The Times Magazine 65weddings, christenings and funerals, and to
surprise family and friends on big birthdays.
And then came Covid.
Having spent the first two months of 2020
crisscrossing the continent on a weekly basis
for work, I was suddenly grounded. For the
next six months, I barely ventured beyond
my little patch of Brooklyn.
My work, like everyone’s, took a knock.
I worried about my parents, fit and healthy
in their early seventies but living in the UK
without either of their children in the same
country (my brother, a pilot, also lives abroad).
If anything happened to them I would need
to leave, but that would mean abandoning my
own life – for who knows how long? The terms
of my visa and the US travel ban (lifted only
last week, after more than 18 months) meant
that if I left the US, I couldn’t get back in.
Stuck in my outrageously expensive one-
bedroom apartment, on regular weepy Zooms
with my mum and dad, I began to wonder
whether it was all worth it.
Six miserable months into the pandemic,
I finally made it out of Brooklyn to stay with
my best friend, who had rented a little house
upstate. The plan – since none of us could
venture far, and certainly not overseas – was
to escape the city for the summer. Five days
in, I fell off a mountain bike at high speed
and – ever one for thoroughness – broke my
shoulder four ways.
I was fortunate in that my friend cut
me out of my sports bra and drove me to a
nearby clinic, where they cleaned up my road
rash, X-rayed my smashed-up humerus anddoled out enough opioids to fell an elephant.
I was unfortunate, however – or, some
might say, foolish and reckless – in that I did
not have health insurance. Yes, I know, but
in the US, health insurance is tied to and
partially funded by your employer, and I didn’t
have one. As a freelancer, the cheapest policy
I could buy was more than $650 a month.
And that’s just the premiums – you still have
to pay each time you see a doctor or specialist,
get a prescription, test or X-ray, or in any way
access healthcare. I’d never felt in a financial
position to afford that, and when I got ill- which was rarely – I paid $250 upfront to
see a doctor at a walk-in clinic. Which worked
fine until I found myself, almost blacking out
with pain, telling my best friend she could not
take me to A&E because, uninsured, it would
cost me thousands (the clinic, by contrast, cost
about $800, including all the opioids); and
until I needed major surgery – within ten
days, I was told, or the break would be too old
to repair. That ruled out flying back to the
UK; Covid rules meant I’d need to isolate for
two weeks on arrival before I even saw an
orthopaedic specialist.
So those ten days were spent applying for
insurance – which, in New York, I could not
be refused even with a pre-existing condition
(thank you, Barack Obama) – and hounding
the health authority to backdate it. Ordinarily,
the insurance would have kicked in on
September 1; my surgery needed to happen
by August 7, latest. I found out an hour before
I went into surgery that I was covered.
And thank goodness. The total bill for
my surgery – a four-way proximal humerus
repair – was $230,000. I have nine pins in my
shoulder, at $1,500 each, plus a plate at
$15,000. That feels like a steal, though,
compared with my overnight stay on the ward
the night before surgery at $17,000 (nil by
mouth too), or the “bone substitute hydroset”- injectable shoulder concrete, basically
- at $91,000 for 15 cubic centimetres.
Medical bills are, unsurprisingly, the
leading cause of bankruptcy in the US.
Unable to perform any exercise that
required my upper body, I invested in a Peloton
(hello, lockdown cliché) and spent most of
last autumn sweating on my stationary bike.
Having always been buoyantly optimistic and
positive, I struggled with my mental health for
the first time.
When, one morning in early December
while staying with friends in Washington DC,
I cried inconsolably midway through the
washing-up, it was apparent something
was up. The trigger: the Pet Shop Boys’ Go
West, a glorious anthem to exploration and
I CRIED THROUGH THE PET SHOP BOYS’
GO WEST. SOMETHING HAD TO CHANGE
Repats Continued from page 53JOSH ANDRUS, COURTESY OF DAN ROOKWOOD
The Rookwood family in Santa BarbaraJane Mulkerrins in New York, March 2020