Doctor, therapist, and diabetes educator visits for free. $10,000 of tuition paid for by the state at little cost to me. A FAFSA near miss cleared with only a couple days to spare. None of these things feel like normal life to me because they haven’t been. And they’ve all appeared as the benefits of a simple, transformative realization: I have to advocate for myself, and keep advocating despite doubts of self-worthiness and pessismistic outlook about outcomes.
This all started with me losing my job. The paperwork makes it permanent: I wasn’t meeting my employer’s expectations. But I was given unemployment benefits just generous enough to try to keep access to the very expensive GLP-1 medication Tirzepatide, which had to that point helped me lose 100 lbs. I went looking for a cash-pay doctor and I found one: Tisha Higgs, a local DNP (doctorate of nurse practitioning). She was incredibly kind and her cash- pay prices were very affordable, I would reccomend anyone give her a visit if they can. Before deciciding a plan for continuing care of my T2DM she asked me to get my A1c checked as it had been 3 months, the regular interval for checks in a newly diagnosed patient. However, she made a reccomendation on how to go about it: she advised that her own family had success in getting a discount by applying for financial aid through the local healthcare system she used to work at, OHMS.
Newly out of money and with a lot of time to spare I took my lab order and wandered off to get blood drawn. At the visit to the outpatient lab I inquired about where to see a financial aid officer, and I was directed (I felt somewhat ironically) to the endocrinology/diabetes specialist office on the floor just above. After some wandering and waiting, I met a wonderful soul named Dixie. Dixie explained the application and process to me and sent me on my way to gather information on my finances and income history and I was back just a few days later with a stack of paper declaring my checking account balances, unemployment income, etc. It was wonderful talking to Dixie, she was kindred spirit that I don’t find in too many people and I would have settled for just having met her and a denial of my application.
Instead, I got a 100% discount confirmed only a week and a half later. 100%. My Primary care doctor, my Therapist and my Diabetes educator and the lab that processes blood draws is all inside OHMS. I don’t have to pay for anything except for my medicine, \(15/mo. for the Atorvastatin and Metformin ER, \)75/mo. for the Libre 3 CGMs. I could’ve gone to Lilly Direct for Zepbound and the price of same Tirzepatide would have been cheaper than the ACA healthcare exchange insurance with a medicine co-pay for Mounjaro coverage, but instead because I’ve already lost 117 lbs I’ve decided to save that money and see what happens. Besides, the top other ‘antidiabetic’ drug Metformin ER that I’m on also has mild weight-loss effect and I’m only on 40% or so of the max dose so there’s room to work with before coughing up a fortune.
I thought self-insurance for medical care was for millionaires, but obamacare has failed so badly at accomplishing affordable prices that it seems it’s also for me. /s. If I don’t find a well-enough paying job by next year I should qualify for medicaid then and because the indication for Mounjaro is t2dm not bmi/weight loss I should be able to get it, but we’ll see if that’s necessary or not then.
When I applied for UI benefits there was some mentions in reading materials of training programs that would qualify me for an exemption from the job application requirements and extend benefits by 5 weeks. When I started closing on the end of benefits at the end of July and I still wasn’t getting interviews despite a higher quanitity and quality of efforts (self-evaluated anyhow), I decided to investigate ust that 5-week extension specifically, having already enrolled at OCTC for my EMT-B certificate.
When I called the local Kentucky Career Center, I was given a very encouraging bit of unexpected news: because of the length of time I’d been out of work and the type of program I was enrolled in, I qualify for tuition assistance. Up to $5000/year for up to 3 years. I’ve been in flux trying to decide between a pursuit of any given directions you can take into medicine, nursing, physician’s assistant, M.D., MSTP. I took a week to hem and haw and decided after a bit of research that I’d rather not pidgeon-hole myself into rn -> np and instead keep something of an option open by pursuing emt -> paramedic then decide on PA/MD later. It costs some opportunity of tuition assistance but I think this is the right path for me. Ultimately though, it’s very encouraging to have a career pivot into a more meaningful but worse-paying field get rewarded with real help. I told my fiance it’s hard to believe that things are working out in my favor for a change and I really meant that.
Finally, the third bit of my recent self advocacy success story: I kept getting notices from OCTC via student email that I my financial aid hadn’t been applied and I still had a $2,000 outstanding balance for this fall semester and it would have to be paid or I would be unenrolled just before classes started. I didn’t understand why this was and so I called the financial aid office and a student worker was able to confirm they had recieved my FAFSA details and I was properly enrolled, but I felt some apprehension about just leaving it there and so I pressed on about the email balance and warning and she was very accomodating and flagged the issue for escalation to a financial aid officer. Unbeknownst to me, there was just a form I needed to fill out in the student portal to formally request/accept FAFSA funds, and I still needed to sign a ‘master promissory note’ or something of that nature via FAFSA.gov. I managed to get all of that infromation submitted just 17 days before classes started, 2 days ahead of the 15 days to spare the system told me was the minimum I could have waited before I put my enrollment into jeapordy. A proper near-miss. Saved at the last minute by skepticism and a slight additional push out of self-advocation.
Nobody has the assigned task of advocating for you above themselves, and above all else it’s unlikely that anyone could advocate for you or even has the information available to do so like you can.
Keep solving problems and advocating for yourself like your life depends on it;
because it does.