This is America. We shouldn’t be afraid to go to the hospital.

Reading about what mostly unvaccinated people are doing to our health care system is one thing. Needing that system and being frightened to use it is another. This is America. We shouldn’t be afraid to go to the hospital.

I recently had an incident where, under normal circumstances, I would have called 911. I didn’t for fear they would want to transport me to the hospital and that scared me more than the incident itself. I may have heart problems, but hospitals in Alaska right now are filled with COVID patients and I don’t want to be anywhere near that.

So I hauled myself into bed, slept for 24 hours and called my doctors the next day to tell them I’d survived whatever had just happened. No one suggested I go to the ER to be examined for any possible residual problems.

And that’s the real issue with mostly unvaccinated people filling our hospitals with raging COVID infections. The rest of us — you know, those of us who bothered to get the vaccination — are faced with decisions that could be life-or-death decisions. Do I go to the hospital to see if this was my heart again, or do I worry that COVID will find me there because I have a weakened system? Families face loved ones who need care and have to make the heart-wrenching decision of keeping them home or risking the hospital — assuming there is even space for them at the hospital. And God forbid they chose the hospital as the better course of action, only to have their loved one die of COVID they encountered there. Imagine living with that guilt. Imagine reviewing your decision-making process over and over as you tried to not think your decision led to a loved one’s death.

I know most hospitals are pretty good about keeping COVID patients isolated from others, but they can only go so far. When you have people waiting in cars to be seen in the ER and then waiting for possibly days in a bed in the hallway to get into a room, accidental spreading is apt to happen.

I could get mean and state what I have thought more than once, which is that I don’t care if unvaccinated people die. It’s their problem and their decision. But I do care when someone is inadvertently caught up in their refusal to listen to science. If they want to believe what some idiot on the internet is proposing — drinking bleach, eating horse deworming pills — that’s their prerogative. After all, doesn’t horse deworming medicine sound so much more effective than a vaccine every credible scientist in the world supports?

And so on the day when I should have probably hit the button on that lovely necklace I now wear day and night, I chose what seemed a less risky path. I took care of myself and just prayed my cold, lifeless body wouldn’t be found in my bed a week later, with my dogs gnawing on my legs for nutrition.

Now, to accommodate all these unvaccinated COVID patients, the state of Alaska will spend millions of dollars to bring up Outside health care workers to help relieve the burden on our local medical providers. While I’m happy we are giving them the break they need, I am very resentful that we are spending so much money on people who listen to anything but science in their attempt to prove that COVID is just a liberal myth to scare people. If they don’t trust science about the vaccine, why are they trusting that same science to save their lives when they get COVID?

People who chose the unvaccinated path — to prove I-don’t-know-what — I don’t want to pay for them. As that old saying goes, you made your bed, now lie in it — preferably at home where you can’t affect other patients or strain the health care system. Then, maybe the next time I have a health scare, I won’t be more frightened to go to the hospital than I am of dying alone at home.

Elise Patkotak is an Alaska columnist and author. Her book “Coming Into the City” is available at AlaskaBooksandCalendars.com and at local bookstores.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.