The Dark Side of Good Health

In order for people to function effectively in the world, they need to believe that although they can see that other people can get seriously sick, they themselves are in a safety bubble.  This is an unconscious state of mind, but it is one of the many ways that evolution has allowed people to be actively engaged in the world without feeling a compelling need to hide in a cave waiting for some impeding disaster to befall them.

Young people, in particular, take risks with their bodies and their health that presuppose the mistaken belief that all is well and that nothing can harm them.  However, I have seen people in their 80's who have never been sick manifest this same attitude.  Such people, whether they are young, middle-aged or old, walk around with a halo of invincibility, or wellness, around their head.  We are all born and live with this halo, which only shatters when one, as an individual, is visited with a life-threatening illness.  When one is stricken, one's family and friends may feel sincerely sorry for their loved one, but their own halo of wellness will remain intact.  It is only when you fall seriously ill that you realize that your own halo of wellness is slipping away.

In my own case, I remember the day and time when I had such a revelation.  It was not when I got my first seriously bad diagnosis of cancer.  My halo was only shaken then.  It started to permanently disappear when I began undergoing medical treatments and underwent invasive and disturbing treatments for serious disease.  

I have often wondered over the years if it was possible to reclaim my halo.  However, despite much effort and wishing over the years that this could happen, I have discovered to my chagrin that, like Humpty Dumpty, once you your halo of wellness is shattered, it can't be put together again.  Once one has lost that halo, one has entered the Land of the Sick, and like the mythological Gates of Hades, there is no coming back from that land once you have crossed into it.  

This is similar in a way to car accidents.  We all drive wearing seat belts in order to remind us that cars are inherently dangerous, but it is only when one is in a bad accident in which one incurs serious injuries that one experiences the deep truth of this danger.  We have heard on the radio many times that there is an injury accident on the road ahead, but how seriously does this news actually impact us?  We feel bad for a few seconds and then drive on, paying no more attention to the matter.

It is this dark side of wellness that causes so many healthy people not to feel that they need, and thus not want to sign up for, health insurance.  Such people simply cannot imagine ever being sick!  However, some day, such people will get sick, and when that happens, it is critically important for such people to be able to get reasonable medical care at affordable prices.

When I got sick at 32 with cancer, I was told it would kill me and that my odds of surviving were 3 percent.  As a result, I became stuck in time.  I could not leave my job and the health insurance that came with it, because I now had a "pre-existing condition," which effectively made it impossible for me ever to get comprehensive health insurance with no exclusions.  My disease meant that I could not have any more children (luckily, I had one already), and that I would be unlikely ever to re-marry (my husband is one of that small percentage of spouses who do not abandon their wives when they are suffering from deadly illness).

It is only after beating the odds against me that today, at the age of 62, I have been given the heart to pursue a new and different career.  I have been encouraged to do this, because the Affordable Care Act puts us all on the same footing by eliminating the ability of insurers to impose a "pre-existing condition" limitation on their customers.  Affordable health insurance is no longer just for the healthy; it is now for all of us.