Obamacare Saved My Leg

Sounds pretty hyperbolic, doesn't it?  Well, it's more than likely true.

Exactly a week ago, I was bitten in my sleep by a bug unknown (though a spider is suspected) and the bite wound became infected.  The eventual diagnosis was staphylococcus ("staph").

It was one of those things you dismiss at first.  I woke up last Saturday morning with a darkish, itchy welt on my upper left thigh about the size of my pinky nail.  A little bit large, but nothing too alarming - maybe the kind of bump you'd see from a large biting fly or a bee sting.  It was itchy, but not extremely so, and slightly painful - but not extremely so.  I didn't think a whole lot about it.

The next day, the bite looked about the same, but the original bite area had spread.  Now there was a red aureole around it.  Again, I didn't think a whole lot about it.  It'll get a bit bigger before it fades, I thought.  My wife had a similar bite about a week before.  It started out mysteriously just as mine had, got bigger over two or three days and then began fading.  No big deal.

Monday, the red aureole had expanded.  I was still sure that it was just going through its phases before waving bye-bye.

Tuesday, the red aureole had transformed into the bull's-eye pattern.  That got my attention.  I called the clinic I use, Families First, on my lunch break.  They couldn't see me that day, but said call back for a same-day appointment first thing Wednesday morning, when they brought me in right away.  I saw Doctor Samuel by noon, and he made a diagnosis and prescribed a powerful antibiotic along with a prescription topical antibiotic ointment.

My wife was with me for the appointment, so, after seeing the doctor, I went back to work while my wife filled my prescription for me to begin taking that night when I got home.  No big deal.

Well, what timing!  I went back to work and began feeling slightly ill, a bit fluish: Lightheaded, slightly queasy and weakened.  I made it through the afternoon, though, and went home on time.  After I arrived at home, I took my first dose of Doxycycline at six, showered and put topical antibiotic on the bite rash, which had darkened considerably in twenty-four hours.  By nine, I was in full-flu mode - shivering, chattering, sweating out the chills with a fever of 100.4º F.  The fever broke in the middle of the night.  When I finally rose at six a.m., I felt a lot better.  I was still sapped of a lot of my strength, but I had enough in me to make it through a day at work.

The bite, however, had enlarged overnight.  It seemed faintly lighter (but so faint that I wasn't sure), however, it had expanded by quite a lot, almost doubling in size and losing some of its pattern's symmetry.  That was Thursday morning.

I'm getting better now.  I feel perfectly fine and the bite rash is fading.  It stopped expanding and is now distinctly lighter.  The medication and ointment are working.

I reacted to my medical condition with a lot more confidence than I would have otherwise because I had health insurance, which I obtained through the Affordable Care Act (ACA or "Obamacare").  That's right, Obamacare not only made me better, but it saved me from a very much worse outcome than I would have seen without it.

I've been through this before: In a previous blog post, "I'm Glad I Have Obamacare," I talked about how my wife and I lost our health insurance because of a job loss: We couldn't afford to go COBRA, so we bought health insurance through the federal healthcare exchange for New Hampshire at HealthCare.gov.  Without that option, more likely than not we would have elected to roll the dice and go uncovered because health insurance is so expensive.  We have preexisting conditions to consider which would have both guaranteed coverage exclusions while raising our costs.  I've priced personal health insurance before.  It was way too expensive before Obamacare.  I went without insurance in the past for exactly that reason.  I was very lucky that nothing bad happened while uninsured.

The psychology of uninsurance:

If I hadn't had insurance for this spider bite, I would have hesitated just a little bit more before calling the clinic.  I would have worried too much about my costs.  I probably would have given undue consideration to taking the risk of hoping things would get better on their own before my symptoms pushed me into the emergency room - after it was way too late and amputating my leg became the best option for saving my life.

If Obamacare didn't save my life, then it very likely saved my leg.  Worried about money, I would have delayed contacting the doctor's office for another twenty-four hours, which by then would have been too late because the infection would have taken over my leg and run wild throughout the rest of my body.

The rapid enlargement of the infection as a fever broke out makes me think that I barely dodged a deadly bullet, and that Obamacare helped.  True story.