Unsolicited

So...here it is:

BUY ALL MEDICAL / PSYCHOLOGICAL INSURANCE PRODUCTS AT WORK.  It's a bettin' game. They're betting you don't get bad sick or seek full treatment, but if you need to you will be so grateful you bet on being a fragile human who might need help. I know a bigger paycheck matters, too, but buy what you can....INCLUDING short-term and long term disability and critical illness.  You never know.  I am SO GRATEFUL to my past self who scrolled through enrollment and thought, "Well, I'm gonna be 60.  I'll load up even if it costs me."  THANK YOU PAST SELF!!!!!!!!

BUY ONE MORE THING:  A DIRECT PAY MEDICAL SERVICE.
I know.  MO' money.  But hear me out.
I pay PeakMed direct pay service $80.00 a month and then I can go in next day or day-of for an ear infection or whatever at NO COST.  There's no paperwork or fighting with insurance.  They work with it, but they.......are you sitting down?...................they HELP YOU.

January 2020, WEEK 2.   I go to  Peak Med after a fall.  DR Josh Chow asks me about my migraines in the conversation about my balance? and my headaches?   "I'm fine"  I say, but weeks later when I notice that I'm having trouble speaking and the left side of my face is not working properly, I go back.
"What do you take for migraines?" His young face was dark with worry. "Maxalt?"
He made me do the drunk driving test and reflex and other tests.
"I think you may have had a stroke," he said,  I want you to get an MRI."
I gasped.  "I don't know if I an afford that."  He didn't give me the used car salesman line that "I couldn't afford NOT to"..........he said...........(are you sitting down?)....."We can get you in tomorrow for an MRI for a flat $500.00. without insurance."  HE looked at me gravely.  "This is your BRAIN-" I interrupted him. "I'm already there."

The next day's horrors only began with the MRI and climaxed with Dr Josh very, very reluctantly telling me over the phone that I had deadly aggressive brain cancer, but also that they had found a neurosurgeon within my insurance network, had precertified me, and made the appointment for me.  I was all set, I just had to show up and fill out their paperwork.

Out of paranoia I went to my insurance PC later and told her the story, but mainly to get the almighty REFERRALS (make an effort to speak some insurance Vogon lingo-it could save your butt-but never listen to their poetry).  She tested my reflexes, etc.

She stood back and shrugged.

"Your neurological signs look fine to me,' she chirped.

"So, you wouldn't have ordered an MRI?"

She thought about this.  "Oh, at some point I'm sure we would have," she said breezily, and I thought about how narrowly I had escaped spending thirteen to fifteen weeks (the average survival after diagnosis) in an excruciating headache haze before dying in pain-possibly while at the wheel.

One thing NOT to buy.....
Don't buy into anyone else's idea of Why You Have Cancer. That's just playing Gawd.  It is none of their damned business.  Just because somebody is high on religion or read a New Age book doesn't give them the right to tell you that your karma is bad or you didn't eat enough kale.  FUCK THEM. FUCK THEM RUNNING-away from you.  Don't fall for any of this bullshit.  BE FIERCE on this one if you have to be.  Demand to see their GOD CARD if nothing else works, but send them packing.

One more thing that can't be bought......
People who truly love you will show up like CRAZY.  My boyfriend instantly signed up to be my caregiver and he has been my ROCK, my therapist, my comfort and joy.  One friend came to stay with us for a month to babysit my traumatized little soul and help me start putting myself back together.  She also drove me to radiation a lot.  She and another friend STILL call me EVERY SINGLE DAY.  My lovely neighbor brought over a cake and flowers to celebrate the end of radiation.

You can't nurture your relationships too much.  Find people who truly GET you and love you and accept you, and whom you feel the same way about, and show up for them.  At every opportunity.  It makes it easier to lean on THEM when you have to-because they won't have it any other way and you will just have to deal with that.  Loving people tend to be badasses.

There's my big ADVICE column.