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snarpI've been mostly keeping this under lock because I assume that most people are here to read about manga and princesses, not to follow my glorious little personal dramas. But I feel like I should give some kind of explanation for a lot of the Nothing Fun To Say Recently, now that 1) it's all over, and 2) I accidentally made a couple of public posts during the past week anyway.
So: I got diagnosed with a small brain tumor last fall. They took it out Wednesday of last week, finished up the testing night-before-last, and certified it benign and my head cancer-free yesterday morning. I look faintly as if like I got in a fistfight with a wolverine or small bear, am on six kinds of pill, smell excellent due to the generous application of Black Phoenix and antiseptic, and my hair may never recover - but except for follow-up MRIs every once in a while over the next few years, I have officially concluded my five-month long project of being a potential cancer patient.
I asked if they could go ahead and pre-emptively cure me of every other possible disease, so I could get a really fresh start, but they suggested diet and exercise and I said "whatever." (I then had soymilk and bran because I honestly am that huge of a wuss. No real exercise allowed for a month, and my head feels like I've had it stuffed up a hole, or I'd probably have gone for a walk.)
I feel like I've either been underreacting or overreacting to everything since the day I got the first MRI back. The world's kind of been compressed under my arm or shoved into the bottom of my computer case to make room for Things Being Fucked Up. Yesterday everything just got so much easier. In a lot of ways nothing's any better than it was before I got diagnosed - really, it's worse, because of all the time, money and energy my family and I have now thrown into this. Apparently the relativists were right! (I still don't trust you guys, though, not going to lie.)
If I have learned anything - and I have not - it is this: that people who talk about shitty things happening like they're about gaining EXP or wisdom can go fuck themselves.
Unnecessary painful learning experiences suck. There is no fucking value to my having gotten a brain tumor, it is not something that god wanted to happen to me, I refuse to behave as if it has been some sort of goddamn privilege, and I decline ever to do something like this again. I'm done with things sucking now. From now on I intend for everything that ever happens to be awesome, and if it's not I will bitch about it and, if someone else is at fault, I will make them feel it.
(Did you vote for Rand Paul? LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE COAL COMPANY HE WANTS TO LET OFF THE HOOK FOR KILLING A BUNCH OF PEOPLE, I'VE BEEN LOOKING AT PICTURES OF THE DAMAGE FOR WORK EVERY FUCKING DAY SINCE OCTOBER AND I THINK THAT YOU WOULD BE INTERESTED IN MY OPINIONS)
I have learned nothing I couldn't have learned better without having gotten sick for no damn reason, resent the entire experience, and I would rather none of this had ever happened - I'd especially rather my Dad had never had to deal with a second of it. I do not come out of this shit vowing to be a better or nicer person. I'm pretty good with myself already. Maybe I could be a better cook.
This doesn't actually differ at all from my previous philosophy, I just feel it slightly more viscerally now. Shouting levels may go up slightly in rural eastern Kentucky.
While we're getting all my aggression from the last half-year out of the way, let's package up this piece, too. If you're American and were against the Affordable Care Act, get lost. I never want you reading my blog again, because you don't care whether I live or die.
I feel pretty fucking good. I'm going to say that out loud a few times. Let me just go open the door and tell the cats to cover their ears.
If not for the Maryland state high-risk pool (state, not federal, just to be specific - they've got two, and I used the state one, MHIP, because the federal wasn't yet fully online when I was trying to get in), I probably wouldn't have died, but I would definitely be either be 1) in horrible fucking financial shape for the next decade or so, or, 2) still undiagnosed right now. This is because the first MRI - the one that finally got me diagnosed - would never have happened if I hadn't managed to get myself into the pool.
Because of some relatively minor and now-over health problems when I was in high school, under the pre-Affordable Care Act situation, I could never get private insurance in the US after I got out of college. During that period, I only really went to the doctor while I was living overseas. (Given my relative engagement with American and disengagement with Japanese politics, the cognitive dissonance of knowing that Japan has, for the past few years, had a much stronger vested interest in my health than the US has been odd.)
