THE SYSTEM KILLED ME

THE SYSTEM THAT KILLS.

BY MATTHEW LUCAS BECKETT

“SKIN CANCER!” my parents and I cried together. “But I'm always so careful in the sun,” I concluded.
The doctor nodded. “Sometimes it can happen to those that are,” she said. “Fortunately, you're young and we've caught it early, so it's easily treatable.”
“Yeah,” I said with a bitter laugh. “If I had Health Insurance to pay for it.”
- - -
I had known I was 'different' from the day I became self aware. I had had trouble counting, reading, and doing other mental tasks in my early schooling that my classmates did with ease. Later schooling had been much the same, only the more difficult concepts had taken even longer to grasp. I gave up arguing with those who called me a 'retard' in about Third Grade, it did no good, made no difference and just used up energy I soon found that I did not have to spare.
Finally, at the end of Fifth Grade, I asked my parents, “Why am I 'different'?”
They both hesitated and the looks they gave each other told me this was a question they had expected and dreaded for a long time.
“Well, Samantha,” my mother finally said. “When you were born. . . there was a moment as you were coming down the birth canal, when your brain was robbed of oxygen by a tight place, and that caused you to be born with a brain with some . . .damage.”
“Why didn't my brain just heal, like my arm did when I broke it after falling off the monkey bars?”
“Well, dear”my father began. “The brain is a little different than the bones in your arm. When a part of someone's brain dies or is damaged, that deadness or damage is permanent. The brain can create new ways of performing tasks if one bit is unusable, but it cannot repair itself like bones can.”
At the time, it had seemed strange to my child's mind that something as simple as an arm bone COULD repair itself and yet something as complex as my brain could not, but I did not pursue this line of questions further.
“Is that why I always saw Uncle Johny when I needed a doctor, because other doctor's didn't want to see kids with damaged brains?” I asked years later, recalling that conversation at Uncle Johny's Funeral.
“In a way” my mother replied. “Before the 2010 Health Care Overhaul, Health Insurance Companies would not even cover minors with preexisting conditions, which your damaged brain was considered. Now they have to cover you at least until you are twenty-six through us, so we wanted to get you all the care we could during this brief window, since for the past year and a half Uncle Johny could not take care of you.”
She then explained that the window was brief because when I turn Twenty-Xix, which I will in just a few weeks, I will no longer be eligible to be covered through her and my father, and the insurance companies can still deny adults with preexisting conditions coverage for another two years. Fortunately, everything turned out good in my health evaluations, so I thought everything was fine.
My Twenty-Sixth Birthday came and went with only a small and quiet party, for I have never had very many close friends. A few days later, my parents got the letter from their Health Insurance saying that I was too old to still be covered through them and so was being dropped. This we had been expecting, and so had been searching for other options.
After receiving this letter, we sent for applications for many of these, filled them out and sent them in. Without fail, they all denied me coverage because of my preexisting condition, which now that I am an adult they can still do for two more years. So in 2012 I am without Health Insurance options for another two years, and. . .

- - -

“Yeah,” I said with a bitter laugh. “If I had Health Insurance to pay for it. Since I don't because of my preexisting condition and there's no way we can pay out of pocket, how long have I got?”
She stared at me for a long time. Clearly, she'd never had a patient decline treatment for this reason before. “A year maximum,” she finally said. “Probably more like six months, maybe less.”
My parents dissolved into tears. I was upset too, but I had always in a way suspected that I would not have a long lifespan, and since discovering the lump on my arm had been preparing myself for this news. What part of me was upset, though, was more angry at a system that allowed this and the people who defended it than a sad kind of upset.
The following weeks were not pleasant. The cancer burned and ate away at my skin and also moved inside my body, burning there too.
Then, one night, about two months after my diagnosis, I wake and feel like every inch of my body, outside and inside, is on fire. The pain is unbearable.
“Mommy! Daddy”” I scream in sheer anguish, and then, suddenly, excruciatingly, everything is gone and the world goes black.