Canada has been hit hard by the new inflation rate. The whole world has been hit hard due to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Canada’s inflation rate is currently more than 8%, which is an all-time high since 1998. Not only that, but Canadian homeowners’ mortgage rates are at a rate of 2.5% as of now. We’re all, specifically the millennial generation, at a point now where we don’t know how we’ll be able to live and survive through this financial burden that’s now on our hands.
I’ve been so stressed as of late that my husband told me to take a break from anything that has to do with my work, specifically with this website and my social media pages. This is why you haven’t heard from me in a little bit. Sorry about that, but mental health always comes first, right? We definitely feel that financial burden that’s come on to us. It’s especially true when it comes down to my health and well-being. It was already so expensive to be chronically ill, but now with the aftermath of the pandemic, it’s more true than ever before.
Even thinking about this topic reminded me of the time I was in line to get my pills one day when there was a woman right in front of me who was crying while she was on the phone with her husband because neither her nor her husband’s work insurance covered her pills that cost her almost $1,000 per month. She kept asking her husband, ‘What are we going to do? How are we going to live and take care of the kids?!’ Without a pause or hesitation, her husband told her to get her sh*t together, get the pills, and they’ll figure out the rest.
The desperation in her face was a heartbreaking sight to watch. I just wanted to give her a big hug. I myself don’t know what it’s like to not be able to afford my pills; to have to have to make a decision on whether I should pay my mortgage and the rest of my bills or to spend my money on something my health and my life depends on. My medication costs $400 per month, and my husband’s work insurance covers all of it. I have been on the other side years ago before my husband got a full-time job, though, where my needs weren’t met. I was prescribed the cheapest anti-seizure medication by a neurologist because, in his mind, it’d be less of a burden for us financially. In reality, what ended up happening was that my condition worsened with each day that passed by. Within months I felt that I was dying. Heck, I was dying.
Nothing was helping me anymore, and I had to take different, more extreme, and more expensive measures. I traveled to Israel to get the proper testing – testing that wasn’t even available or heard of in Canada. It was after those tests that it was decided by neurologists there that the pills I’m taking to this very day would be the best option for me in order to improve my health and for me to live a normal life. My husband and I could barely afford them at the time because I started intaking them before he got a full-time job that covered the costs, but that was the price of my health, and there was nothing we could do. There were no other options. Now, a few years later, I feel better than ever. It has a lot to do with the pills I’m taking.
I recently saw ‘Purple Hearts’, a Netflix movie which stars Sofia Carson and Nicholas Galitzine. Without giving too much away about the movie, I’ll tell you it’s about an inspiring singer-songwriter who marries a marine in order to get health benefits because she can’t afford the medication she needs to manager her Type 1 Diabetes. It’s a love story, of course. But it also shows a representation of the measures one takes to make sure they stay healthy when they’re faced with the crippling reality of having to make a choice between their livelihood and their health, which is just about anything. It shows what happens when faced with the crippling reality that one can’t live their true normal when they can’t afford the proper care they need in order to stay healthy.
I know I’d been stating time and time again that I’d been managing my health thanks to lifestyle changes and such. It’s all true, but having the right medication is also a big factor in staying healthy. Without having either one or the other is threatening to the person that’s ill. And yes; it could most definitely be a matter of life and death.ether I like it or not, without my health, I have absolutely nothing. I can’t be the person I want to be. I can’t have the life I want to have. That’s why I’d do practically anything, no matter what it costs me, and no matter how much money I’d be losing, to stay healthy.
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