Hard to Swallow

My wife was recently diagnosed with a condition I can’t pronounce, let alone spell. It involves white blood cells collecting in her esophagus as a result of allergens. These allergens are a combination of environmental (pollen, pet dander, cheap perfume, etc.) and food allergies (in her case, eggs). The end result is a swelling in her throat that can potentially close things down.

If that sounds scary, it’s because it is. Fortunately whenever this has occurred to her the swelling is at the base of her esophagus and it prevents food from going into her stomach. It has not impacted her breathing at all, other than the anxiety of not knowing what the heck is going on causing pressure in her chest.

She’s had a few isolated problems in recent years with this but we assumed the problems were unrelated. A recent trip to the ER for a bad one put us in touch with the right doctor to help figure it out. She ended up getting on a medication that’s supposed to help out as well as had a procedure performed where a balloon is stuck into her esophagus and then inflated to stretch it out. Yes, that’s a little scary too. Fortunately she felt virtually no discomfort afterwards and could carry on. And no, it didn’t fix the problem, but it might have helped a little.

All was well and we were moving on with life when yesterday we received the bill. We have insurance, and considering what the total bill was I’m mighty happy about that. In spite of that, it came to over $2000. $2000 for a procedure that took a few minutes and a stay in the recovery room of around 15 minutes. Without insurance it would have been over $8000.

Once I picked my jaw up I had to make arrangements with the hospital to pay the bill over a longer period of time. Then I began to fume about how incredibly screwed up our healthcare system is. I recently did a blog post and an interview on a libertarian political activist’s website and he asked me questions that made me uncomfortable. Not because it painted me to be a bad guy, but because it showed that I was under-informed. I tend to spend my time with my head in the clouds, or at least in my own worlds, and I just deal with the system we live in. Kind of like a lot of us, I suppose.

The easy solution is to just write and sell more books. Then I can pay for the bills and move on to her next throat stretching appointment in June. But is that really the right answer? A lot of people out there don’t have the option to boost their income. Heck, the way my book sales have been up and down lately (mostly down), I can’t be sure I have that option either. So what does that leave us for people who have medical problems that are bleeding us out?

I don’t have the answer, but you can bet your ass something’s going to pop up in a book of mine sometime soon. I’d love to hear some suggestions or, better yet, hear of things that are in process to try and make our lives a little less devastated by medical issues and / or bills.

In the meantime I’ll keep writing since it’s what I do best. I’m nearly finished with Chasing the Dragon, book 2 in the Order of the Dragon fantasy trilogy (sequel to the Blades of Leander trilogy). Next up is going to be book 2 in my Homeland series. After that, probably back to finish Order of the Dragon and then another Vitalis book. I’m also considering rewriting some old stories I wrote to create another fantasy series that has a more mature rating. Ironic, since the people that will probably like it most will be teenage boys!

In the meantime, stay safe and healthy my friends!

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com .