In November 2022, literally while in the final stages of selling/donating my belongings, selling my house, and catching a 1-way flight to Colombia… I started having constant daily fevers and blood in my urine. Since I didn’t have health insurance – if you’re among the millions of uninsured Americans like me, you know exactly what I’m about to say – I didn’t go to the hospital. I didn’t want to incur massive medical debt and cripple my finances for subsequent years.

I was hoping to “tough it out” with pain killers and fever reducers, complete my house sale, fly to Colombia, and immediately go to the nearest emergency room where I could pay out of pocket for good (even world-class) medical treatment.

That was my plan, and I hoped against hope that I could make it work.

My Plan Didn’t Work

As my illness progressed, I could not stand the horrible symptoms anymore, and I drove myself to the emergency room, hoping it’s something that could be treated with a few injections to “buy me time” so I could get to Colombia.

No such luck.

Turns out I had randomly gotten a nasty kidney infection called Pyelonephritis, which had spread to my blood. They ignored me for a while in the Emergency Room – I am a black male, after all, and according to the US Healthcare Mentality, my demographic is supposedly superhuman, immune to pain, and not worth saving anyway… especially since I was most likely intentionally addicted to on hard drugs 🙄 This is the type of bias and shit that black people have to deal with in the USA.

Eventually a competent and caring doctor arrived, examined me, saw how fucked-up I was, and raised an alarm to the rest of the fucking racist moronic staff in the ER. I was admitted, and they quickly started administering powerful antibiotics intravenously.

The next day, two separate doctors said that if I had waited another few days, my left kidney would have been irreparably damaged, and they’d have had to surgically remove it 🤷‍♂️

Self-Reflection

I thought about my life up to that point. I had nothing to show for 47.5 years on Earth. A few months prior in August, my daughter’s mother (ex-wife) had passed away from a strange and rare lung disease. A few days later, over a videocall to figure out the future legal and living situation of my teenage daughter, she said she hated me and that I was a bad dad 😟

Two months later, in October, my dad passed away from old age. He was 96, so at least he put in his time – my sister said he passed peacefully while napping.

Meanwhile, I was rapidly losing all hope of ever having a life partner or even close friends (real friends, not just acquaintances). The ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic isolation harshly reminded me that the USA is extremely unkind, uncaring, and low-key heartless towards single/unmarried, non-celebrity, middle-aged black men.

To top it all off, I was about to incur massive medical debt, one of the leading causes of bankruptcy and persistent poverty in the USA, over a random fucking bacterial infection.

At that moment, in my mind, a quick (and hopefully painless) death sounded FAR more desirable to me, than continuing to exist under those deplorable circumstances. I really felt that there wasn’t any point in continuing to waste oxygen.

So, while still hooked up to tubes in the hospital bed, I updated my Living Will and Last Will and Testament documents, making sure my brother in Washington State was looped in. Against his wishes and plaintive protests, I spoke with the doctors and told them I’d like Compassionate Euthanasia (“assisted suicide”).

To no one’s surprise, the doctors didn’t take my requests seriously. And I had already sold my firearm a few days before going to the E.R. 😞 Fuck.

Time To Pay

I decided to try the only other option: avoid the medical debt. For the last 3 days of my 9-day stay, I kept asking people to help me contact Charity Care Pennsylvania, enroll under the Affordable Care Act, or whatever other program that could help pay for this medical debt. People kept saying they’ll get me the information, but no one ever did 😓

After I was discharged, I had to keep asking about it… and finally they just gave me a number to call and explain my situation and get on a payment plan or something along those lines. WTF.

My house was already sold, but I was able to “rent it” from the new owner for like 3 more days, to give me time to remove/sell a few more items from the house, get my head together, and reschedule my flight to Colombia. Fortunately, I had bought a refundable ticket, which could be rescheduled at no additional cost to me.

Mind you, all of this was going on over my birthday… I turned 48 on November 19th, 2022. Worst, birthday, EVER.

Not long after I made it to Colombia about 11 days later, the bills started arriving. It amounted to many thousands of dollars, spread across multiple specialists. I paid off most of them (one specialist’s office even gave me a deep discount) but could not pay all. I made some phone calls, but no one was able or willing to help me with any Charity Care or anything of that sort – it turns out that someone at the hospital had misinformed me about that shit.

To make a long story short, while I was still working on the payment plans, they sent my account to Collections. The partially paid medical bills finally hit my credit, and dropped my credit score by over 50 points, instantly erasing over a decade and half of budgetary discipline and economic sacrifices on my part 😑 Why did I even pay AT ALL???

I Fucking Gave Up

Putting a massive dent in my well-tended and hard-won credit history and score was the final “stab in the gut”, one last “Fuck You, Pay Me” from my wonderful, adopted country USA… just before I could flee to Colombia, a place where I could actually afford healthcare.

So, that’s the story of how I almost didn’t make it to Colombia in December 2022.

Dear reader, I hope you can get YOUR medical needs addressed overseas and never have to go through what I did 🤞🏽 Take care.