aging

Rant alert. No humor today.

On October 3, 2001, at 7:30 in the evening, I sat in front of the TV, waiting for Farscape to start and my brother, Alan, to arrive to watch it with me. It was a regular thing, and I looked forward to it every week. Tonight he was late, but that wasn’t unusual.

About five minutes into the show, the phone rang. It was a woman, who asked, “Who’s this?”

I replied, “Who’s this?”

She only kept asking who I was, and I finally hung up. I have no patience for anyone who can’t identify themselves on the phone. I went back to watching the show.

The phone rang again, and it was the same woman, asking again who I was. I insisted she tell me who she was, and got another runaround. This was beginning to annoy me. This was before we had a DVR, and I was missing my favorite show. Again I hung up.

A third time the phone rang. This time it was a police officer, who informed me the call was about my brother, who had just had a heart attack. Apparently I was his emergency contact, and I was summoned to the hospital. I picked up my purse and left immediately.

On the way there, I sorted out in my mind how we would take care of Alan during his convalescence. I was his only local relative; he would need to stay with us and I would be responsible for him. That was how it had always been. He was my little brother, and all my life I had been held responsible for him.

In the ER, I learned he was still coding. They’d been trying to restart his heart for about half an hour. I was told that at this point, even if he responded he would probably end up brain-damaged. But as it was, they gave up soon after and pronounced him dead.

It turned out that the woman who had called twice then hung up was a friend of his, who had discovered him on the floor of his computer shop about half an hour after he called her, complaining of severe chest pains. (And by half an hour I mean God only knows how long it really took that flaming idiot to finally decide Alan needed help.)

Much later, from various sources including witnesses, emergency responders, and hospital records, I was able to assemble the truth of what happened. Alan began experiencing chest pains early in the evening, and phoned his friend the brain trust. She later said to me he told her to not call 911, because he couldn’t afford another trip to the ER and thought he could just tough it out the way he always had before. I learned he’d been having these episodes for about six months. Two months earlier he’d gone to the emergency room after going unconscious during one of them, but by the time he got there his rhythm had normalized and he was stable. The ER had done nothing; the episode had simply ended. By law, hospital emergency rooms are not obligated to find out what happened, they’re only required to stabilize. I know this because the ER at TriStar Hendersonville Medical Center, where Alan went for help and where he ultimately died, has notices posted on every available wall space stating in detail that they are not responsible for treating patients who are not insured, and once a patient is stabilized he is expected to leave the premises. So, since my brother was conscious and breathing, the hospital booted him out the door and he went home with a medical bill he would never have been able to pay even if he’d lived. He was a self-employed computer tech, new in town and barely scraping by, and had no way of affording individual health insurance. Ever. An individual policy for someone his age would have cost more than his entire income.

Alan told his friend not to call 911, and told her it was because, if he incurred another medical debt, he would never be able to have anything for the rest of his life. So she didn’t call anyone, and a while later wandered over to his shop to see if he was all right. He was, at that point, quite dead.

Had he been insured and not afraid to call for help, he could have been taken to the hospital in time and ::cough:: stabilized. And they might have stumbled across the cause of these episodes. Or perhaps, even, he might have had a diagnosis after the very first episode if he’d had access to a GP. But almost no GPs take new patients who are not insured. Why didn’t he get on Medicaid? Fffff…right. Be real, this is Tennessee. You need a lawyer to get on TennCare. In short, my brother died for lack of health insurance, as surely as if some actuary from Blue Cross had put a bullet in his brain.

So…I told you that story to tell you this, and some other stuff. (Yeah, this is going to be a long post, but I hope you’ll bear with me.) Skip ahead a few years. President Barack Obama, after at least a year of struggle which I followed closely, with fingers crossed that he would put an end to our health care system which was killing people, signed into law the Affordable Care Act. I decline to call it “ObamaCare,” because the main thing to remember is the word affordable. Let’s note that affordable is not part of the Republican repeal bill, on any level. We’ll get back to that shortly.

