How Would I Breathe?

Every night I sleep hooked up to a ventilator. My sleep doctor says if I don’t do that my brain might get deprived of oxygen in my sleep and I might have a heart attack or stroke. That would really suck.

But you know what else really sucks? It costs $800 a month to rent my ventilator from a medical supply company. Fortunately for me, I’m married to a fine woman. She has everything a man like me could want. She’s smart, wise, kind. She has a killer sense of humor and a job with good health insurance.

But what if I wasn’t so fucking lucky that she lets me tag along in her life? Or what if that bit of luck runs out? Or what if she loses her job or whatever? How would I breathe?

If I wanted to keep pursuing my goal of not having a stroke or heart attack in my sleep, I’d have to figure out a way to come up with 800 a month forever. Because I can’t buy the ventilator or rent to buy it or anything like that. I can only rent it month by month forever. Those are the rules.

So I would probably adapt a strategy of saying fuck it. I’d just stop paying the rent. And I wouldn’t feel the teeniest bit guilty about it. My insurance company has probably given the medical supply company enough money to pay for 15 ventilators by now.

What would the medical supply company do? Would they send the ventilator repo man after me? Would he don clever disguises in an attempt to fool me into answering the door? “Congratulations! You’ve won $10 million dollars from Publishers Clearing House!”

Or maybe it works like an eviction. Maybe the sheriff shows up with a warrant to confiscate my ventilator.

But in order to avoid the bad optics of snatching away a crippled old man’s ventilator, the medical supply company would probably bide their time and wait for my machine to break. I'll come crawling back, just like they planned. And then they’d say if I want it fixed, pay up first! And if I don’t pay up they’ll bide their time again and wait for me to have a fatal stroke or heart attack. Either way, they win.

Maybe I should be proactive and get a big, mean dog to guard my ventilator.

Don’t you just love capitalism?



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