# Surviving Sickness in a Healthcare Hellscape ```yaml title: Surviving Sickness in a Healthcare Hellscape published_date: 2024-12-04 04:57 ``` 🐈‍⬛ --- Well, well, well. Here we are once again for that what seems like annual post of me having great shame and discontent with the fact that I only care about my health when I am in the weeds and completely fucked over. Shortly after Thanksgiving, it just hit me. I laid there on the couch hoping for death all of Friday. Saturday came and Christina demanded that I stay home. It was probably a good idea. Actually it was a great idea, what the hell am I saying. But missing work in a meat department gets you labled a bitch real quick, so I guess that is where that instinctively comes from. Sunday came and I forced myself to go to work, but I was not feeling any better than I was the day prior. Got to work and wandered over the area of the store where you can buy over the counter drugs and bought some Mucinex Xtra Hardcore, which I'm sure is just a way to get a couple more dollars from a person. But it was too the point that it felt like someone was sitting on my chest. Took one of those and gave everyone else in the department one as well. It seemed to help. I was feeling better by the end of work. But somewhere during the next 12 hours it all came crashing back. Fucking relentless. I'm couching up what looks like a strange combination of applesauce and cottage cheese. Unable to concentrate on anything other than moving objects on a screen, I'm left to nothing but my thoughts. Nothing makes any sense, and it's almost like a fear of impending doom I was having. I'm laying on the couch, wrapped up like a burrito with a heating blanket on max volume, with several layers on and still freezing. Will I die? How old was my Father when he got cancer? Why does Christina love me? Seriously, why does she? Then it's back to forcing myself to work on Tuesday (this) morning. I get there and I'm wondering what the fuck I was thinking that this would even work. I moved around a palette of chicken breasts and stacked them onto a cart and priced them up and I felt so fucking empty after just moving the eight boxes from the palette to the cart. I priced each of them up and the motion of picking everything up just felt like too much. Christina said she can visually tell that I have lost weight, and it was in that moment that I was feeling that to be true. I could tell it was happening before she said anything because that morning when I put on my watch (this must have been Monday) it naturally went to the hole past where I normally put it on. With ease. Adam my dear colleague said something along the lines of *"Look here Bucko were top-heavy today why don't you get out of here."* I denied him at first but it wasn't long after when I tapped out. Barely made it up the stairs before falling asleep for five solid hours. Literally at the top of the stairs, on a hard floor. Woke up and basically went back to work to pick up Christina. Come home, nothing is getting any better. My dear Mother brings over some antibotics and I take them. A couple of hours go by and I look over at Christina and ask if I should go get a COVID test. She nods and so I'm off to get one and a snickers bar for her, for putting up with my bitch ass. My whiny resort to a five-year-old-mentality bitch ass. Hop in the whip, and go to get the COVID test. Come home and take the test. The longest fifteen minutes in a hot minute begins. Ring the buzzer, I'm not with COVID. Thank god. But I can feel something happening. It's garbage day so go outside and get all that shit ready. My Father has to drive his garbage in himself. I feel like we should have to do that too. Sort everything like they have to. In the cold and everything. Anyways, every sensation is different than it was five minutes ago. A million miles away from an hour ago. It's got to be the antibiotics kicking in. Now why is it that such user-friendly drugs like this are not available at your local Walgreens but there is all kinds of other shit there that only kind of work. I'm willing to bet it has a lot to do with showing your membership cards for whatever insurance club you're in, sitting in that waiting room — pumping your anxiety, give the nurse a twenty for walking you back and then pay the big boss the real money for him to tell you have this or that and now here, go to Walgreens and get yourself some antibiotics. It's fucking bullshit. The entire health care system is a fucking joke. The whole fucking thing. I listened to rap when I was kid, and Ice Cube once said in an interview in the 90s that he was basically checked out of politics because it was too fucked to care about. He's solution was to "douche the whole damn system and start over". That's exactly what needs to happen. We shouldn't have to scour the earth trying to find antibiotics like we're trying to buy cocaine. We shouldn't have to go to the horse and pony show just to get a fucking bottle of what we know will work. My philosophy on health has basically always been: Wolverine through that shit. You'll be fine. Walk it off. That does work a majority of the time. My approach to going to the doctor is for three reasons only: My heart has stopped (but my iPhone tells EMTs simply **Let Me Die** on my Medical ID), there is bleeding I cannot stop, or I have broken a bone (a serious one). I haven't had a checkup since probably half my life ago and even then it was required for something, it wasn't out of my own accord. The more time you spend with those medical professionals who are way better at slowing shit down than eliminating anything entirely in regards to ailments of the human health experience. It's in their nature. They want job security. Less sick people might mean they make as much as the grunts and nobodies who work at grocery stores and gas stations and deliver their cheap Amazon products. **This is American INC. baby!** and this free market system we have here is the way of life! --- **DISCLAIMER:** There may be grammatical and or spelling erors in this post. Most editing processes have been tossed out the window in the face of AI, to prove our humanity. --- <div class="benjamin"> <p>✉️ <em><a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject={{ post_title }}">Reply by Email</a></em></p> </div>