The hardest part of recovery is convincing your anxiety that you're actually going to be okay now. Since heart disease struck so swiftly and stealthily before, a neurotic mind considers it highly likely that it could spring another surprise attack at anytime. Heart disease becomes the cleaver-wielding maniac lurking in the bushes; the lone sniper in the book depository; the deadly poison floating in the goblet of Borgia wine; the viper clasped to the bosom, literally. It's rather like being an unpopular world leader with a constant fear of sudden assassination. No wonder that Colonel Gaddafi employs his own full-time medical staff in a secret clinic equipped with a state-of-the-art operating theater, turbo-charged wheelchairs and twenty-four-hour helipad.
For regular people, however, health paranoia is most acute when insurance companies refuse to cover the cost of medications ordered by their doctor. For instance, I was prescribed 40mgs Lipitor but my insurance would only pay for 40mgs of inferior Crestor. Does the forbidden drug cost more than the drug I'm allowed to have, the neurotic mind worries, because it causes excessive gas, stomach cramps, and all those other horrible side-effects that deceptively soothing voices recite at high speed in the last five seconds of TV commercials? Or is it so much cheaper simply because it is downright less effective?
My health insurance furnished me with five pages of justifications for rejecting the Lipitor prescription. I read through them twice but was none the wiser. It was like receiving a quarterly 401K report prepared by Tweedledum and Tweedledee with pie-charts and graphs drawn by M. C Escher.
According to my calculations, this Lipitor and Crestor cost differential could easily be made-up if the insurance company reduced the amount of printed health bulletins and new laminated membership cards they mailed to me each month. In fact, I am certain that such cost-saving measures would lower the ruinous price of health care premiums by vast amounts. But that, of course, is someone else's battle. I'm too preoccupied with my anxiety to fight it.
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It is only natural to be nervous about ones recovery and continued health. The problem arises whenever one puts too much faith in the promises of the chemical industry. The medications alone can make you a, "Nervous Nellie," to the point of paranoia. The important thing is to not turn everything into a worst case scenario. Don't let them win is my motto and if they take away all of your joy of living and replace it with fear and frustration they have won. Think of just one thing you can do that will help you to forget for just one moment that you nearly lost your life. Breath deep and realize that for this one moment in this one day you are alive and for this one moment you can say your heart is doing its job.
Posted by: Giric | August 22, 2011 at 13:03
Crestor and Lipitor were supposed to fight in the Trojan War, but they overslept and missed the boat.
Posted by: Carter | August 23, 2011 at 13:33
The face that unblocked a thousand arteries.
Posted by: american fez | August 24, 2011 at 10:54
Coincidentally I happened to see Michael Moore's 'Sicko' yesterday on television. It is shocking to learn about the US health care system, even if I already got an idea about it during this summer.
Anyway, I think I can more or less rationally understand how unnerving it must be to have your body fail you all of a sudden, perhaps just because it never did in my case.
Posted by: Laurent | August 24, 2011 at 12:24
Well, I feel Michael Moore's approach to documentary truth is not always convincing. Having said that, I enjoy his films as films and he is an entertaining personality. Health care provision will always be unsettled issue. there is no panacea, as it were.
Posted by: american fez | August 24, 2011 at 12:47
Giric, that is sage advice. Thank you.
Posted by: american fez | August 24, 2011 at 12:48
The old saying of, "Laugh and the world laughs with you," is apparently no longer relevant. I laughed yesterday and was met with an icy stare of iceberg proportions. Cry and you will be told to suck it up. Under the circumstances I think I will just keep laughing and say, "hang it all," to the mean and belligerent. I am a firm believer in laughter being the best medicine, so find something every day to laugh about, be it a soft snicker or a full blown belly laugh. Just be careful not to hurt yourself in the process.
Posted by: Giric | August 24, 2011 at 13:09