Flatlining the annual health check
My relationship with my medical aid is really love-hate. I hate them and they love my money.
My scheme is so far down the tier chain that I’m one unplanned fart away from ending up in a government hospital.
And I still have to pay for gap cover – what is that?! – because apparently medical aids don’t know how to count.
The whole concept is flawed.
It’s in their best interests that I remain happy and healthy, and yet they refuse to fund any of my wine deliveries or media streaming subscriptions, despite the joy they bring me.
They will do everything in their power to keep me marginally healthy to boost their bottom line while keeping me an inch away from the flatline.
Because that’s when the payments tend to stop. That, they can count.
And they do this annoying thing of dangling ‘bonus points’ in your face for doing things like running in a circle or eating a carrot – although you have to prove it by paying money for tracking equipment and doctor’s fees, which completely mitigates the bonus points you’re earning anywhere.
It’s a farce, yet one I will keep supporting until the government ministers themselves start using government hospitals. I’m political like that.
Just last week I was bullied into going for a health check to unlock some points that might allow me to get my leg reattached or some other minor inconvenience.
Lord knows there’s no way my medical scheme savings are going to take me past June, not with all these liver tablets, headache pills and ylang ylang bath oils I’m claiming as chronic medication.
So I put on actual clothes (over my pyjamas) and head out to some parking lot where a couple of foldup tents welcome me - triggering flashbacks to those endless pandemic vaccine queues - while offering all the privacy of a unisex bath house in Italy.
Brenda, who takes up most of the tent, invites me in with a lack of enthusiasm one so rarely finds outside of the public administration sector.
She snatches my ID card and, once the niceties are aside, the questioning begins.
Do you eat fruit and vegetables? - Well, Brenda, I’ll have you know potatoes are a vegetable and grapes are a fruit – I just consume them in liquid form which is actually much healthier, thank you very much.
How many drinks do you have a day?
- I have one, Brenda.
Is that one glass? One bottle? One case?
- Yes.
Do you do any exercise?
- Loads. Many arm lifts, mostly my drinking arm. I often roll off the couch unexpectedly, plus I leopard crawl around my house a lot, primarily to avoid my children seeing me while I go in search of sour sweets. These are all modern forms of exercise.
Onto mental health - do you have any anxiety? Night sweats? Hear voices?
- Not if you let me drink my wine, Brenda!
Let’s talk about your waist size.
- I beg your pardon? That’s quite disgusting, Brenda, you want to know about my waste? I would have thought that was private but, honestly, if you have to know I’d say pretty sizeable. Look here! I took a pic in the bathroom this morning. Oh, you mean waist size!? Got it. Let’s circle back to that one.
What’s your height?
- Roughly the same as it’s been for the past 25 years, Brenda.
I’ll alert you the moment I start shrinking and get a sudden urge to invade an unarmed country atop a steed.
Blood type? Blood pressure? Blood sugar?
- …Blood pacts. Yip! Got ‘em all, thank you for asking.
This series of questions continued for some time, many of which I’m sure Brenda was making up on the spot. She then used her fancy doodad to calculate what they call your ‘health age’.
Considering I’m not so keen on my actual age, I wasn’t looking forward to this one. And I was right.
Turns out I’m a 90-year-old Sudanese man with the anxiety level of someone fleeing a war-torn country and the nutritional health of an anaemic slug.
Well worth it to unlock those two extra medical aid points.