Sans Alcohol

Having obtained eligibility of health insurance at my current J.O.B., I went bananas and made all my doctors appointments after having not seen any of them in a year and a half. All the ailments I thought of, I saw each corresponding doctor. Even if it was a hint of a problem, I made sure I got an opinion. After all, how are we to be sure of the security of our jobs in this economy- access to affordable health insurance is tied to being employed, unfortunately.

There are many perils of working in the food and wine industry, one of them is eating. Yes! Think about it- food in the danger zone, under cooked meat, contaminated produce, unwashed hands, dirty water, the list goes on and on...

In the past year and a half, I have traveled to many places, drank fine wine, ate great food and had some funky dishes mixed in-between. Along the way, I began to notice I had some interesting stomach issues. ( I will spare you the details and not discuss them here.) With my insurance activated, I went to see a G.I. not Joe but a Dr. Jim the gastro-internist.
"Stomach infection," was what Dr. Jim told me. It could have come from something as simple as drinking tap water in NYC to the food I ate in San Francisco, Italy, Guam or where else I've been.

Rx: antibiotics for 7 days. If I don't feel better, "more tests." I'm praying I feel better, I don't like the sounds of the tests he's talking about. The thing about traditional medicine practice is they like to hand out pills for every ailment, every disease you can think of. The warning of these pills came with: Do not consume alcohol while taking this medication, it can cause you to be violently ill, cause seizures, heart palpitations, metallic taste in your mouth, shortness of breath = death. OK. Point taken. I WILL NOT DRINK for a week.

Here's the conundrum, had I not have insurance, I would have went on with my life with these symptoms and live with it for God knows how long?! How many people in This country have more serious ailments than this and just deal with it? Boy, all this thinking and I can't even have a drop of wine. I'll just sit here and sip my cranberry juice and ponder it some more.

The status quo of This country's health care system may never be solved in the next three years. But, I pray everyone gets a chance to be well.

Be well my friends.