What an odd day this has been. Is it alright to say, “I’m grateful this day is over?” I find myself smiling as I type that. The truth is, this hasn’t been a bad day–I’ve had many much worse days. So it is perhaps more accurate to say, I am grateful to have experienced and lived another day.
I woke this morning determined to build on the momentum from yesterday and sit at my desk and get some work done on a book chapter I am working on. It is a project I have been involved with for many months, but now it is getting down to the wire. I have about two weeks in which to finish a 5,000 word chapter for a book to which a number of other women from academia are contributing. So when I dressed this morning, I once again eschewed wearing my scrubby jeans and t-shirt, instead opting for much nicer black jeans and a nice polo shirt. In keeping with my theme from yesterday, I wanted to dress less casually because I would be working on a scholarly endeavor. I pushed up to my desk, spreading out my materials and prepared to work on the draft.
Then the phone rang just as I was starting, and as often happens, the conversation distracted me away from what I had been working on. Instead of thinking and reading and writing, I went hurtling into the uncertain world of online health insurance shopping. For the next hour or so I scrolled through screen after screen, with descriptions of plan after plan. Deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, out of pocket costs, etc. After a while it all started to blur together, until out of desperation I sort of picked a plan and started the online application process. Page after page asking what diseases or conditions I’d had or didn’t have, what type of treatments have I received, what kind of medications I’ve been on over the past 12 months. In the midst of clicking yes or no through dozens of questions, I found myself reverting back to my old knowledge about basic survey research–some of the questions were worded in such convoluted and confusing ways that the average person responding wouldn’t know how to accurately answer them. Then at the end of it all you’re supposed to attest and affirm that your answers are accurate and true. Yikes! I ultimately did not complete the application–I am going to call a human being tomorrow and see if I can get some clarity about what some of this stuff means.
(I really am getting to gratitude, honest.)
Experiences like this remind me how incredibly privileged I am to be educated enough to even be able to begin to wade through this process, and also how incredibly ignorant I am about how all this works. I was so frustrated with trying to navigate through all the questions and asterisks and fine print (not to mention the legalese about rescission and binding arbitration) that I was scared to click “complete application,” and had to walk away from it for a while. In the end I will do my best to answer the questions as accurately as possible, pray that I select the best plan that I can afford, and close my eyes and hit “send.” This is not the way this process should go. And if it’s that confusing for me, how much more so might it be for people with less access to resources and assistance to help them navigate?
I am grateful to have people who care about me–it was a call from one of my sisters expressing her concern that I don’t have health insurance that prompted me to wade back into those murky waters and try to find something that will work for me until I can find employment that offers insurance or I find a way of finding and affording a better plan on my own. I am grateful to have friends I can get some advice from about all of this, and I’m also grateful that I have the energy to pick up the phone and ask questions and get answers.
In the end I did spend some time working on my chapter, and I plan to get back to it over the next few days. It is one a number of important items on my to-do list. And as odd as the day has felt, I am ending it as I have so many others over the past months, with a sense of gratitude for this day and hope for tomorrow. I’ll play my guitar for a few minutes, prep for a brief phone interview tomorrow morning, call my daughter, and before I go to sleep thank God one more time for good measure.
