An inconvenience

Adventuring rule #16: Let someone else be the grownup. It's cool. 

     "I just got my teeth back three days ago!"

     These are the things you hear when you wait outside a pharmacy counter at Raley's. I was waiting for the kind pharmacists to fill my prescription. Getting to this stage, however, was complicated.

     I'm one of those fortunate individuals who has always had medical insurance. Always. It was something I relied on, like having food and shoes. I was cut off from my parent's coverage, unfortunately, when I graduated from college. So the antibiotics I needed to battle a lingering sinus infection were on my own tab. My limited college-graduate-spending-the-summer-in-Europe budget is being stretched in these final days before takeoff.


     Getting medicine isn't so difficult, actually. Maybe it costs a few bucks more without the copay. But if I don't have insurance and something really big happens, I'm out several thousand dollars that I don't have. Hospitals and ambulances are really nice to have when you need them, but they are very expensive in our privatized insurance world. I don't want to open the can of worms that is universal health care. On the one hand, I don't understand much of the debate. On the other, there's not much I could do about it if I did.

     What I do know is that it's a beast to reapply for insurance. Spending two hours on the finicky application website with all its options and menus is no guarantee they'll accept you. In fact, you can apply to the same one twice, lying the second time, and they still won't take you. Maybe it's a felony. Maybe I just wanted to be done with the forms. They all want to know every bit of your very private business. If they find even one thing wrong with you, it's grounds to veto your whole application. Very frustrating. Not very useful.

     This is a grown up problem. This is something I delegate to my parents. I hand them bills. They take phone calls about insurance and car parts and money. I'm the creative one who runs off to interesting places in hopes that someone else will sort out the details. So, no, this isn't any fun at all.

     I'm going to spend as much time as I can being grateful that my parents will do these things for me. For now, they are understanding of my lack of a real job, income and an ability to take care of my own problems. Someday they won't be.

     Until then, I am perfectly glad to sit for thirty minutes in a grocery store listening to old women talk about their dentures.