Holy crap. Seriously.

Most people my (advanced) age are on some form of Medicare.  However, my husband is still working (that’s what happens when you marry a sweet young thing) and we have private insurance through his work.  And of course, every year, his company looks at, and sometimes changes, the health insurance choices.

In California that was no biggie.  We had Kaiser; and that was always an option.  But now we live in the wilds of Michigan, we can no longer avail ourselves of Kaiser’s all-encompassing medical embrace.

So when we first moved, we had one insurance company; and then my husband’s employer said, no, no, no, you’ll be on this insurance. 

Okay.  Benefits seemed comparable and life went on.

Except, for one major change that I just found out about.

Colonoscopy prep.

If you have ever had a colonoscopy, you know all about the dreaded “prep”.

There are several choices, and I’ve had them all (my colon tends to grow things that need to be cut out from time to time, and right now my red blood cell, hemoglobin and hematocrit are all low which makes my hematologist wonder if maybe I might be leaking in a place where the sun don’t shine – if you catch my drift). 

Anyhow, there is the fizzy gross bottles of stuff.  There is the drink a literal gallon of (vaguely) lemon-flavored yuck.  And there are the pills. 

The pills are definitely the way to go.  Yes, you have to swallow 24 pills in all; and yes, they clean you out like the proverbial white tornado; but you don’t have to taste anything.  They are a fucking God send – and this is from an atheist. 

My last colonoscopy I had the pills.  First time, and oh man, if you have to induce explosive diarrhea – the pills are the way to go.

Now, I have another colonoscopy coming up, and the gastroenterologist’s office tells me that our insurance does not cover the pills (!).  What the serious fuck?  They only cover the gallon of nasty lemon-flavored yuck. 

What kind of sadistic bastards are these people?

I am not happy.  I am dreading, not the colonoscopy, but the prep.  It’s bad enough to have to drink 8 oz of this stuff, but I am looking at drinking 8 oz every 10 minutes, until the whole gallon is gone.  There are 128 ounces in a gallon. 

You do the math, I’m upset enough already. All I know is next time we are in the market for health insurance, I have a very specific question I want answered before we sign up with a company.