There are a couple of doctors my parents know who treated me at a major discount out-of-pocket a couple times since then, but the one time I've ever ended up in an American ER, winter-before-last, would have wiped out almost 3/4 of my savings if the hospital had chosen to pursue me for the money. My savings are not impressive, but they're okay for my age and employment situation, and they represent about a six-month safety net, which I put a lot of work into getting together and maintaining during and after college. I hardly did any travel during the two years I spent in Japan because I hated the idea of using that money. (I could have spent two months eating every pastel-colored macaron in Tokyo and photograping every moss-covered garden in Kyoto for that ER bill. And then gone up to Kushiro and bothered the cranes for a while.)
So, like most people in my age bracket in the US, I just tried not to go to the doctor. Reasonable economic decision! And the thing I learned when I did go in is this - the doctors felt the same way I did. They know perfectly well that a big chunk of their under-thirty patients can't afford to be there. It was clear that I had some sort of chronic problem to everyone I saw - I'm of normal weight, get regular exercise, and have never had a serious injury, so there was no good reason for the problems I was having - but there wasn't much for the doctors to go on. My symptoms were scary, but they didn't lead anywhere obvious, because I have a medical history that's just kind of a miscellaneous list of incidents rather than some kind of compelling Gothic narrative - "stomach problems, car accident with no immediately obvious consequences, hormones are a little weird but the birth control seems to be helping." Having me in the office depressed them a little, I guess!
So pre-high-risk-pool, the people I saw were all very reluctant to recommend tests for me, knowing that I'd have to pay for out-of-pocket, with no guarantee that they were even pointing me in the right direction. They felt guilty about doing it, and given my age and general health, many of them were clearly inclined to tell me to let it go. One doctor said to me outright that he thought I was just anxious about money (I'd mentioned my insurance situation to him), and that he thought I should just stop going to the doctor until things were more stable.
And you know - there's no reason he shouldn't have been right. A friend of mine, whose opinion I trusted during this whole situation and still do, said the same thing to me. Statistically it would've been much more likely than what was actually going on. They were telling me to be realistic - reality just turned out to be fucked.
The doctor who finally sent me for the MRI wouldn't have prescribed it to someone in my situation who didn't have insurance. I know this because the first time I went in, I didn't, and she didn't. She told me to go home, get some rest and see if the dizziness got better. I did, it got better briefly and then came back, and I came back signed up for the Maryland pool two months later. She then suggested the MRI along with a battery of the other tests she thought more likely to turn something up. She was very restrainedly startled when it was the brain that turned out to be the problem.
It's your right to decide that I should've had to either choose to pay full-price for the treatment or go without - I mean, I'm not you. But when people get angry with you for your politics, you need to understand that this is why. They're not making something of nothing. My brain is not nothing to me. My stupid little pile of money is not nothing.
The way we vote is not some abstract thing about you like our hair color or our shoe size - it is a moral decision, part of the way that we choose to treat the people around us. And that's the only real important choice we ever get to make. We deserve to be judged for it. So when we make choices that hurt people, then they are not obligated to be polite to us, or to pretend that we are better than what we are. We make our choices, and if the consequences are heavy, we pick them up and we carry them our fucking selves.
I'm not hauling your shit for you. If you're going to go out next year and vote for people who think I should've sacrificed my health, savings, and possibly life for something you say you believe in, then when you're talking to me, you'd better own up to it and don't pretend to believe anything else. If you really believe in it, then believe in it wholeheartedly, and don't pretend it means nothing.
I have very little left to give for people like you. Civility is a gift, not a privilege. I'm fucking tired and my head hurts. I feel like giving it out a little more selectively right now.
-
Okay, tomorrow I'll write about manga or Minecraft. (I can't wait for modding. I have SO MANY BAD IDEAS to put into effect.) Or Melissa Scott. Melissa Scott, why is that, while every individual element that makes up every book you've ever written seems custom-designed to appeal to me personally, I have now read three of them with no emotional reaction whatever? And why do you stop in the middle of a paragraph to describe a small problem with a chair? I don't usually do that unless there is an unusually compelling or relevant problem with a chair.
