It was the middle of the night on Wednesday, week one of the term. I was dreaming that a stranger was giving me advice on how to make my heartbeat slower, such as unbuttoning a top button or lying down, the way you might dream of hearing the phone ring or hearing people on the television you left on when you fell asleep.
I woke up very suddenly, and my heart really was beating out of control. It felt like a major anxiety attack, or like I drank 20 cups of coffee. After a few minutes, it wasn’t so noticeable and I went back to sleep.
On Thursday and Friday, I went to classes feeling generally off and like there was something wrong with me, but I didn’t know what it was. On Saturday morning, my chest started to hurt, and I went to the emergency room. I ended up in the hospital for nearly three days.
It turns out I had rapid atrial fibrillation caused by a pulmonary embolism. That’s the fancy way of saying I have a clot in my lung which caused my heart to beat irregularly and much too fast. Pulmonary embolisms cause 15 percent of all sudden deaths, so it’s pretty obvious to say I was lucky.
I went from feeling sure I was being a hypochondriac to being hooked up to monitors, stuck with nine different needles (I have tiny veins) and wheeled under a claustrophobic CT scanner. At least six different people touched my boobs in a single weekend, which is a record for me.
This is the obligatory part, where I urge you to go to the emergency room if anything like this ever happens to you. But you know what’s amazing? None of us want to face the massive inconvenience of being hospitalized in the beginning of term, missing classes and unable to get to a laptop to do homework, all the while thinking about filling prescriptions and making sure you don’t inadvertently die.
Worrying about how intimidating the bill might be would add a mountain of stress to that pile. Yet since the Affordable Care Act took affect Jan. 1, a struggling, independent college student like myself qualifies for Medicaid. I don’t have to worry that I can’t afford my very expensive blood thinners. I don’t have to worry that I’ve just gone into a massive amount of debt as the price for staying alive. The rest of the world has enjoyed that luxury for a while, and the U.S. is finally starting to catch up.
Thus far, half the states in the U.S. have expanded Medicaid, while half are resistant, showing that split down the middle in America we’re so used to seeing these days. But many states that have exercised their right not to expand are starting to reconsider when they see that providing health coverage to poor people helps the economy, businesses and hospitals.
It’s also really hard to explain to the people in these states why their politicians are turning down billions of dollars in money from the federal government, which has elected to pay 100 percent of expansion costs for four years. For many conservatives, fighting Medicaid expansion is the last real way to protest Obamacare.
When I was in the hospital, many of the nurses told me about the homeless patients they treat and how the hospital relies on donations and other funds to pay for them. A 2012 report by The New York Times said New York’s hospitals lose at least $1.5 billion annually through treatment of the uninsured. This federal money is going to them, to help them provide better care to people, no matter what income level they are.
If you have yet to look into CareOregon or find out what your options are under healthcare reform, I urge you to figure it out. It can be confusing, but you really never know when you’ll end up grateful that you did.
I feel incredibly grateful to be from California and to be living in Oregon, where we don’t have to deal with the kind of politics that happen in places like Florida and Texas. I have lived without health insurance before, and there was a time when the looming specter of dollar signs would have prevented me from ever going to the emergency room. I’d hate to be a poor college student in the other 25 states.
Full disclosure, I voted for Obama three times: once in the California primary and twice in the general election. I think a lot of the criticisms of his time in office are valid, and I wouldn’t say he’s lived up to all his promises. But I will say that healthcare reform may end up directly saving lives, which is kind of a big deal for an American president. That may sound naive, but I have an irregular heartbeat and a bunch of very expensive classes to catch up on.