I won’t go into detail about the law itself; it’s extremely complex and deeply flawed. I’ll spare the rant on why. The central issue on this is that this law enabled millions of people, including me, to have more or less affordable health insurance. For some it is the first time in their lives. I had been uninsured my entire adult life. Being insurance clueless, I approached the government exchange with trepidation. It was confusing, but not nearly as hopeless as the teeth-pulling nightmare I’d experienced when signing my husband up for an individual policy several years earlier. (Just him; we couldn’t afford to insure both of us.) The information I needed was there on the site, I just had to interpret it. I signed up for insurance on the exchange, barely affordable because of the subsidy, and began to feel like I belonged, and no longer fallen through the cracks. It’s impossible to describe how good that felt.

My husband’s profession (entertainer coach driver) doesn’t offer health insurance at any price, because this is Tennessee and entertainment unions are by law prohibited from any sort of collective behavior that might give them any power. Welcome to Right to Work. I have been a freelance writer since 1993, but though I have been a member of the Authors’ Guild they were unable to offer me health insurance because I live in Tennessee. I point out these things lest anyone accuse me of just not wanting to pay for health care. The ugly truth is that over the years I have paid many, many times as much for the smidgens of diagnosis and treatment I’ve managed to pry out of the system as what was charged for the same tests and prescriptions to insurance companies. I’m not talking about copays, I’m talking about total cost to the insurer. Because my husband was briefly insured, and we’re both diabetic and taking the same tests and pills, I have bills to prove it.

During these past few years of being fully insured (except for optical and dental, because apparently the health insurance industry doesn’t consider eyes and teeth part of one’s body), I’ve finally been able to control my blood sugar and blood pressure, goals that had eluded me during previous years when every office visit had to be budgeted and certain medications were impossibly out of reach. In December of 2014 I developed a blister on my foot and was hospitalized with a diabetic foot ulcer. It was caught soon enough to avoid amputation because I hadn’t hesitated to have it checked as soon as I realized there was something wrong. Nowadays any foot sore will send me to my GP immediately, because my copay is one-fifth the cost of an office visit. Though they told me the cellulitis that developed from the foot ulcer might never heal entirely, after two and a half years has healed up and there’s no sign of it. I’ve also managed to lose a little weight, and my thyroid is being properly tested and medicated, which helps weight control and therefore blood sugar and cholesterol control. I can get antibiotics for respiratory infections and stomach bugs, thereby spending days under the weather rather than weeks or months. All in all, the advent of the ACA has enabled me to feel healthier–be healthier–than I had for decades.

Thank you, Mr. Obama.

Now jump to January 20, 2017. Trump put his hand on a couple of bibles and swore to defend the Constitution, a promise we knew at the time he didn’t mean, and now he’s showing us just how little regard he has for it. At that moment I was on a bus full of women in pink knitted hats, headed to Washington D.C. to let the world know Trump is Not My President and that we weren’t going to allow him to plunder the country. Six months in, it’s beginning to look as if our political system–even the rule of law–is crumbling around our heads. Regardless of which side one supports, it can’t be denied that Washington D.C. is not getting anything accomplished, and those of us who are retirement age or close to it, who have the rest of our lives at stake, are watching the three-ring nightmare with white knuckles. I am literally counting the days until I will be old enough for Medicare. Mitch (Yertle the Turtle) McConnell is leading the charge to yank the ACA, among other things. Every few weeks it looks like millions of us are going to lose our health care–and therefore our health–so that monstrously, absurdly, unthinkably rich folks can pay less in taxes and by that become even more monstrous, absurd, and unthinkable. It appears we are doomed.

But I say there’s hope. (You knew I was going somewhere with this, yes?) Trump isn’t going to be impeached this year, or next. However, neither is he fooling most of us. We in the pink hats have made ourselves clear, and will continue to do so. Those in Washington who care about democracy, rule of law, and the individual lives of Americans who are not rolling in money, are sticking up for us. Last night (Thursday, July 27, 2017) the Senate voted on the Republican ACA repeal bill, and the vote was “no.” In a Republican-controlled Senate, McConnell’s mean little bill hasn’t gone forward. Three Republican senators made the difference by joining the forty-eight Democrats in not wanting to hurt people. John McCain, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins helped stick up for those of us who are at risk.

McConnell, having postponed the vote so McCain could participate, is not a happy camper today.

So all is not lost, despite the White House turning into Animal House. The ACA, obviously, is not the whole picture, and there will likely be more repeal attempts in the future, but for now the Senate has moved on to other things and many of us will be healthier for it.

