Now that we’re back home, it’s been really hard to adjust back to real life. The jet lag is brutal – a 14-hour difference is a lot.
Ken has not been feeling well since we got home – he thought it was residual heat exhaustion that he never fully recovered from, but after 2 ER visits, it seems he might have contracted some minor bug while we were gone. We don’t know if it had anything to do with the tap water, but even the locals live on bottled water – there are water refill stations everywhere. That’s just life there – I’m sure you get used to it. Ken has had steady body aches, little appetite, constant headaches, and a fever that keeps jumping up to 102. After about a full week of that, the doctors finally gave him some antibiotics to help him get back to healthy – the antibiotics that SHOULD have been provided at ER-visit-number-one. Two ER visits in the US is no joke. I’m not excited to see what that bill looks like when it comes in. The nurse told us that we have almost met our deductible for the year. And to be honest, they still aren’t clear on what caused his illness – it COULD be a bug he caught while traveling. But it could also be kidney stones, though the doctor doesn’t think that is likely. There are so many “ifs” and too few answers.
This only serves to remind us why we don’t go to the doctor as often as we should. Why we space dental appointments and eye exams out more than is standard. Because all of these cost us more than feels reasonable. And we would quickly go broke if we did everything on the expected schedule.
Ken’s health has not been great. He’s been seeing multiple doctors steadily for a couple of years now, and they still don’t have answers. Those answers might come through faster if insurance wasn’t getting in the way by refusing to approve various tests or treatment options. Yet another reason why we want to leave. US health insurance is a joke. In Vietnam, he could run ALL the tests he needs for less than a third of our deductible. But here, we can’t afford to pay for them out of pocket, so we’re at the mercy of insurance companies, whose entire business model rests on making diagnosis harder.
We think Ken’s mom believes he’s having a manic episode. She doesn’t understand at all why we want to leave. Why we can’t just stay in the US and move somewhere less expensive. But moving somewhere less expensive comes with other compromises – we would have to live much farther from services which takes us even farther from big cities. So we basically have to isolate ourselves to be able to afford our lives. But that also assumes that a remote job is available that would still pay close to the same. And remote jobs are getting fewer and farther between. They want to pay you less, but still have the ability to demand that you come to the office, at least SOME of the time. Which means living close enough to a large city to make that occasional commute possible. Which in turn eliminates the possibility of lower cost of living that comes with a residence farther removed from population centers. The truth of it? Life in the US is costing us more than it’s giving back. The American Dream is dead to us.
This isn’t a manic episode. We’ve thought this through. And Ken’s health won’t survive staying. Neither will our finances.
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