I was pretty sick three weeks ago. I had a dry cough. I had a fever. I had a sore throat. I had every symptom there was for COVID-19. And my doctor was concerned. My husband’s older than I am. He’s 72, and he’s at risk. If I get coronavirus and I’m carrying it, it can be very detrimental. I also have asthma really badly, so it’s not good for me to contact it either.
My doctor said, “You need to come in. I have four tests.†She was worried about my asthma; I’m one of the candidates that would be on a ventilator, easily. But is that fair? Here I am, able to get a test because I have a doctor who has one, and I feel a lot of shame about that. It’s a terrible situation to be in. Because in one sense, I’m saving my family’s life — my husband really can’t get this. And seeing what happens to older people, it’s very hard to combat. But it is unfair that I got a test.
The test is swab. It’s just a swab up your nose behind your throat. It’s not that painful. You can gag, if you have a sore throat, which I did. It took me six days to get the test results back and it did come out negative. But I know how lucky I really, really, really was to be able to get it done. But I have to tell you, I’ve had a headache. I’ve been in the house for three weeks, and then after I stayed in for two weeks. But I still don’t feel great. And they’re not even sure if these tests are really working. There’s a lot of false negatives. And I feel bad that I was able to get one and then I end up being negative. But there’s no way that this doctor could’ve known. She’s a very reputable doctor and she wanted me to come in immediately and get a test because I had all the symptoms.
I would say she’s a higher-end doctor. I’ve always had good doctors and I pay for them, but I believe that good doctors should be available for everybody. I’ve had to pay a lot of money for health care. Trust me, I don’t want to have to pay a lot of money for doctors, but I have to have good doctors, because they’re not really available otherwise and it is damn expensive. I pay a lot out of pocket. It’s probably $350–$400 to see her. Insurance doesn’t cover everything anymore. I mean, did it cover this test? I don’t know. I have to check. I think she didn’t charge me for the test itself, but I have to pay the lab for doing the test.
My husband has the concierge-type doctor. I think that’s just so disgusting that these people are doing this now. But I go to her one-on-one. I’m not into having a concierge doctor, thanks. I don’t have that and I wouldn’t do that. It’s bad enough paying the money that I pay for a good doctor.
She does have famous patients, but she also has many, many people who are not famous. It had nothing to do with me being an actress. But the fact is that she only had four tests available. And she has a lot of old people there, so she has to determine who can get a test and who can’t. I just got a note from another doctor that she has a few tests, but they’re really going by the severity of symptoms, too.
I questioned it. Like, why am I allowed to get it? How did I get to get this test? Is it because I’m privileged? That’s completely, absolutely unfair. Now I’m also a person who hasn’t been feeling well since I don’t know. I just have to say, I’m not 100 percent. And I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the 5G that’s going all over and we’re all just going to be feeling less than. It affects all of us in a major way, and it affects our health, which we’re not seeing.
But anyway, the fact that we don’t even have widespread testing is evil. In Germany, they just tested everybody and so their numbers are really low. You test, you see if you have it, if you do, you isolate and make sure that people are safe so it doesn’t spread. But we’re a month behind and still don’t have the proper equipment in hospitals across the country, where our health-care workers and doctors don’t even have the correct masks — and they’re now wanting to disinfect used infectious masks instead of just getting equipment. I think it’s truly despicable and disgusting that the test’s not made available for everybody for free around the world. This needs to be made available for everybody forcefully, no matter what walk of life, wherever you are, what station, including homeless people who are on our streets that are struggling to even have a place to live.
This story has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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