Now we must get the message to our representatives that we want the ACA fixed.

End rant.

When I was in my early forties I took my first trip to Scotland. It was a whirlwind of new experiences. I discovered it was possible to drink carbonated soda at room temperature, that ale isn’t like beer at all, and that black pudding is really very good, so long as you eat it with eggs that have really runny yolks. But part of what I learned was that in the U.K. older women are not invisible to young men.

Having spent most of my life as a young, cute blonde girl, quite visible but for all the wrong reasons, I’d become comfortable with fading into the background as I aged, because I was done with fending advances. After decades of leering looks, copped feels, really dumb double entendres and generally being treated like furniture, I’d take being unseen over being a target, with pleasure, thankyouverymuch. But then, in Edinburgh one Sunday, I encountered a young, handsome Irish fellow in a souvenir shop who did not ignore me.

Such a sweetie, he took seriously my lame desire for a clan badge for a clan that was not my own. He wasn’t certain he had one, but he was perfectly willing to help me dig through baskets of pins looking for it. He appeared to be having as much fun on my trip as I was chatting merrily as we knelt on the floor, looking for a Matheson clan badge for the character in my new book. I adored his accent as he told me about Ireland vs. Edinburgh, and the one thing missing was the condescending, yet somehow suggestive tone American men always seemed to have. If they spoke to me at all. This young Irishman spoke to me straight across, just as I’d always wished to be spoken to. I was astonished.

Throughout that trip I noticed other young men who did the same thing. The barkeep at a pub, a hotelier in the Highlands, a cab driver, a waiter. I was visible to all of them! The only downside was that I could no longer fight crime or walk into men’s rooms. I returned home, wondering what was wrong with American men.

Years later when I turned fifty, I celebrated my new eccentricity. I was, I felt, now officially eccentric rather than simply weird. I was now able to get away with things, just like Estelle Getty in “The Golden Girls,” whose character had no filter, so that she blurted whatever crossed her mind with impunity. In short, I could be myself and not be censured. Mostly. I was still invisible to young American men, but that mattered less and less. American men were a writeoff, and British men were…well, over there. I accepted.

Then one day last year I was getting my hair colored, and my hairdresser’s next appointment arrived early. She sat and chatted with us while my cut was finished up and blown dry. I noticed her hair. She had short, blonde hair in a kicky sort of style, and it had large streaks of bright purple. The sort of eye-catching color one these days usually sees on millennial girls, and sometimes boys. But this woman was my age, and it struck me that she didn’t look as if she were trying to appear younger than she was. In fact, it was just the opposite. She actually appeared to be flaunting her age. As if she were saying, “Yeah, I’m fifty-five. Get over it.” I couldn’t help staring at that fabulous color.

My hairdresser said I should have mine dyed like that. I said, “I was just thinking that same thing.” Not purple, because then I’d have to buy a whole new wardrobe. But blue. My favorite color is blue, which would work with everything I own. After some discussion, we settled on a bright, electric blue. Just little spots at first, but over the following year it increased to larger, more visible streaks.

Way more visible. Like a light going on, I was suddenly noticed, in a good way. Younger people I didn’t know, older people I did know, all thought it was delightful. Most

Blue Haired Old Lady — Introducing…myself.

importantly, I enjoyed it. In an odd way, it seemed as if people in general began treating me like the person I felt I was inside. Eccentric, creative…visible.

This afternoon I was in a book store with some friends, at the checkout, and a handsome young man at the cash register said, “I love your hair.”

I thanked him kindly. I’d grown accustomed to positive remarks about it but it’s always nice to hear. I said, “Yeah, I’m a blue-haired old lady.”

“You certainly pull it off well.”

I thanked him again, now truly flattered. What a sweetie, and he sounded like he meant it, unlike all the young men of my own youth who’d only ever wanted to get me into bed. (Not nearly as much fun as one might think.) What a joy!

Outside the store I told my friends, “I love being an age where I can get a compliment like that from a young man and know for a certainty he’s not trying to pick me up.”

At long last I can be myself. Now I know what Robert Frost meant: “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, ‘A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!’”

The System is Working

On Being a Blue-Haired Old Lady