I thought of other images for this, but here’s Freddy meeting a giraffe at the zoo last week. It was an amazing moment! Yay!
My LDL cholesterol is high enough that I now need to manage it with a statin. Don’t judge. I ate nothing but salad for about six months and the cholesterol went UP. I play squash a lot. Truth is, this is something that often happens to people in middle-age, and I’m middle-aged. I’m not quite old enough to consider running for President. But you know. I’m an adult.
Statins are a weird club you get let into only when you knock. About a year ago I told people “I’m worried about my cholesterol numbers” and they all got this look on. “Don’t worry,” they’d tell me. “You can go on a statin.”
You go on a statin, and everything goes down. You can eat ice cream and lobster and whatever you like. They’re like a get-out-of-jail free card. That’s the way the thinking goes. You can hold up gas stations without consequences. There’s an entitlement energy that comes along with being on them, and it fits with being a middle-aged white dude in America. Like, I bet Donald Trump is on a statin. If he weren’t he might have died by now. Hey, there’s a thought.
Trouble is, I’ve been on two statins, now, and the first worked. It lowered my cholesterol. It also made me feel like a truck had run me over every morning. I complained and they changed the drugs. The second one, even worse. I’d sleep nine hours a night and still wake up feeling tired. Then my cholesterol went up while I was on it. Along the way, I got a sense of how it feels when your medical provider doesn’t listen to you. It’s like, “I’m telling you I really don’t like the exhaustion here, but do I have to be the one to emphasize how much I don’t like it?”
Likewise, one feels like one’s body isn’t a playground. After several weeks I got off the second statin. My fatigue went away within days. I asked myself, “why didn’t they warn me beforehand, how this could have gone?” Then they recommended another statin which won’t work with another medication I’m on. I Googled that and let them know. Now I’ll try another, at a low dose, starting at the end of next week. That’s the hope.
Because of racism, doctors under-treat Black Americans for pain. There are huge health inequities. Black mothers die six times as often during childbirth. I’ve supported health equity work which focuses on giving Black patients more power. Restorative circles focus on giving people the tools to advocate for themselves. I’m not comparing my privilege with their lack of it. Or my frustrations navigating the health system with theirs. Far from it. Right now, my family pays $2,300 a month in cash for health insurance. That’s after tax, and it’s not deductible. We’re lucky, in America, to have access to some of the best health care in the world. A lot of that privilege comes along with the white bonus.
Yet nobody wins. Drug companies, which make statins, are very powerful. They enrich their shareholders by pushing these products on patients for life. I’m not disputing that I need to be on a statin. I’m also saying that going on one has been an experience in learning how to advocate for oneself in America. In theory I knew how this country’s medical system is a mess. But in practice, when one goes through it, one finds oneself picking up tips, mainly, from one’s friends and family. They’re the people who help you feel empowered. Not the medical system itself. And that’s a problem. I’ve relied on peer support to navigate a system that should place its patients’ experience at the center of things. When you Google “statins”, patients’ actual experience is the last thing that’s reflected in the SEO rankings.
It’s so important that people talk to each other. If you’re starting on a statin and want to chat about it, let me know. Or if you’ve got any tips. I’m keen to pay it forward, and likewise, I’m all ears. There’s an alternative universe where I’d prefer to die of heart disease in my early seventies than be on statins, and this isn’t quite it. But one understands, more than ever, why health outcomes are so disparate in America when it’s so hard to trust the medical system. Entitled, slightly whiny rant over. Thanks for bearing with me in the meantime.
—Matt Davis is a communications consultant and writer for a wide variety of clients. He also teaches yoga and lives with his wife and son in New York.
