She explained treatments—inhalers, breathing exercises, oxygen therapy, medications that cost hundreds of dollars a month even with insurance. She used words like “chronic,” “progressive,” “managed but not cured.”
The hospital bills started arriving a week later. Thousands of dollars. My tiny savings evaporated paying the minimum payments. I couldn’t keep up at the factory anymore—I’d cough so hard during shifts that I’d have to stop working, would get dizzy and disoriented, couldn’t meet my quotas.
They let me go as kindly as possible. Gave me two weeks’ severance and a handshake and told me to file for disability.
The disability payments started three months later: eleven hundred dollars a month.
My rent was seven hundred. Utilities ran another hundred fifty. Medications were two hundred if I filled everything the doctor prescribed. The math didn’t work, and there was nothing I could do to make it work.
