"We can't work ourselves to death"
Medicaid is a literal lifeline for this hardworking mom and cuts to the program would unravel everything.
The drive from Raven’s Hair Apothecary to her home is just nine minutes, but it felt like hours on September 8th.
After cleaning up her salon after a long Sunday of cut and color appointments, Raven called her husband, Will, as she got in her car to tell him she was going to make a deposit for rent on the way home. But he didn’t answer.
During those long minutes of her short commute, she called again and again. Finally, Will called back, but his voice was garbled and slurred, and he wasn’t making sense.
Raven barely remembers parking in front of their townhouse or running in, but she does remember finding Will slumped on the floor of the living room and Gunnar, her 12-year-old autistic son, crying and upset next to him.
“I have no idea how long Will had been on the floor like that, or how long Gunnar had been there, but I remember putting Will’s head in my lap and holding Gunnar with my other arm as I called 911,” she says.
Will had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke and was in the ICU for a month and hospitalized for two. The medical notes written by his doctor include the phrase: “He is lucky to be alive.” Raven stayed with him in the hospital, posting tender, open letters to him on Facebook documenting the days. She called a friend who she knew was looking for a new housing situation and asked her to come stay at their home to be with Gunnar, who is nonverbal autistic and needs careful care. “These guys– Gunnar and Will– are my guys. They are the most important people to me,” she says, “Please stay with me was all I could think.”
Raven and I are sitting in the corner of a busy Starbucks as we talk. She has ordered a bright red drink that matches her bright red hair. Her eyes well up a little, and she wipes them carefully with her finger, smearing her gold glitter eye shadow a little. “Dammit, here I am trying to look good, too,” she laughs, seeing some glitter on her fingertips.
Raven MacFarlane-Bradbook is a hairdresser but, honestly, more of an artist. She loves art and literature. “I think of my clients as a canvas where I am commissioned to create a great painting.” She’s been behind the chair for over 25 years now and finally runs her own shop. Being a small business owner “allows me the ability to meet my son’s schedule and provide for my family,” she says.
“In my industry, we don’t have a 401k or insurance or paid leave,” she says. At one point, Raven worked for a corporate salon, hoping that the commissions with insurance would help get her ahead. “But even having insurance, the co-pays were so high.” Gunnar requires regular speech therapy, physical therapy, and pediatric occupational therapy to help him participate in everyday activities, and Raven says her copay “could be $300 a pop just for speech therapy.”
Raven herself wears a medical alert bracelet- it's shiny and black and clinks against the charm bracelet on her right wrist. She has a genetic-based anemia, causing her to need iron infusions. With a $500 co-pay, she sometimes considered skipping this medical necessity but would remember that without her functioning well, Gunnar would suffer.
Today, as a small business owner turning a minimal profit, Raven’s family receives Medicaid. She looks me right in the eye and minces no words when I ask about this:
“It’s very possible that no one in my house would be alive without Medicaid.”
She means it. Even though she’s struggled to get things covered– Medicaid only covers limited physical therapy for Will even though he can’t yet go upstairs in their house and his speech is still scrambled– the impact on her family is undeniable. Because her business has ups and downs and her expenses are ultimately tied to the market (“A tube of color is now $10– and I need to purchase dozens at at time”), basic needs like Gunnar’s pull-ups can be out of reach. But with Medicaid, she can get help with expenses like that.
“If I had to bet, I’m going to say that there are more people like me than not,” Raven muses as she cleans brushes in her salon. “But I’m not going to bet because I don’t have any money!” she laughs.
We are back at Raven’s salon, which is decorated with Edgar Allen Poe quotes and prints from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. She has a small bookshelf of literature–Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird– that she encourages her clients to take home with them if they enjoy them while getting their hair done.
It’s almost 8 PM on Sunday and she would, no doubt, like to get home.
“I grew up being told that getting so-called “handouts” from the government was bad,” she explains. “There’s a stereotype that people are sitting around doing a fat lot of nothing. So it was a blow to my ego to apply for Medicaid, but what am I going to do– let Gunnar or Will suffer? I do everything that I do because I love them.”
“And I know I’m hardworking, and I know what I do every day. And I have no reason to think that the next family who needs help isn’t just like mine.”
I think a lot about people like Raven. Here she is a hardworking small business owner, a mom of a special needs kid who is the absolute center of her life, the wife of a man who is learning again how to talk and walk up stairs. While she joked about being late to our coffee date earlier because of her “smooth brain,” I can’t help but think those sorts of life experiences must make a person not just resilient but possibly brilliant. I tell her so.
She laughs. “I’m not sure about that! I’m just getting by!”
But I press her on it. She keeps fussing around with combs and brushes, but I won’t let it go. I ask her what she would tell someone in Congress who was thinking about voting for Medicaid cuts if they sat down in her styling chair. She thinks for a minute about this and then replies:
“I’d tell them that everyone here matters. We can’t work more than we can work– I can’t hold five jobs to make ends meet. We can’t work ourselves to death. It’s okay to need help, and it says something good about us as a country when we give it.”