(written 6/6)Today was a good day. I got a lot of kitchen cleaning done, and a clean kitchen always makes me want to cook something, especially a recipe I hadn’t tried before. Tonight, I fancied a doughnut. So therefore, I made yeast doughnuts. I figured my brother (who lives with my husband and I) would come home about the time they were done. He’s got an instinct for freshly baked homemade stuff.
He and his girlfriend had been out. She lives three hours away, and drives over on her days off. So they’ve been pretty much either secluded in his room or gone this weekend. They came in, he got the food I’d saved for him and was eating it, and she sat down on the kitchen floor and ate a cheese-filled garlic breadstick left from dinner. "My God, Alex, I want to marry you," she said, laughing. "Hey, John, I’m leaving you for Alex, cause she makes these...."
Her voice trailed off, and as I paused in the process of filling doughnuts with jelly, she began to twitch. Her eyes rolled up, and she began to shake as though electrocuted, barely breathing. I called my brother in, and he said, "This happens," and began to talk to her and encourage her to breathe. At length, it was over, and he coaxed her in to sit on the couch and rest before they tried the stairs down to his bedroom. I started to breathe again, myself. I always wait to fall apart after the crisis.
I had been talking to a friend online in the intervals of letting dough proof and rise, and sat back down at the computer and said, "Well, that was interesting. John’s girlfriend just had a seizure on my kitchen floor."
Her response was, "Oh, my God!! Did you call 911?"
No, we didn’t. We wouldn’t have. You see, all four of us are naked....none of us has health insurance.
They offer it through my husband’s workplace. He could buy in. We might consider it, if the premium didn’t take 2/3 of his paycheck. We’ve both got preexisting conditions, too. I don’t work; I’m currently in the process of applying for SSI due to fibromyalgia and vestibular problems. John’s not employed; he donates plasma, mows yards, does a little shadetree mechanic stuff, and keeps putting in applications and calling around. But since GM pulled out of here, the job market has gone to hell, even for an ASE certified mechanic. My husband drives an hour each way for a job paying twelve dollars an hour. Amy, John’s girlfriend, manages a McDonalds. She’s in the same boat as my husband and I; she can’t afford to pay half her salary for insurance either.
So no, we’re not going to call an ambulance for a four hundred dollar taxi ride. We’re not going to go to the hospital and wait six to seven hours to just get back to an examining bay. We’re not going to have a CAT scan, and bloodwork, and medications given, and be handed a bill for over ten thousand dollars and asked if that will be cash or credit. We can’t afford that.
She’s going to go downstairs and sleep for a while with her boyfriend watching over her. I’m going to take my sleeping pill, and be thankful that generic Ambien is cheap, and go to bed. My husband is going to take another four ibuprofen for his continually sore shoulder (damaged rotator cuff) and go to bed. And my brother is going to check his calories and make sure he’s not eaten too much; he’s got pre-diabetic symptoms, and is being careful with his diet, since that’s all he can afford to do. And all of us are going to pray, before we go to sleep, that nothing goes wrong, that no one gets in a wreck or gets a really serious illness. And that we win the lottery so we can afford to retire, instead of working til we drop or committing suicide in our old age.
This is the reality of being the working poor in America. I’m better off than a lot of people; I picked the right guy to marry, have lots of family support, and am intelligent and careful with what money we do have. But we make the same dollar amount we made now in 1995, and it seemed to go a lot farther then. And hanging like a cloud over the four of us eating blackberry jelly-filled yeast doughnuts and laughing is the fear of sickness, and disability, and homelessness. But we’re all voting Democrat, and praying that things will change.
ETA: Whoa, rec list! Thanks guys.
Apparently she has seizures only when she doesn't get enough sleep and drinks lots of caffeine. And she says she knows they're coming, and in the car, pulls off the side of the road, at work can walk to the back of the store, and here got herself sat down out of my way while I was working. So I think I saw a failure in management of something rather than something new. But I'm not a doctor.