It’s no fun getting sick under any circumstances. It’s especially no fun getting sick when you can’t afford medical insurance. And if you’ve ever heard it said that there’s no need to worry, the ER will take care of you no matter what, don’t believe it. First you have to be pretty much dying, then you have to be prepared for a whopping huge bill. I visited the ER in September, a month after I came down with some mysterious respiratory illness that wouldn’t go away and got a bill for over a thousand bucks for a diagnosis that was questionable at best. That was enough to keep me away from the ER after that.
I had to give up working on FOSSForce. My day job, which is really an eight bucks and change an hour night job, doesn’t pay me when I don’t work, so I’ve been spending my days in bed resting so I’d have enough energy and health to keep working and keep myself from ending up on the street. At 61 years of age, I don’t think I want to end up in a homeless shelter, capisce?
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux