WAIW | Healthcare Should Be Universal

TW: discussions involving blood and needles.

Following-up on my previous post about possibly being vitamin B12 deficient, I thought I would talk a little bit about my newfound financial privilege and what it has meant to me being able to address my current health issues. More importantly, I also wanted to touch on the fact that wealth shouldn’t really be the deciding factor as to whether or not one is able to live a healthy life.

As a Canadian, it’s something I kind of took for granted for most of my life, but I’ve become much more aware of it while travelling. Even though I’ve been able to pay relatively little for health-related expenses here in SE Asia over the last few years, a number of these decisions involved a rising concern in how I would cover other bills soon after. Personally, I don’t think that’s the way the world should be, and I hope at some point universal healthcare becomes the standard.

On a different note, in regard to the tests I requested, they basically cover both my vitamin B12 and my iron levels. However, since B12 levels can be hard to determine with the usual blood test, especially for vegans, I requested to have both my homocysteine and hemoglobin checked. I was hoping to get an MMA test, but the clinic I visited didn’t offer it, so these things were the best options. Both of them should help to give me a more reliable indicator of whether or not I’m deficient since a deficiency would lead to noticeable changes.

If you’d like to learn more about the importance of vitamin B12 and the need to be properly tested for it, I recommend the Vegan Society’s page here.

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