Uninsurance

“So would a Doppler Study to determine the extent of the remaining blood clot be covered even though maternity is excluded?”
“That depends on how they bill it.”
“How should they bill it?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t give you that information.”
“You don’t know or you can’t say?”
“I can’t give you that information on how to bill it so that it would be covered. I can say that if it is pertaining to pregnancy then it would not be covered.”
“Like if it was ordered an OB/GYN or a high risk pregnancy specialist.”
“Right. That would not be covered.”
“(long sigh) Insurance is a frustrating game, Felicity.”
“Yes it is. But it’s something we all need.”
“The way the rules are now, yes.”

The division and subdivision of humanity into specialties and areas “covered” and “not covered” has a fractious effect on the individual. As a person who happens to think that God created us as unified wholes I deeply resent the way my wife is being carved up. It’s not the knife of the surgeon I fear as much as the categories of the medical professionals who work for those companies who are in the position to render the inflated costs of the best medical care in the world somewhat more plausible to people like us.

Melody had to stop taking birth control because it was a contributing factor to her blood clot. Shortly after, we found out she was pregnant. A condition complicated and made much more risky (for her and our child) by her blood issues. The unity with which we were created can be seen in the way that anger triggers high blood pressure, and in the way that prayer and petting a bunny can lower it. How much greater is the interplay between the complete overhaul the female body receives in pregnancy and something as blatantly physical as a blood clot? Changes in one trigger changes in the way the other is treated. Yet for reasons I do not yet understand (financial I am prone to suppose), the very companies we so trustingly finance pay medical staff that divide these bodies into “covered” and “not covered.”

I know. It was in the fine print. It’s not the legality of it that I question. It’s the unnatural division of what to me are so clearly, inextricably interacting with each other. I don’t even like to phrase it that way. The baby (independent personhood aside), the clot, the genes, they are all part of the unity that is Melody’s body. To say that they will not help us pay for treatment because it is related to Melody’s pregnancy doesn’t make sense to me. How can anything in her life, mind, body, NOT relate to her pregnancy? A child growing inside a woman foreshadows the changes it will require beginning now and from now on by taking her body and turning it upside down, inside out and leaves us all reeling, kicking its tiny, yarn-sized legs in the dark.