I am writing from the midst of a storm of sickness that has hit my family. It started last week with my middle son, 5. He had a fever without many other symptoms; it lingered on and off. We kept him home. No visit to the doctor, it seemed to be a virus that passed. But he was left with a funky cold sore, which none of the kids have had before. Fast forward to this Wednesday, My middle one is back at school, and I am pulling into the student health center at my college after scrambling around with golf balls for tonsils. I had been dropped off of my prenatal insurance, well, shortly after my last pregnancy and I had reapplied on the Covered CA website and somehow was left stagnant, without insurance as far as I’m aware. So, as I drag my oldest, 7, who I had kept home because he had come down with a fever, and my youngest, 1, my only healthy child through the campus, I get a call from the boys’ school. It turns out, there was a reported case of Staph infection in my middle son’s Kindergarten class. Also, there was a case of Scarlet Fever in the 2nd grade. They wanted to make me aware since Phin had the cold sore and Ari was home sick with a fever. Great.

I’m quickly diagnosed with Strep Throat. I pick up my antibiotics and some miscellaneous things from the pharmacy right in the student center and get out of there for under $10. An ounce of relief from the body aches, chills, pain, and inability to swallow. But then it’s home to figure out where I’m going to take my middle one. See, my kids had recently been dropped from one plan and reassigned to another, just at the beginning of September. I had only browsed the new directory of covered providers and it was just an overwhelming and frustrating loss. I looked at their small Urgent Care list, went to the website and tried to book an appointment for later that evening. A girl calls, asks for the insurance and my son’s number. Oh, they don’t take that sub-kind of that kind of insurance...and I just want to FUCKING SCREAM “MY KID IS SICK AND I JUST NEED TO HAVE A DOCTOR TEST HIM FOR STAPH INFECTION!!!’ But I couldn’t scream if I wanted, as my throat is a swollen pile of mush.

This is a country without universal healthcare. This is a country where healthcare is capitalized and profits come before people. And they want to take more of it away. And we keep being told the same lies over and over how socialized medicine is terrible and people hate it, but it doesn’t take much research to find that that doesn’t actually seem to be true at all.

By the way, after more searching, crying, an appointment, an hour wait at a pharmacy and a $50 prescription later, my middle son is getting treated for the Staph infection he does have. It’s now Friday night, my swelling has gone down, he has finished three out of ten days at four doses per day. And my daughter has a fever; my little one-year-old. My oldest son also has a hacking cough. I just want to cry again. I don’t want to live in a place that values profits more than my child, or anyone else’s child, mother, father, grandma, brother. We are all human. We all deserve equal access to healthcare.