International Medical Insurance

It was 1:00 a.m. Tuesday morning when the right-side of my chest throbbed with each heartbeat, awakening me suddenly from my sleep. I tried to sit up but my right arm was numb and uncooperative. I rolled out of bed only to fall to the floor, realizing that my shirt was drenched with sweat. I tried once again to sit up, but I was too dizzy to make sense of what was going on. My eyes blurred from the salt stinging sweat and the darkness all around me, I struggled to try to find the phone. I rolled left and I rolled to the right, only to find myself stuck there on my right side, barely the strength to upright myself.

I concentrated on all that I had done with my life in the darkness and uncertainty that followed and wondered what have I done to deserve such a fate. Am I do die here all alone with no one to see me crossover and no one to morn my immediate departure? Hours must have passed before I came to and found myself in the emergency room with plastic tubing going into my nostrils, metal needles in my arm, patches on my chest with wires going here and there all the way down to my legs. When I looked up the glaring examination lamps with their shiny aluminum covers blinded me on wakening and the bags of fluids hanging over my head did nothing to ensure that I was going to be alright.

The first words I heard from anyone since my sudden awakening with chest pain was the woman from the admissions office of the hospital asking me for my medical insurance information. Thank goodness I was able to speak and more importantly recognize that she wasn't my doctor. I gave her my medical insurance information and she didn't seem to pleased and walked away without saying goodbye or "I hope you feel better." To her, I was just another person in the grand scheme of her workload that early morning. Throughout the ensuing four days, I had medications for pain, Nitroglycerin and Morphine. I had an EKG, a chest X-ray, a CT Scan of my neck, chest and groin and if, that wasn't enough, I had an MRI of my head, neck and chest to include an echocardiogram of my heart and a sonogram of my legs. I was poked, prodded and had more than one orifice explored, only to be told that I had a passing blood clot in my right lung and that I didn't have a heart attack.

Over those four days in the emergency room and upstairs in the Cardiac Unit of the hospital, I had seen a transporter, an admission clerk, a patient care technician, an licensed practical nurse, a dietary aide, a nutritionist, a registered nurse, a nurse practitioner, a pulmonologist, a cardiologist, an Internal Medicine Specialist and a host of Allied Health Practitioners, ranging from Nursing Assistants to Phlebotomist-folks who draw your blood. Most of these folks make a decent living and have an array of benefits associated with working at such a fine hospital, so as I am laying there in bed, I began to ponder just how much all of this is going to cost me and more importantly, how much of the total hospital bill would the medical insurance cover?

When I saw the admitting physician on my fourth day in the hospital, I sure was eager to go home. It sure is difficult to get any sleep in the hospital because there is always someone coming in about once a hour in the cardiac unit to take your blood pressure, your temperature, your blood, your urine (to measure your input and output)or listen to your lung sounds for fluid buildup. This was my first hospitalization in all my years on this planet and I must admit, you haven't lived until you've been hospitalized. I say this because, it is the ultimate in humility. You are no longer the master of your life, because when you are in the hospital, you are at the mercy of people you don't know, who may or may not have your best interest at heart and worse still, who may be competent at what they're doing or Lord forbid, just doing what they're doing to make ends meet and not really have passion for their work or empathy for the patient.

I'm blessed to have survived my hospitalization and I am equally blessed to have gone through the experience and lived to tell it. Going to the hospital is one thing and getting out alive and unharmed or infected is another. There are many medical insurance plans available and it's hard to know which medical insurance plan is right for you. For me, I found that the Blue Cross Blue Shield Plan that I had was utterly of no use abroad and was grateful for the International Medical Insurance and Pacific Prime Health Insurance that I carried. Between the two of them, the financial burden of my short hospitalization was for the most part taken care of and I am free to roam the Earth once again.

Autopsy of A Divorce

How is it that I have given my heart to someone who cares not to receive it? I have fallen so deeply in love with a woman whom I married, but a wife didn't come with the wedding. It took me some time before I could no longer deny the truth, and as real as the truth is, I sought to avoid it, in hopes that she would come around to reason. How is it that one can fall so deeply in love with someone that they lose all sense of themselves?

I gave my everything to my wife, so much that I had no memory of who I was. How is it that a heart is overwhelmed with pain? Pain, so great that its blood that flows thorough the heart, swell its capacity to contain the warmth it once had. I surrender my emotions to the one woman I ever loved, trusting that she would keep the dream we shared alive. Somewhere within our years together, she dropped out emotionally from our relationship and her actions towards me, were as cold as ice.

Some say I have gone mad. They ask me if I want to take my wife home to her lover? So, what if people make fun of me. The hardest reality for me, is to admit to myself that the woman I still love, loves someone else. Her heart no longer beats for me. Of course, being a man, means living with the truth, and the truth is, if we stay together, it would be a lifetime of sorrow and regret. Life is precious, because time is not our own, when two people disagree. No matter how much time you want to spend with the one you love, if they are loving another, their absence from you is felt deeply in a place that is as intimate as the love you once shared.

My male friends tell me that I can't control my woman, and that is my problem. My heart tells me that there is no such thing as controlling your woman, only loving your woman. My male colleagues ask me aren't you a man? In which I tell them, if being a man means robbing a woman of her happiness, then in their eyes, I am not a man according to their definition. The truth is, being a man is facing the truth! If, being a man is living with a woman whose body belongs to you, but her heart and affection belongs to another, then what is life without reciprocity?

Being a man means being selfless, because love is not selfish. My happiness lies not within my heart, because it is painful to admit the truth of loving someone so much, that you are devoid of your very soul. Her actions shattered all the dreams we had for one another and the thoughts we once shared with generosity, became mute, as she made every effort to avoid me. Like a caged bird, I watched as she left me for another, although emotionally she had left me more than three years ago. As she physically walked away for the last time, I was hoping for a cursory glance, but she walked away as if the wind were at her back, never to see me again.

In my loneliness, I've come to know, that wishing for something and actually getting it are two different things. Love is not receiving it, but giving it. Love is sacrifice and without ever having known love, one can never understand sacrifice. The two complement one another, much like a paradox. You can not appreciate the love you have until you have sacrificed something to get love and sacrificed even more to keep love. Without sacrifice, love is meaningless and without appreciation. It is then that you begin to lose love, when you stop sacrificing the things you once did to maintain it. Divorce is nothing more than a public admission of failure of a marriage. I got married, but a wife didn't come with it, so why am I surprised at its outcome?