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Thanks a lot, Harry & Louise
Tuesday, June 4 2002Gretchen's condition hasn't improved in many days. She goes up and down, but stays roughly the same on average. At first the primary theory was that she had mononucleosis, but after a number of tests, her doctor suspected there might be some sort of thyroid condition as well, and that they might not even be related. This didn't make much sense to me, since it seems highly unlikely that one would contract mono at precisely the moment when one's thyroid gland decided to go nuts. I know from experience with complicated systems (computers, people, cars, etc.) that when something bad starts happening, it's always just one thing that has gone wrong (unless something fails that immediately precipitates the failure of something else).
What makes Gretchen's medical situation especially horrible is that this month happens to be the first month in her entire life in which she has had no medical insurance. She'd signed up for a continuation of the plan she had as a student at Sarah Lawrence, but in the switch she lost coverage for pre-existing conditions and medications. [REDACTED]Under her new policy, then, she wouldn't get any coverage for her current illness for an entire year, which essentially made her new policy useless. Luckily, however, today Gretchen learned about (and immediately signed up for) another health insurance plan that will accept her and her pre-existing conditions with only a single month wait. It even pays for birth control, a financially-savvy policy given the expense of pregnancy and giving birth. That's all well and good, but this experience has confirmed yet again the adage, "If you think the medical system in this country works, you've never known anyone who was sick." Thanks a lot, Harry & Louise.[REDACTED]
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