Such A Small Thing

Jesus. I was feeling pretty okay about everything this afternoon and I'd had my walk and filled out my forms to take to the dermatologist and it felt so great to check off all the diseases and conditions I do not have and to be able to say that I am not on any medications and I just felt so grateful and healthy, you know?
And everything went fine at the doctor's. Really it did. I just have a few spots of Actinic Keratosis which is a very common sort of skin damage and which is also called a precancer which, according to the doctor can result in a true cancer in 20% of cases or, if you believe the hand-out brochure he gave me, 10% of the time. So, you know. No panic or anything. And I've had these before.

Once, my old dermatologist simply froze a place on my face where one was and that's actually a place which has "reactivated" but that was a long time ago. It left a white spot, that freezing treatment and the doctor today told me that he doesn't like to use this treatment on women's faces because of that resulting white area. And I told him that I really am not a vain woman at all, not that not wanting white spots on your face is vain but really, it doesn't matter much to me. I mean shitfire. I'm not going to win any beauty contests from here on out. And if I do want to cover them up, that's easily done with a little make-up. But he really didn't want to discuss that treatment and for some reason, I let it go,  not even  thinking much about it until I left and realized that what he had said was incredibly sexist. That he didn't like to use that treatment on "women's faces." WTF?

Moving on.

There are drugs you can use on your face which burn the crap out of it thus, eliminating the precancers but I have done this before and I will never do it again. And the doctor even admitted that anyone who has gone through this regimen will never do it again. It was horrendous and painful and scary and weird and I bled on my pillow and I scared small children and it goes on for a month.
So no. Not that one.
There's a "new" drug, he told me, which doesn't cause that reaction but you have to use it for three months, twice a day, instead of one month, once a day. I told him that I put stuff on my face twice a day anyway so...sounded okay. He said it was very expensive but they'd give me a coupon to use to help with the cost if I decided to go that route and I said I would certainly consider it and he had the 'script written out and given to me along with the coupon. And a few samples.
Now there's another possible treatment and I could tell this was the one he likes best. It's a solution which goes on the area and then you undergo fifteen minutes of a light treatment. Done. Except that for forty-eight hours you cannot expose your skin to the sun. AT ALL. You gotta do like a mole and go underground.
Basically.

All right. Diagnosis given, possible treatment options explained.

I hopped in the car and drove over to Lily's to kiss the boys and we decided to go to Costco. I took my prescription and the coupon to the pharmacy there and the very, very nice pharmacist who was named Harsh, who most certainly was not, said, "This is a very expensive medication."
"I hear that," I said. "But here's a coupon."
He put in all my insurance information (and we have very, very basic insurance which doesn't cover much, believe me) and announced that without the coupon, the three month treatment would cost $790.00.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Then he put the coupon information in.
"I don't believe this," he said.
"What?"
"They have discontinued this program."
We checked the coupon again and it has not expired. But the program, according to his information, most definitely has.
Yes, I will be calling the dermatologist's office tomorrow to inform them of this. You better believe it.
And I will probably set up an appointment to get the damn places frozen and live with the white spots. I mean- the light treatment may work well, I don't know. But that costs three hundred bucks AND there's that staying inside for 48 hours thing. And it involves some weird chemicals too.

So it was all sort of crazy and the really, really fucked-up part was that Harsh told me that the drug in the three-month, $790.00 treatment is actually a very, very old drug, almost a hundred years old and is not expensive in and of itself. And that the treatment has nothing in it BUT that drug.
He kept saying, "I'm so sorry," and I kept saying, "It's not your fault," and we agreed that the pharmaceutical industry is fucked up and ridiculous. And so is our so-called "health care system."
"America pays for the world's medicine," he said.
I think there is more to it than that. Things like greed and lobbying and so forth. But ain't none of it good. And look- my life does not hang on the balance according to whether or not I get that drug. I know that. This is just a small, small thing. But still, it's frustrating and as Lily said, for the truly poor in this country, it is almost impossible to stay healthy. We all know this to be true. And I think of Elizabeth and her trials and tribulations with the whole health care industry and the drug companies and the insurance companies as she tries to do her best to care for her beloved Sophie and I am shamed at even saying a word about this.
But it all makes me wonder- how long is our country going to put up with this sort of bullshit? How long?

Well anyway, here I am and here I will be. Until I'm not. And when I die, I'll probably have white spots all over my face and you know what? I will not care one damn bit as I lay on my death bed. Those white spots will not concern me in the least.