Saturday, October 31, 2009
this is the evening
after the day in which no one has been quite nice enough to me, if there is a nice enough, if i'm not a whirlpool that sucks in nice and cannot be satiated. i need all these dumb labs done, just normal ones, just . . . you know, do i have syphilis (NO) and crap like that, they do this at the beginning of pregnancy, i have read about it on the internet, and like a good soldier willing to schlep in order to save fifty bucks, i bring the lab orders to campus to have the blood drawn there. because there are at least four tests (of the eight) on this list that are freebies at the student clinic, but are $20 at the lab.
except someone just made a policy that they won't do this anymore. because pregnant ladies' lab results kept getting lost, and pregnant ladies who are less on top of it than i am didn't notice, i guess, that their labs weren't getting back, and didn't insist on printing their own copies of the results. no offense, less overachieving pregnant ladies; i know this is not your job. but i am on this kind of shit. i don't prefer to wrestle with the system, but i'll do it to save some money. it's that kind of month. it's that kind of year. it's that kind of baby. they're those kinds of dental bills coming down the pike, and an unemployed summer of breastfeeding coming up, and another person to insure, and i have to stop thinking about this now.
instead of fixing the system so that THE RIGHT FUCKING PERSON GETS EMAILED with the lab results, they just made a rule so that pregnant grad students have to shell out more cash to have the same tests done at the fancy lab. the CBC the midwife ordered? at school: free. if i need it because i'm sick: free. if i need it because i'm pregnant: go back to the expensive hospital. and man, i know it's twenty bucks, but it's like none of these people have ever been in the place where twenty bucks matters. listen, it matters.
i wonder, very briefly, what it would be like to do this without concern for money. and then i think about the pregnant lady at the taco truck on the corner by the bus stop, and how maybe she doesn't have insurance at all (or, what do i know, maybe taco trucks are incredibly lucrative and she drives an alfa-romeo) and how we actually have everything we need. we have everything we need. including an apparently thriving fetus and no syphilis.
except someone just made a policy that they won't do this anymore. because pregnant ladies' lab results kept getting lost, and pregnant ladies who are less on top of it than i am didn't notice, i guess, that their labs weren't getting back, and didn't insist on printing their own copies of the results. no offense, less overachieving pregnant ladies; i know this is not your job. but i am on this kind of shit. i don't prefer to wrestle with the system, but i'll do it to save some money. it's that kind of month. it's that kind of year. it's that kind of baby. they're those kinds of dental bills coming down the pike, and an unemployed summer of breastfeeding coming up, and another person to insure, and i have to stop thinking about this now.
instead of fixing the system so that THE RIGHT FUCKING PERSON GETS EMAILED with the lab results, they just made a rule so that pregnant grad students have to shell out more cash to have the same tests done at the fancy lab. the CBC the midwife ordered? at school: free. if i need it because i'm sick: free. if i need it because i'm pregnant: go back to the expensive hospital. and man, i know it's twenty bucks, but it's like none of these people have ever been in the place where twenty bucks matters. listen, it matters.
i wonder, very briefly, what it would be like to do this without concern for money. and then i think about the pregnant lady at the taco truck on the corner by the bus stop, and how maybe she doesn't have insurance at all (or, what do i know, maybe taco trucks are incredibly lucrative and she drives an alfa-romeo) and how we actually have everything we need. we have everything we need. including an apparently thriving fetus and no syphilis.
Labels: chickpea
