One Person's Story

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Lots of sturm und drang about healthcare reform has been flying around Washington and the blogosphere and the media and... well, it truly all comes down to this:

We need reform. Postponing. Delaying. Putting it off until everybody feels all nicey-nicey about what's in the bill just isn't going to cut it. I feel strongly about this. I know lots of my friends and fellow bloggers feel vehemently different.

But it's been six months...and I still remember the haunted faces of caregivers I got to know in Rochester at Mayo's hospital. How they each worried for their loved ones. How they dreaded the financial toll. I can't get that out of my mind. There but for the grace of God, for we had good insurance.

Big numbers get thrown around by the chatterers. Too big to absorb...the cost, the number who die uninsured... but how many live? In quiet desperation at the effort just to survive and the unrelenting anxiety of how to pay for treatments and medicines and meanwhile the vampires take their bites: profiteers whose coin is blood.

And then in the quiet of a stormy Saturday morning, a message on the phone. Call me. And it's a dear friend who needed me to know she hasn't been in touch lately because she has breast cancer. And surgery's next week and then....

One person has a story to tell at Josh's place, too. Please take time—our most precious commodity—to read what he has to say. Because time's a-wasting.

I'm not so cynical as Josh's editor's blog to call his commenter's words a "sob story." Nor my friend, because I know in my heart she will be fine. Nor myself and my own loss last summer and the people who had their own experiences to share along the way.

These aren't sob stories. Nor spin. Nor posturing. Save that for the vampire profiteers and politicians and ghoul media enablers. These are our life stories. And just as hard as we fight, for ourselves, for our loved ones for survival, so, too, we must fight for healthcare reform whatever it takes to get it done.

Because the alternative is death.
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

UPDATE: For more on the battle, the marathon, for healthcare reform, read emptywheel's Some Thoughts on Healthcare and digby's suggestion that Someone Tell Tweety

Health Matters...and so does Science

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This morning, I came across one of those beautiful reasons why the blogosphere matters...about far more than politics, or sports, or whatever special interest may usually send you its cyber-siren song.

This morning at DailyKos, the rescue rangers had highlighted a posting by JohnnyRook, a tribute to his wife and caregiver on the occasion of their anniversary. The posting is a poignant one, worth reading all for itself.

But in the reading, I was stopped in my scrolling tracks by one commenter's mention about the possible impact of treating leukemia with methadone. Being part of a leukemia survivor/endurer family, this kind of thing perks up my antennae.

And since google alerts hadn't yet sent this info direct to my inbox, I did a fast shuffle into google to learn more.

Would that all the health-related news from the blogosphere were so uplifting. However, a recent link from reader Melody reminded me that there are sharks in the healthcare industry and its environs as well. Not that that should come as any surprise, since there seem to be so many sharks on the loose in every section and corner of our country these days. And no I don't mean the finny ones swimmin' in the waters of Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.

I put a mental curse on those folks each time I read in our tall timber weekly newspapers the small ads promoting a benefit dinner for an area resident going thru treatment...and it's usually for some form or other of cancer.

And then there's the word today that Bob Novak got dire news about his brain tumor. As did Senator Ted Kennedy in recent weeks. As a blog commenter I read earlier on another site observed, we wish Novak better than those on the right wished Senator Ted. For each we hope for healing, and courage, and serenity to face the days ahead.

Living with a cancer endurer, I know this is one curse you wish on nobody.

Special props to Joanie McCall of the Park Rapids MN community, who's outlasted her doctor's dire diagnosis for her brain cancer [unfortunately the PR MN paper doesn't seem to keep their stories accessible long enough to link this one].

Back full circle, my wish for you, visitor, is a healthy life, the sustained resource of the Internet to educate and inform you when you need it [as we did and do about the ongoing challenge of living with chronic lymphocytic leukemia], and the hope that the good guys will live long and prosper, and the scoundrels be hoist on their own petard...and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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Teddy's Surgery

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While the rest of us are bustling about our busy lives today, Senator Ted Kennedy will be on a surgeon's table for some six hours responding to the surgeon's questions as he undergoes a process meant to remove the tumor from his brain.

The surgeons and oncologists at Duke University face a daunting task. And our hopes and good wishes and prayers go out to Senator Kennedy, his family, and his medical team.

There is nothing about cancer that is easy. It is a dragon that shadows your days and nights from the first diagnosis. It it the great equalizer, knowing no boundary between rich and poor, young and old, black and white. But the quality of care may not be so egalitarian.

Senator Kennedy will have the finest of care, Duke's reputation is outstanding. As Senator John Edwards has noted about his wife, Elizabeth, his family have the best of care for her, too, where she receives medical care.

The network anchors recently announced they will be hosting a telethon to raise funds for cancer causes.

While the Bush Administration has cut cancer research over the past seven years.

A statement from Senator Kennedy says he is looking forward to getting through his treatment process so he can get back to the Senate and to doing everything he can for the election of Barack Obama.

You can't separate who you vote for from the everyday realities of your life. Right now, some Clinton supporters threaten to vote for the Republican if she doesn't get the nomination. I ask you, how can you vote for the party that takes away medical research; fights and obstructs against stem-cell research; stonewalls scientific reports when it can't edit and distort them into fitting their selfish policies; tears down education advancements; pours trillions of dollars into a botched and corrupt war of choice in Iraq....

Anyone tells you it doesn't matter who gets elected is lying.

It is a matter of life and death.

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UPDATE: Senator Kennedy's surgery completed in 3-1/2 hours. The surgeon, called a thought leader in the field of surgery on malignant gliomas, said the procedure today was "successful and accomplished our goals."

Be Your Own Advocate

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We've all heard the urging over and over to be your own advocate when it comes to health care. To read the fine print, to ask questions, to take notes in the doctor's office, to look things up.

Well, yesterday's 60 Minutes caught our ear because one man, who also travels the leukemia road as our Sunshine family does, decided to go a step further. He's invented a radiowave machine that kills cancer cells.

John Kanzius may not live long enough to see his machine routinely used for cancer treatments, but it's already caught the attention of cancer doctors who are carrying forward his research.

With all the fluff and flat-out crapola that passes for news and information these days, we want to take a moment out of "bitterness" and orange juice and elitism and salute a man who shows what really matters.

Like the farmer who plants walnut trees that will be harvested long after his own passing, John Kanzius is planting a seed of progress. His selfless gift gives hope and inspiration. He lives the example of the best of using one's intellect and imagination. And we wish him long years of good health.

In times when science is kicked around like a football, subject to scorn and derision from the Luddites who want to take progress back to—well, I would say the Stone Age, but we're learning more and more that centuries ago men were performing scientific tasks that became lost in antiquity and had to be totally reinvented. [Check out the History Channel for excellent examples.]

Imagine how far we could have come if so-called civilization had focused on bettering the whole rather than dividing and conquering and mocking and warmongering the planet. Could be, that's the real Revelation.

Salute and thank you to CBS... at least you're gettin' one thing right.

Health. Care.

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The passion Elizabeth Edwards brings to the subject of health care is undeniable. Many of us share that passion because, like her, our family travels the cancer road. And in so doing, we experience, either directly or through our loved ones, the exquisite toll that road extracts.

We know what it means to deal with health care providers, even at their best, and with the frustrations of insurance coverages, or lack of coverages. And even the Rube Goldbergian state of the business side of the health care industry these days. Makes those Hillary Care mocking diagrams the Republicans pushed back then look like a straight-line walk in the park compared to the cumbersome and convoluted and maze-like contraptions the Republican-controlled Congress provided over the years since 1994.

So I follow with interest Elizabeth's take on the candidates and their health care programs.

Without getting into the fine points of those programs, however, because me weary head spins in the doing, I'm of a mind that style matters as much as substance in this argument. Here's why.

