The sound of the sickle’s still ringing in my ears
There is a mindset known as “tall poppy syndrome” where anything and anyone sticking their head up above the crowd gets it lopped off. I’m beginning to think I may be in a permanent state of TPS.
For the last few years, every single time hubs and I have to the point where we can afford to sock a few extra hundred dollars away to pay off debt, something bad happens and wipes us out. Every. Single. Time.
And once again, it’s happened. Literally the same day I was going to have him run by the bank to pay down a loan we have through them, he was diagnosed with a potentially dangerous condition. Said condition will most likely amount to nothing as long as we do what we have to for that to happen. If we don’t, he could die. Or lose a leg. Or have a stroke.
Unfortunately, doing what we have to amounts to racking up enormous medical bills – possibly (but not definitely, as of this writing) several days in the hospital, daily injections of expensive meds (and when the doctors are saying they’re really expensive you know the pricetag has to be ungodly) for a week, followed by months of a relatively cheap drug that has the unfortunate requirement of being made expensive because it’s use has to be closely monitored through regular blood draws and so on.
Oh yeah, our insurance? Probably won’t cover much if any of it, and even if it is covered the best we could afford involves a $10G deductible before the insurance even kicks in.
I’m getting to the point where I’m about to just give up any hope of ever being out from under potentially crushing debt, much of which was racked up by – wait for it – previous medical bills racked up when we were even more broke than we are now. (God forbid I’m ever late on a payment, because if that happens it’s all over.)
Seriously. I just want to give up. We’re paying close to $500 dollars a month on credit cards just to tread water and have been since I can remember. And the balances never seem to budge. Some days I just want to leave the house, lock the door and just walk off into the sunset, and damn the credit rating. There’s just no other way to get ahead enough to get out from under without committing criminal acts. Welcome to the American dream. If the terrorists are killing us out of envy for our way of life, they’re doing it wrong.


