Honestly though, the murderer of my mom, my aunt, my online friend, all these preventable deaths, is on the U.S.A. healthcare system. With how prohibitively expensive even just seeing a doctor is, we can't just go casually get checked out willy-nilly... So even if our bodies change in a weird way, we don't go. And then it's too late.
If "spending thousands of dollars over what turned out to be nothing" wasn't a very real outcome, more lives here would be saved.
When I got bit by a chipmunk this summer the chances of it having rabies was pretty low... So I had an existential day where I was comparing the unknown price of treatment with the <1% risk of just dying.
And because my COUSIN was the only person who was like "UHH GO TO THE ER" (parents over text was like "you'll probably be fine"), I did go and got my series of shots.
My immediate family not pushing me to go feels like foreshadowing.