Thoughts on Carrie Fisher

My thoughts about Carrie Fisher’s death.

When her heart stopped on that plane, the odds were against her. Only about 6 percent of those experiencing cardiac arrest outside a hospital will survive.

In a hospital? About one in four.

A lot of people are going to lose their health insurance with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. And, to avoid crippling debt, they're going to try to tough out that pain in their chests until they're really really sure it's an emergency. And then it will be too late. And they will die.

I had access to terrific health-care through my union job. And while I initially argued with my mother and brother about whether to go to the hospital as the pain in my chest grew worse, I never once factored in whether I could afford an emergency visit to the hospital.

Approximately 10 minutes after I walked into the emergency room my heart stopped.

Ten minutes. How many people will spend 10 minutes trying to walk it off? How many people will have powerful incentives to spend 10 more minutes rationalizing that it’s just indigestion?

Sudden Cardiac Arrest is the second leading cause of death in the United States. My doctor told me that many of the people who experience it tend to be younger and more active. Doctors aren’t really sure why, he said, but the theory is that it’s a greater shock to the system for them when the blood circulation turns off than for a person who’s adapted to poor circulation.

My hospital bill was $70,000, which was paid for my Hallmark Blue Shield. For an article that I’m working on, I have started looking up prices for the services I received and compared them to what could have been charged to someone without insurance. In many cases, it would have been more than twice as much.

Being able to afford health care should not be a privilege in America. But there you go. We have been taken over by men who believe that it should be treated as one. A study published in Think Progress estimates that 36,000 people a year will die due to losing their health insurance.

Measuring Change

UVITA COSTA RICA – Dona Marie watches over the crossroads. The restaurant sign bearing her image has been a landmark here there was little else in this village. But since the highway north of here was completed in 2010, much has changed. Today, there are two banks, two grocery stores, three car rental agencies and numerous restaurants. Dona Marie is no longer the only game in town. Upstairs from the Dona Marie, there used to be a karaoke club for local Ticos. At night, we’d walk through town and hear the drunken voices of locals singing along to Spanish pop tunes. I’m not sure when it closed, but we don’t hear the singing anymore. Instead, there is a local craft brewery.

-->

  

My favorite time of day to walk around is between 4:30 to 5. Sunset is at 5:20 this time of year – although being so close to the equator, it varies little throughout the year. There is a perceptible shift in the collective mood as people gather on the street, chatting and exchanging news about their day – Uvita’s equivalent of rush hour. Today, there was an actual traffic jam of four cars backed up at the stop sign. I never saw anything like that when I started coming down here five years ago.

In November, which is part of the rainy seaon, we’re told that 150 inches of rain fell in two weeks.  That’s got to have an impact on the environment

One man – John – told us that when it rains like that, the rivers are so raging that the sound of the tumbling of the boulders being pushed downstream is deafening.

Such forces leave a definite mark. When Jeff and I walked out to the mile-long Whale’s Tail (The area’s famous sand bar that is shaped like the tail of the visitors that come every September), it had a new appearance.

In the past year since I last visited, a giant pile of smooth river rocks had been deposited near the end of the sand bar. Our guess is that the rains had washed them into the bay from the Uvita River and then the tides swept them onto the sand bar.

Each year, I spend the same three weeks here. So, I measure out the changes to this area in neatly delineated one-year increments. It’s a very short-sighted view.   

I’m reading a book by Jack Ewing, a local ex-pat who came down here in 1972 and bought a cattle ranch, just north of Dominical. In the eighties, he allowed the land to revert back to its natural state. Today, Hacienda Baru is a nature preserve teeming with white-faced capuchin monkeys, agoutis, pacas, coatimundi, otters, crocodiles and even a puma. My guide showed me a line of trees with barbed wires protruding from them. They were once the ranch’s fence posts. Today, they stand more than 50 feet tall.

Trying to get out of my head

I am struggling. I’m starting to feel like something is wrong with me. I try to focus on the words, but they’re not coming. I feel like there are only a precious few minutes each day when I am able to think. If I miss that window, my ability to feel much of anything is gone.

I’m pretty sure it’s the medication. (That, and maybe anxiety about our incoming president.) As I understand it, the metoprolol limits my liver’s ability to process adrenaline. So, I suspect once I use up my day’s allotment, I simply cannot get excited about anything.  For months, I had been overwhelmed with gratitude that I had not died from my cardiac arrests. People told me that eventually that feeling would fade. After the U.S. election, I felt the gratitude slipping away from me as if drifting on a current. I used to be able to take Adderall to clear the fog. But since my heart attack, I'm no longer able to take it. 

For the record, I just successfully ordered my breakfast entirely in Spanish. A very tasty order of Gallo Pinto, which is rice and black beans, along with eggs, a small tortilla and a wedge of queso blanco. It’s really pathetic to note that as an accomplishment. But I’ve been feeling so stupid lately that I had started to doubt even my ability to navigate through something as simple as a breakfast order. Small victories. 

God, I sound tedious. I’ll talk to the doctor. In the meantime, I am going to simply abandon any attempt at structure and switch to stream of consciousness.

In Enlace periodico, a small newspaper about the Brunca region, I ran across this beautiful quote from one of the featured writers, Uriel Rojas Rojas, a member of the Bruncas, one of Costa Rica’s indigenous tribes. Rojas documents the history of his people.

“Es necesario saber vivir en la diversidad, eso fortalice el verdadero sentido de la existencia humana."

Which translated means, “It is necessary to know how to live in diversity, that strengthens the true meaning of human existence.”