So: I got diagnosed with a small brain tumor last fall. They took it out Wednesday of last week, finished up the testing night-before-last, and certified it benign and my head cancer-free yesterday morning. I look faintly as if like I got in a fistfight with a wolverine or small bear, am on six kinds of pill, smell excellent due to the generous application of Black Phoenix and antiseptic, and my hair may never recover - but except for follow-up MRIs every once in a while over the next few years, I have officially concluded my five-month long project of being a potential cancer patient.
I asked if they could go ahead and pre-emptively cure me of every other possible disease, so I could get a really fresh start, but they suggested diet and exercise and I said "whatever." (I then had soymilk and bran because I honestly am that huge of a wuss. No real exercise allowed for a month, and my head feels like I've had it stuffed up a hole, or I'd probably have gone for a walk.)
I feel like I've either been underreacting or overreacting to everything since the day I got the first MRI back. The world's kind of been compressed under my arm or shoved into the bottom of my computer case to make room for Things Being Fucked Up. Yesterday everything just got so much easier. In a lot of ways nothing's any better than it was before I got diagnosed - really, it's worse, because of all the time, money and energy my family and I have now thrown into this. Apparently the relativists were right! (I still don't trust you guys, though, not going to lie.)
If I have learned anything - and I have not - it is this: that people who talk about shitty things happening like they're about gaining EXP or wisdom can go fuck themselves.
Unnecessary painful learning experiences suck. There is no fucking value to my having gotten a brain tumor, it is not something that god wanted to happen to me, I refuse to behave as if it has been some sort of goddamn privilege, and I decline ever to do something like this again. I'm done with things sucking now. From now on I intend for everything that ever happens to be awesome, and if it's not I will bitch about it and, if someone else is at fault, I will make them feel it.
(Did you vote for Rand Paul? LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE COAL COMPANY HE WANTS TO LET OFF THE HOOK FOR KILLING A BUNCH OF PEOPLE, I'VE BEEN LOOKING AT PICTURES OF THE DAMAGE FOR WORK EVERY FUCKING DAY SINCE OCTOBER AND I THINK THAT YOU WOULD BE INTERESTED IN MY OPINIONS)
I have learned nothing I couldn't have learned better without having gotten sick for no damn reason, resent the entire experience, and I would rather none of this had ever happened - I'd especially rather my Dad had never had to deal with a second of it. I do not come out of this shit vowing to be a better or nicer person. I'm pretty good with myself already. Maybe I could be a better cook.
This doesn't actually differ at all from my previous philosophy, I just feel it slightly more viscerally now. Shouting levels may go up slightly in rural eastern Kentucky.
While we're getting all my aggression from the last half-year out of the way, let's package up this piece, too. If you're American and were against the Affordable Care Act, get lost. I never want you reading my blog again, because you don't care whether I live or die.
I feel pretty fucking good. I'm going to say that out loud a few times. Let me just go open the door and tell the cats to cover their ears.
If not for the Maryland state high-risk pool (state, not federal, just to be specific - they've got two, and I used the state one, MHIP, because the federal wasn't yet fully online when I was trying to get in), I probably wouldn't have died, but I would definitely be either be 1) in horrible fucking financial shape for the next decade or so, or, 2) still undiagnosed right now. This is because the first MRI - the one that finally got me diagnosed - would never have happened if I hadn't managed to get myself into the pool.
Because of some relatively minor and now-over health problems when I was in high school, under the pre-Affordable Care Act situation, I could never get private insurance in the US after I got out of college. During that period, I only really went to the doctor while I was living overseas. (Given my relative engagement with American and disengagement with Japanese politics, the cognitive dissonance of knowing that Japan has, for the past few years, had a much stronger vested interest in my health than the US has been odd.)