No health care program at all will be effective if it can't get through the Congress. Carl Bernstein addressed this issue on the Imus Show this morning [no link avail yet] in making the point that the health care plan—and the way Hillary shepherded it—not only did not pass muster with the Congress, it was also, in Bernstein's opinion, a significant if not the major, cause of the Democrats' loss of the Congress to Newtster and the Republicans.

I think we're seeing deja voodoo all over again in this campaign. All the detailed nuanced planning in the world won't make a hill of beans of difference if it can't be passed. And that's where I may be diverging from Elizabeth Edwards' take. Because I'm seein' same ol', same ol' from 2/3 of the remaining candidates.

My personal candidate support is not based on a single issue, important as it is, but the overarching arc of what each of the three remaining candidates offer in terms of style as well as substance. Because it's going to take style—a cool kind of style, methinks—to lead the people in getting this car that is America back out of the muck in the ditch, cleaned up, tuned up, and back on the road.

And there's only one place I'm seeing that right now, with a candidate who coolly tells his audience that he has expectations of them, as well as himself. A candidate who refuses to let his opponents or the media frame him as a single issue candidate. And the audience responds to that, because they—we—are ready for expectations. Young and old, we're not cowering under our school desks anymore, and we're ready to do better.

The Power of One...and Many

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Ever since ABC News named our family—well, okay, our entire state of North Dakota—their Persons of the Week earlier this winter, I’ve been paying closer attention to their other weekly choices.

North Dakota got the honors because as a multitude we rose up to protest National Geographic’s depiction of the state in its January issue…bleak, empty, pretty much dying out. Wrong-o! And a lot of people learned it’s not acceptable to insult a whole state like that.

This week, ABC named one 20-year-old kid, a college student, as their Person of the Week, and some person he is. When Josh Sommer learned he had a rare form of cancer, he didn’t accept the status quo, he didn’t say nothing can be done, he didn’t say well the doctors aren’t giving me any hope. Nope. He organized his own foundation. He set up a conference attracting global experts. He does his own research.

He’s been told he has a seven year survival window, but he didn’t let that slow him down. If anything, it made him all the more determined. Fate has lent a hand. The University he chose for study before he had any idea of the cancer he would face is Duke University, renowned for its cancer research. We wish him the best.

The power of one is sometimes beyond the ability of us ordinary ol’ folk to imagine.

There seems to be a lot of that going around the political world as well. Where the power of one to move multitudes is something people are still coming to grips with.

For his opponents, that power to inspire, to lead, is a thorn in their sides that they choose to mock and ridicule. The status quo of small thinking and old ways permeates their campaign body like a cancer, eating away. Talk of “honor, I honor” becomes action of dishonor…fearmongering, petulance.

The media’s body of work is being eaten at, too, by a cancer, as they egg on the one to diminish himself, betray his principles, become just like the rest of us…. Look at Dukakis, they say, or Kerry, or McGovern, or….

I prefer he look at those who seem to be inspiring him now. Not holier-than-thou Very Important Pundits. Not his political opponents. Not losers of the past. But leaders who have transcended small thinking and small acts.

Some would say Jesus is their most trusted advisor and then go and dance with the devil, while America and Iraq are overtaken by the cancers of greed and hubris and real people die, and suffer grievous injuries, and lose their homes and their livelihoods and their hope.

One says hope is still out there, but it will take all of us working together committed to change, unwavering no matter how big the challenges. There’s a multitude of people listening to that. Responding to that.

Whether it’s one college kid who inspires far beyond his narrow slice of a medical circumstance. Or one U.S. Senator who inspires a multitude of college kids and far beyond to multitudes of every demographic group you can name, the determination not to accept the status quo is unmistakable.

Because we see the body politic today, and it is riddled with cancers of corruption, and cronyism and ideology, hubris, greed, and stubbornness, and too much tap-dancin’… and we cannot, will not accept that it must be so.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you,

then they fight you, then you win.”

Mahatma Gandhi