It’s Exhausting Trying to Stay Healthy in America

Jacqueline Dooley
GEN
9 min readJul 17, 2021

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I have many personal stories about healthcare deferred, issues postponed, obvious problems sidelined until they (hopefully) resolve themselves, but the lump in my neck couldn’t be ignored.

I noticed it about a year ago, right before the pandemic was picking up steam — a small pea-sized bump on the right side of my neck, right near my jaw.

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Jacqueline Dooley
GEN

Essayist, content writer, bereaved parent. Bylines: Human Parts, GEN, Marker, OneZero, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Pulse, HuffPost, Longreads, Modern Loss