There are a couple of doctors my parents know who treated me at a major discount out-of-pocket a couple times since then, but the one time I've ever ended up in an American ER, winter-before-last, would have wiped out almost 3/4 of my savings if the hospital had chosen to pursue me for the money. My savings are not impressive, but they're okay for my age and employment situation, and they represent about a six-month safety net, which I put a lot of work into getting together and maintaining during and after college. I hardly did any travel during the two years I spent in Japan because I hated the idea of using that money. (I could have spent two months eating every pastel-colored macaron in Tokyo and photograping every moss-covered garden in Kyoto for that ER bill. And then gone up to Kushiro and bothered the cranes for a while.)
So, like most people in my age bracket in the US, I just tried not to go to the doctor. Reasonable economic decision! And the thing I learned when I did go in is this - the doctors felt the same way I did. They know perfectly well that a big chunk of their under-thirty patients can't afford to be there. It was clear that I had some sort of chronic problem to everyone I saw - I'm of normal weight, get regular exercise, and have never had a serious injury, so there was no good reason for the problems I was having - but there wasn't much for the doctors to go on. My symptoms were scary, but they didn't lead anywhere obvious, because I have a medical history that's just kind of a miscellaneous list of incidents rather than some kind of compelling Gothic narrative - "stomach problems, car accident with no immediately obvious consequences, hormones are a little weird but the birth control seems to be helping." Having me in the office depressed them a little, I guess!
So pre-high-risk-pool, the people I saw were all very reluctant to recommend tests for me, knowing that I'd have to pay for out-of-pocket, with no guarantee that they were even pointing me in the right direction. They felt guilty about doing it, and given my age and general health, many of them were clearly inclined to tell me to let it go. One doctor said to me outright that he thought I was just anxious about money (I'd mentioned my insurance situation to him), and that he thought I should just stop going to the doctor until things were more stable.
And you know - there's no reason he shouldn't have been right. A friend of mine, whose opinion I trusted during this whole situation and still do, said the same thing to me. Statistically it would've been much more likely than what was actually going on. They were telling me to be realistic - reality just turned out to be fucked.
The doctor who finally sent me for the MRI wouldn't have prescribed it to someone in my situation who didn't have insurance. I know this because the first time I went in, I didn't, and she didn't. She told me to go home, get some rest and see if the dizziness got better. I did, it got better briefly and then came back, and I came back signed up for the Maryland pool two months later. She then suggested the MRI along with a battery of the other tests she thought more likely to turn something up. She was very restrainedly startled when it was the brain that turned out to be the problem.
It's your right to decide that I should've had to either choose to pay full-price for the treatment or go without - I mean, I'm not you. But when people get angry with you for your politics, you need to understand that this is why. They're not making something of nothing. My brain is not nothing to me. My stupid little pile of money is not nothing.
The way we vote is not some abstract thing about you like our hair color or our shoe size - it is a moral decision, part of the way that we choose to treat the people around us. And that's the only real important choice we ever get to make. We deserve to be judged for it. So when we make choices that hurt people, then they are not obligated to be polite to us, or to pretend that we are better than what we are. We make our choices, and if the consequences are heavy, we pick them up and we carry them our fucking selves.
I'm not hauling your shit for you. If you're going to go out next year and vote for people who think I should've sacrificed my health, savings, and possibly life for something you say you believe in, then when you're talking to me, you'd better own up to it and don't pretend to believe anything else. If you really believe in it, then believe in it wholeheartedly, and don't pretend it means nothing.
I have very little left to give for people like you. Civility is a gift, not a privilege. I'm fucking tired and my head hurts. I feel like giving it out a little more selectively right now.
-
Okay, tomorrow I'll write about manga or Minecraft. (I can't wait for modding. I have SO MANY BAD IDEAS to put into effect.) Or Melissa Scott. Melissa Scott, why is that, while every individual element that makes up every book you've ever written seems custom-designed to appeal to me personally, I have now read three of them with no emotional reaction whatever? And why do you stop in the middle of a paragraph to describe a small problem with a chair? I don't usually do that unless there is an unusually compelling or relevant problem with a chair.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-19 03:40 am (UTC)