Let me tell you about how my month has gone.
I get the stomach flu the first week. Whatever, it happens.
Two weeks later it comes back. Except it keeps getting worse. I’m pissing blood and I can’t keep water down. I think that it’s a kidney infection and go to urgent care and they tell me it could be kidney failure. I go to the ER.
It’s not kidney failure. It’s a kidney infection and it’s worse. It’s necrotic pancreatitis. My pancreas is rotting. I spend 10 days in ICU. I spike a fever of 104° and I’m dumped in an ice bath. I spend my 23rd birthday in a morphine induced delirium. I have a feeding tube. I lose 37lbs.
Upon a follow up with my PCP I learn that my pancreas is basically broken. It’s not producing insulin and it appears that the pancreatitis killed off the beta cells that produce insulin. I’m essentially a type one diabetic now. It’s unknown if it’ll heal or I’ll have to live like this.
My brother used up our insurance money earlier in the year when he broke his collarbone. My hospital stay was about 200k, but with secondary insurance and loan forgiveness and everything my bill is down to 4k, which is still a lot.
My insurance doesn’t cover my insulin. It’s $300 a vial.
That’s not even accounting for COVID-19. My mom and stepdad are both nurses. My stepdad works in the ER. None of the nurses have proper PPE so every day he works is a day he potentially brings home Corona. I can’t see my dad because he’s immunocompromised from chemo, as am I from antibiotics.
It’s literally all I can do to make masks out of old scrubs and donate them as fast as I can sew them. I designed a way to use durags as masks in the meantime and I’ve even had people putting panty liners in the masks I’ve made for extra filtration.
