowl of cereal, when my grandpa comes in and breaks the news to me. Needless to say, I didn’t finish the cereal. I was too busy sweating from anxiety because I suddenly needed health insurance.

The worst possible case scenarios started running through my mind. Did my father stop paying for health insurance? Did he remove me off of his policy? I was livid. My anxiety quickly turned to anger. He pays for nothing for me and hasn’t in ten years, the least he can pay is my health insurance. It’s the only time I even went to the doctor last year. I cost him no money, and he must have a family plan either way, so he isn’t going to save any money by removing me. I believed he’d terminated my insurance somehow and not even had the decency to tell me.

 He was at work until 2:30, which meant I couldn’t even talk about it with him until then. I spent the entire day severely sick to my stomach, wondering how I could possibly afford health insurance, and looking at options. When I finally got to talk to him about it he explained that I had not been removed and that he was still paying his health insurance. He even showed me the bill for this months, and proceeded to call his representative for our health insurance company. I felt relieved, that he hadn’t screwed me over, and then I felt sad that I had even accused him of it. More so, that he had done so many things up to that point that my first conclusion was, he’d messed up again.

It made me think of the readings we’ve done this week about David Sedaris and how different his father is from mine.  In “Road Trips” he talked about how, “it was my father who rallied the neighbors and initiated a campaign to plant maples along the side of the road” (Sedaris 61). Sedaris had a strained relationship with his father, just as I do with mine, but at least he had the kind of father who he could be proud of at times. It’s clear from the readings he and his father disagreed on a lot of things, but I doubt Sedaris ever had to worry about his father paying his health insurance. Trust me, it’s a terrifying feeling.

               After talking to my father about what happened I still had to wait an agonizing two hours before we heard anything. Eventually we heard back from the insurance company, and found out that I do still have health insurance, and am still covered. They aren’t completely sure what happened, potentially that my doctor’s office is out of network. That would’ve been nice to know before I went, but I’ll take that bill over having to pay $800 a month for health insurance. I’ve decided the best thing for me to do is go to bed early, and hope I don’t spend all day tomorrow with a massive headache, and have less anxiety.