Day 4: Schedule Your Next Doctor's Appointment #30DaysofGOOD

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Welcome to The GOOD 30-Day Challenge (#30DaysofGOOD). Each month, we challenge our community members to do something that will improve the world around us—and our own lives. The challenge for October? To get healthy. In an effort to help us all rise to the occasion, we're going to assign one small task every day. Each morning, we will post the challenge on GOOD.is and Twitter, along with a testimonial from someone on the GOOD team who's already completed it. We invite you to complete all 30 mini-challenges with us! Today, we challenge you to:

Schedule your next doctor's appointment.

Don’t tell my mother, but I didn’t have health insurance for the month of September. Transitioning from one job to another left me uncovered for that 30 days, and I was petrified, sure I was going to get rear-ended at a stoplight or break my ankle falling down my dark stairs.

My new insurance kicked in on Saturday, so I feel newly free of fear. I’m not going to go darting into traffic anytime soon, but I finally have peace of mind that I’m covered if something happens. After my health insurance at a previous job took the cost of reconstructive knee surgery from $57,000 down to $10, I’m firmly convinced that insurance is a basic human right.

To celebrate having coverage again, I immediately called my primary care physician and a friend-recommended optometrist to make appointments for checkups. Two weeks from now, I’ll have new contact lenses and a reassurance that I’m healthy overall (I hope). Dentists’ offices are my greatest fear, but I’ll make a dentist appointment, too—tomorrow, I swear.

-Megan Greenwell

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Ready, set, go! Good luck completing today's challenge. Share your experience on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook by using the hashtag #30DaysofGOOD, or let us know how it went in the comments section below.

Tomorrow's challenge: Eat three balanced meals.