Grin and Bear

Benefits.

I have been a young working professional for seven years now. It will be eight years by next spring. I think once young people get past the sparkling visions of multi-figured salaries and living in the best cities in the country and having that wonderful blend of professional life and night leisure, that we start waxing about the comfort and security that successful employment can bring. We can make that transition from tolerable apartment to our first homes. If we're single, we think about the marriage life phase; if we're heading there, we cement plans. Children optional, but the nice car is not so much, and neither is a step-up from hand-me-down furnishings. But above all that, the benefits. Whatever size the family, we think about getting off that university insurance payroll (if we were ever on it) and start preparing insurance coffers to take care of us when sick and to handle us if we die unexpectedly.

I did it too. I began speculating how much salary I could command on the marketplace, and it took a few years before I began thinking of the important issues: weekly schedules, vacation time, telecommuting, and those bright and shiny benefits.

I never got them. Like many college students (and probably more so now considering the state of the economy), I couldn't afford not to work. I enjoyed my time interning as a parenting counselor and a victims of crime advocate, but I thought I was "too good," had "too much professional training" to settle for a $20,000 annual salary at a nonprofit. My student loans pushed $25,000, so I ventured back into the world. At one point, I cobbled together three jobs out of financial necessity.

I would describe myself to your face as a behavioral counselor, though the reality was that it was a part-time, hourly gig that I could have learned on-the-job. If you could sound like you cared over the telephone and take notes at the same time, you had it made. I earned $10.25 an hour at that job and was denied a yearly raise because the parent company knew I would be leaving for school. Once enjoying the freedom to work as many hours as I could while we were behind on intakes, the parent company knocked every caseworker down to a 32-hour maximum. No benefits.

I would grab dinner around five, and then drive to the factory. I worked the graveyard shift. It wasn't difficult work since I had to sort and scan incoming freight, but we were talking 12-hour shifts (and 14 in mandatory overtime). I worked over 40 hours a week, but because I was a temp, I received no benefits. We were also expendable, too.

When I wasn't working at the "clinic," I waited tables a couple nights a week for some extra cash. Saturday was probably my favorite day of the week. It wasn't because I could go out and have a good time. It was the one afternoon I had off so that, when I got off at 5 a.m., I could crash until the sun made it impossible to keep my eyes closed.

I held two jobs for a long time prior. I managed to keep three for about six months. One winter night, I was driving home and a microsleep came over me. It felt like a split second, as if I just blinked. In that blink, I managed to go completely off the road and into the grass shoulder. I snapped out of it just in time to cut a hard right at a transitioning red light into my neighborhood. Any further delay and I would have been wrapped around a tree.

The money was tempting but hazardous to my health. I quit the factory, and then I left the clinic. My manager at the restaurant was super sweet to me about the whole thing. She let me work until just shy of 40 hours. I had no clue the restaurant would close for business about a month later, but it was good while it lasted. Sleeping right, eating okay.

But no benefits.

I worked at the mall for a while, too, before this whole three-job foolishness, and the manager talks to me one morning about being financially crunched. Her husband had been struggling to get on the police force, and money was tight at home. She mentioned health insurance. I chortled. She chastised in return. I told her that I have managed just fine without health insurance for many, many years.

I was six when I had my tonsils removed, and even then I only had them taken out because the impending sore throats were practically killing me. I was sixteen when I unexpectedly passed out in high school. I had a brief seizure in algebra class. We went to the emergency room for treatment. The doctor referred me to a neurologist who, to the tune of $600 for a consultation, could find not a damn thing wrong with me. He was dumbfounded, and it was then that I realized that being totally ignorant of something can still bring in a paycheck.

The rest of the bill came. The know-nothing doctor, the IV drip, and a sick craving for anything McDonald's could throw together because I was not allowed to eat while being tested. It was four figures forced onto piddling savings and Mom's hourly job and welfare benefits. We nearly defaulted. I worked all summer long to save up some money for college, and out it went with the borderline collections threats. Because my name was on the bill. Because I had no idea what would happen to me if I didn't pay this thing.

Who puts a teenager through stuff like that?

That was thirteen years ago. Never had another seizure, so I assume it was some fluke thing. I developed allergies later in life. I don't remember all the details, but a drive to Louisville meant that some generous soul or kindly hospital service was willing to help out with the tab. Some x-rays revealed several cysts and polyps in my sinus cavity. I live with one nostril open. The blockage shifts left or right depending on how I sleep; it's usually the left, and I get nosebleeds only on the right side.

I couldn't tell you how much the surgery costs for repair. Maybe it's because you block out impossibilities. You don't think about saving or preparing or setting anything aside because, even if I did get it, how could I pay for the missed time off work? How soon can I recover and get back to full strength? Or what if the complications messed me up worse than I began in the first place?

Wait. Hang on a sec. One other procedure. Wisdom teeth removed sometime that summer before I graduated. The anaesthetist doped me up too much. I didn't want to wake up. Mom carried me on her back to the car, dumped me onto her bed, and I stayed like that for a full twenty-four hours. Another $800. Payment for a near overdose, I tell you.

When you're like me -- working class, not much savings, you get used to getting by -- health care is a luxury. This whole nose thing aside, I consider myself relatively healthy. I don't smoke. I drink in moderation. I'm lean, even with a bit of belly on me. I must be doing something right if I have thus resisted the family legacy of chain smoking, adipose tissue, and cardiovascular disease. But that's not to say I'm totally immune. And that's also not to say that I am doing anything beyond common-sense prevention.

I can pay a couple of bills or get a physical. I can pay a credit card (eventually) or opt for that surgery. That's what it comes down to. Being healthy won't get me financially back on track. I am taking away from my own well-being now and banking on the chance that I will get it back sometime down the road.

I am twenty-nine years ago and the luxury I have right now is sheer dumb luck. I also have university health coverage. It would probably require me completing a Ph.D. before I understand all of the benefits attached to it, and it would require every bit of dumb luck and then some to get covered in the event something does happen to me. If so, it would have to be catastrophic; we're talking explosions rivaling those in Transformers 2. Then and only then might a company grudgingly offer to pay. It's the small, everyday stuff that might keep us alive that are exempt from coverage.

Today isn't such a bad day. I'm breathing particularly well out of my right nostril.