The next day, the offer came, with one change — no group insurance. Instead, I would receive $500 to buy my own policy. When I told him that could not work, he pressed me to explain. Reluctantly, I revealed my epilepsy. The next morning, on my first day of work, he told me that I was off salary and I was no longer allowed in the office. Less than 24 hours after I disclosed my epilepsy, the advocacy group decided I had to work as a freelancer from home. My chance for insurance evaporated.

Job after job followed, none with coverage. Months before my dreaded 25th birthday, I took a low-level editor’s post compiling career announcements for a Washington magazine; I hated the work, but I needed the health coverage. Weeks into the job, the insurer rejected a bill for my anticonvulsants; unknown to me until that moment, the magazine’s insurance policy included a pre-existing condition clause.

Desperate, I pleaded with colleagues for help. One journalist offered to assist me in gaining work as a copy boy at The New York Times — a job many rungs lower on the career ladder, but one that offered insurance. In my interview, a perplexed editor stared at my résumé. Why, he asked, would I trade an editor’s job for one fetching coffee?

I lied. I revealed nothing about my health issues or my fears of financial wreckage. Instead, I rhapsodized about The Times. I got the job.

I turned 25 before my Times policy went into effect, leaving me uninsured for a few weeks. During that gap, I found myself post-seizure in an emergency room. Realizing I was responsible for all the costs, I demanded to be released and staggered outside. I woke up hours later on the sidewalk. My parents paid the multi-thousand-dollar hospital bill out of pocket.

I worked seven days a week as a copy boy and then news clerk, terrified that easing up would cost me my job and my insurance. Thankfully, in 1988, The Times promoted me to reporter.

By 2005, I was married and considered going on my wife’s employer’s insurance plan so that I could become a full-time book writer . But my wife is four years older than me, and she hoped to retire at 65, when she aged into Medicare. If I was solely an author, at the age of 61 I would be both uninsured and uninsurable. I abandoned the idea.