Hi everyone. Welcome to Your Stories,
a podcast on how Costco benefits are changing the lives of Costco employees.
I’m your host Anne Webster,
and I’m excited to present the third episode in our podcast series.
Today we’re talking with Costco employee Henry Chi. Welcome Henry,
and thank you for joining us.

Oh, thank you for having me.

Let’s get right into it. How long have you been with Costco?

So this October it will be three years.

And which Costco location do you work at?

The one in Clifton, New Jersey.

Whereabouts is that central New Jersey or.

You?
There’s that whole debate about whether or not Central New Jersey even exists.
It’s probably right between that North Central sort of barrier there,
probably more into the north Jersey.

And what do you do there?

I am a pharmacy technician.

What kind of work does that involve?

Filling prescriptions, processing prescriptions as they come in,
calling doctors, dealing with insurance, things like that.

Cool. So you probably deal with a lot of people during the day. That’s.

Fine. Oh yeah. A lot of people come on through.

How about when you’re not at work? What do you like to do in your spare time?

So I was always a bit of a gamer and not the video gaming
sort of thing. That’s kind of taken off now. I was always board games,
role-playing games.
I was a big Dungeon Dragons nerd and I would run
games back in the day.

Oh wow. What does that mean? Running games?

So you create the adventure and then you’re the Dungeon Master,
so you kind of sculpt how the game goes.

Oh, very cool. Okay, now I’m going to put you on the spot a little bit.
Have you taken the We are in this together pledge.

I actually have.
I checked at the website and took the pledge recently.

Oh, fantastic. And for listeners who haven’t heard about it,
the we are in this together pledge is basically a way for you to learn about
your Costco benefits and what they can do for you.
Costco offers really valuable benefits to support your emotional, financial,
and physical wellbeing. So Henry,
can you tell me how you’ve used your Costco benefits to help you?

Around a year ago, I had a whole series of hospitalizations.
It started when I was actually out of state.
I was going to perform the wedding for my friend’s foster daughter.
They had asked me to perform the ceremony and I was down in Orlando all set to
go when I noticed that my abdomen was kind of getting distended.
So I went to the hospital there and found out that I had an infected
gallbladder.
I was able to actually perform the wedding ceremony and everything was lovely.
But afterwards the gallbladder situation got worse.
It started a cascade of medical problems for me.
But the Costco benefits were amazing in helping me
out because this was kind of a long-term sort of problem.
I had a pleural effusion, I had pneumonia twice.
I had two bloody hematomas.
I had to go on dialysis hemodialysis during this period.
I had temporary disability for around six months.
And kind of the one thing that tied everything together for me
was there was a nurse named Jeannie who was getting in touch with me
in the beginning every couple of weeks and then once a month just to check up to
see if I needed anything and to help walk me through the process for the
disability and things like that.

She was from the Liv Healthy Team, correct?

Yes, I believe so.

Great. And did she offer you other suggestions to help you with your health?

Oh, all the time.
What was really amazing was just having one person who was kind of following me
on this journey,
and I even told her at the time that I felt like we were just kind of in it
together and it’s not something that I had ever had to do before this temporary
disability and this kind of entire situation.
So having someone who was always there that I could ask questions of was
amazing.

Yeah, it’s nice to have such a strong advocate for sure.

I think you also mentioned in a previous conversation that you used the benefit
called Second md. Can you tell me about that experience?

Sure.
So one of the six hospitalizations I had that year involved the
removal of the gallbladder itself. And when they removed it,
they always do histological tests on the tissue.
And my gastro was saying that it looked like there were some
abnormal cells and this could be indicative of cancer
down the line.
And my dad had just passed away from liver cancer around a year ago.
So I was a little concerned.
And the second MD was a good option of getting a second opinion just to
see how concerned should I be about abnormal cells and whether or not
there were other interpretations about what it could be.

That’s great. So that helped you make decisions going forward?

Yes,
and I ended up following up with an oncologist and turns out it wasn’t anything
to be worried about, but it’s still something just to keep an eye on.

Sure, definitely.

I imagine with all this medical treatment that you got,
the expenses got pretty high.

Oh,
it would’ve been astronomical without the Costco insurance and all the benefits
there. I mean, it’s been absolutely amazing.

You’ve been through quite an ordeal, Henry,
and I’m so glad you got the care you needed and are feeling better now.
I wanted to talk a little bit about the Wellbeing website. Each month,
Costco posts new information on different health topics on wit pledge.com.
This month is all about moving safely.
There’s also information about different resources.
It’s a great place to explore your benefits. Henry,
have you had a chance to visit wid pledge.com? Oh yeah.
Anything from your last couple of times there?

So when I was looking on the website,
what really kind of surprised me was I saw that there was a second wellbeing
challenge that was focused on financial wellbeing,
asking you to keep track of your spending for a month.
I think it was one of the challenges and another challenge was increasing your
contribution to the retirement fund by 1%.
And I remember thinking that was kind of interesting just because usually when
you think health and wellbeing, it’s very medical.
And what Costco seems to have realized is that it’s not
an isolated thing.
I’m sure your financial wellbeing is going to affect your health and vice versa.

Are there any other benefits that you’re thinking about trying?

I actually received some information about the emotional
aspects.
Costco provides a program where you can have video
conferences with a therapist,
and it’s something that I didn’t take advantage of yet,
but I was thinking that I might down the line just because I think what I
realized during all those hospitalizations,
having Jeannie check in with me every couple of weeks was really
helpful,
even if she wasn’t there to provide some piece of information that I needed
about the temporary disability or some other form of coverage,
it was nice being able to talk to someone as you’re reeling from one medical
issue to another is that you don’t really have that time to
decompress and you might not want to kind of unload all
of this on someone in your life because I’m sure they’re going through their own
burdens with your medical issues.
So having someone there to kind of walk that journey with you and that you could
update and just kind of talk out the problems was really helpful for me.

One final question.

Let’s say a coworker comes up to you in the break room and asks you about your
benefits, what would you say to them?

I mean, I would tell them that this is hands down
the best package of insurance health benefits
that I have ever had in my entire life and that they really should take
advantage of it because it’s just been remarkable and I’ve had a lot
of bad medical experiences in my life,
so I was just really just struck by how amazing Costco’s
and the benefits have been. And the whole thing is it’s there for them.
There’s no reason not to take advantage of it. I mean, it can only help.

Well, that’s a great endorsement. Thank you.

Thank you so much for sharing your story and spending time with us.
We really appreciate it, Henry.

It was really my pleasure.

Until next time, stay well. Be safe. And remember,
we are in this together.