Malaria? Blame Aetna

If I had any idea how much money this trip would cost, I would have planned better. The hidden expenses are incredible. Example. I booked my plane ticket, yes. But how to get from home to the airport? I was initially going to take Amtrak. $120 each way is pricey but tolerable. But there's a problem. Amtrak won't allow me to take all my bags. So I try shuttle service. Only no shuttles pick people up from Philly to take them to JFK. It's just too inconceivably far. Forget that on the other side of the country, shuttles drive that distance all the time. We call it "commuting through Los Angeles."

Please forgive me. I am cranky today.

So I decide to rent a car from Philly Airport and drive to New York. Mom balks at this. I don't know the roads, I don't know the traffic, I get lost easily, she will put extra money in my account if I please, please, please find ground transport. Okay, fine. She's right. I would probably wind up in D.C. before I made it to New York. So on a friend's advice, I book a sedan. It costs $200 one way. Ouch. Only, after I book the trip they let me know it's $200 if I have only one piece of luggage. With five pieces of luggage, the price goes up to $320 one way. Plus gas. Plus tolls. Plus a tip. Suddenly, I'm paying $500 for a one-way trip, which adds up to an extra THOUSAND DOLLARS just to get from Philadelphia to New York and back.

I don't care if I have to sleep in the train station, I am not booking a sedan back home. I'll just abandon most of my luggage in Gulu, see if I can crash with my aunt in Manhattan, and take Amtrak home in the morning. Details TBD.

Next crisis. I rush to the store to get my prescriptions. Only guess what? They don't have Malarone for me. I'm supposed to start taking my malaria pills TOMORROW, but Savon's won't be able to get the meds until Thursday -- at which point I will be in London. I panic, and the pharmacist notices and says, "Well, I guess I could see if we could speed it up."

The rational part of me is very thankful that he says this. The rational part of me recognizes that this is customer service -- pushing a delivery time for one concerned customer. But the part of me that has been too nervous to sleep since school let out is throwing a temper tantrum. Gee, THANKS, buddy, Maisha-angry says. It's good to know that you threatened me with Thursday on a whim, that you weren't actually basing your estimate on any sense of how long the prescription delivery would actually take. I manage to bite my tongue and wait fifteen minutes while the pharmacist dawdles behind the counter, only he never fills my scripts. Instead, he lets me sit around for a while and then tells me that my health insurance will only pay for one month's prescription at a time; it'll be an extra $500 to purchase the other two months' worth of medication at full cost.

I try to swallow my frustration. I call my health insurance company, hoping for some sort of policy override. They are closed for Memorial Day weekend. I didn't even know it was Memorial Day weekend.

Meanwhile, I still haven't gotten my tax return, my economic stimulus check, the fellowship that is supposed to be paying for all of this, or rent from either one of my tenants (although to their credit, it's not due until June 1). And I am smarting from the extra fees that I paid to get to Florida for that conference. And I have to pay another thousand to MoneyGram shortly for my hotel room. I am the closest to zero dollars that I have ever been in my whole life, and that is with a healthy dose of support from Mommy and Daddy.

I guess I'm tense because this doesn't begin to consider the administrative junk I have to take care of at home and abroad, or the laundry and cleaning I have to do before Wednesday. I miss my dog; I miss my easy, aimless life of science fiction and junk food; and I miss having a paycheck. I have felt terrifically out of sorts ever since law school began, and this hiccup of time before flying out? Cool as I try to be, it feels like I'm choking.

(It'll be okay, it'll be okay, it'll be okay ...)