Fatimah Ali: My health-care nightmare

I WAS planning my funeral the other day, instructing my mate about how to conduct my services. It's not that I'm rushing to die any time soon (I'm only 53), but I'd been feeling lousy for weeks.

My blood pressure was dangerously high (173/103) and I'd been off my medication because my doctor retired, and I hadn't yet been seen by her replacement. I also had what appeared to be serious flu, which despite my best efforts had refused to go away. So I just wanted to make sure that Natu knew how to plan my services in the event that the worst happened.

"You should be trying to get well, not writing your obituary," he complained, while taking copious notes.

Nothing had worked, and I was progressively feeling worse. Certain I had swine flu when I couldn't stop coughing, I dragged myself to the Jefferson University Hospital emergency room, along with my fear of needles and mounting medical bills.

The doctor sent me for a chest X-ray and the nurse drew my blood. Lying on the gurney with the port still painfully stuck in my arm in case they needed to take more blood, or start an IV, I pondered my illness and continued to worry about the tab.

Like 47 million other Americans, health insurance is a daily nightmare, and the last thing my family needs is more medical bills. For one brief moment, fear took over: What if I'm really sick and don't have enough coverage?

Suddenly, I had an epiphany.

Dying would be a whole lot cheaper than facing another long illness.

Months before, just as we'd become optimistic that expensive medical treatments would prolong Natu's life following his cancer diagnosis, his insurance company abruptly dropped him. So I thought, even though I'm too young to die, I also know I'm too poor to get sick.

Turns out I had bronchitis, which was treated with antibiotics. Before I got the medication, I'd been weak, coughing and unable to speak above a whisper.

And so I personally feel Professor Henry Louis Gates' pain when he says he had a bronchial infection and could barely talk when he was arrested at his Cambridge, Mass., home.

Which brings me to this. Even though I'm miffed at the timing of his arrest and the media's prominent coverage of it that drove health-care reform and other social ills onto the back burner, I'm also just as concerned about the hot-button issue of race. Gates' bronchial illness and police harassment hit very close to home.

Just a few months ago, plainclothes police profiled my 23- year-old son Malik, who was sitting on the front steps of our house. They rolled up and told him that he didn't look like he belonged in the neighborhood, but he did fit the "profile" of the perpetrators of a string of nearby robberies. Malik had left his keys and ID inside, and the cops were about to arrest him for "loitering" until the mailman walked by and greeted him by name.

My son asked me if he should just resign himself to expect police harassment for the rest of his life because he's a black man.

Gates' arrest is further proof that racial profiling can happen to any man of color, regardless of income or education. What I want to know is what type of training do police receive to decide who should live where?

Horace Small, a Boston community activist and president of the Unions for Minority Neighborhoods says "Gates is lucky that it was only Cambridge police and not cops from Boston. His arrest could have been much worse, and it's actually a good thing that it happened to some one famous, like Skip Gates. As we speak, he's getting funded to produce a documentary on racial profiling. President Obama needed to step in to draw more attention to the problem."

The president's invitation to Gates and Sgt. James Crowley to join him at the White House for a beer is just the prescription warranted to spark meaningful conversation about race.

"White folks just don't get that this stuff happens every day," Small said. "A lot of them really do believe that we are post-racial and refuse to acknowledge the systemic bigotry which many of us experience daily."

Like Small, I believe Gates is the sacrificial lamb needed to spark meaningful dialogue about race. But now that the issue has snagged the president's attention, I really want him to get back to health-care reform, having just experienced a bird's-eye view of the current system that truly scares me.

Fatimah Ali is a journalist, media consultant and an associate member of the Daily News editorial board.