Illustrated Epistle: How to Stay Healthy in New Zealand 🐶

We're pretty healthy, but planning for the future.
And trying to eat less Whittaker's chocolate.

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As I write this we are still Covid free, but getting fed-up of mostly sitting outside bars and cafes, especially as we have had a burst of wintry weather. The boyf is super fed up as he doesn’t have as many down jackets and woolly hats as I do.

Because of my reducing-the-money-I-give-to-polluting-dairy-companies, I have amassed a small fortune with the money I've saved from having my coffee black instead of enjoying a latte. But my jar will keep filling up for a while before I feel it is worth the risk of eating out..

I'm waiting for three weeks to pass without hearing of a someone we know here getting Covid before I venture inside to mingle with people at random, without a mask.

We've also been looking into our long-term health. We are generally healthy, but we're getting older (shock!)

So we want to know that should anything happen we’ll be covered. New Zealand has a public health system that covers emergencies, but it is patchy when it comes to everything else.

So we're looking into health insurance. It’s a tough decision to go from spending practically nothing on healthcare to hundreds of dollars a month when you don't have a crystal ball to know what's going to happen. The alternative is to keep ourselves stupendously healthy.

To that end, the book I'm reading might provide some guidance. Cured by Jeffrey Rediger (I'm linking to this review because I too found the quantum physics section hard to swallow) tells tales of people who have had remission from serious illnesses after changing their lifestyle. A plant based diet, meditation, reduced stress and connection with community could all contribute.

We already have a largely plant based diet and do a reasonable amount of exercise (having a dog and a big sloping garden which needs lots and lots of work helps). Things are also less stressful compared to the corporate lives we had aeons ago. And living in a small community gives us a genuine social network that is generally more positive than the online versions.

So maybe we’ll be okay, insurance or not.

TTFN

PS. Though Molly has a great diet (except for when she eats random stuff off the street) and does masses of exercise, she already has health insurance as she is not risk averse like me. She jumps from ridiculous heights, careers through dense undergrowth when chasing cats and is still picking fights with dogs, often ones that are way bigger than her. So it seemed sensible to insure her. And at $NZ33 per month it’s considerably less than what it might cost to insure us.
PPS. How are you?

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