So, I got home from work today and got a call from my old job. When I say old job I am talking 2, almost 3 years ago now. I was very close to the people I worked with because I worked there for almost 5 years. It was not that odd to get a call from my old manager. The news I heard today...depressing.
More on the flipside
A woman in her mid-fifties died yesterday afternoon. I worked very closely with her my whole time working at this place. She was funny. She was kind. She did everything possible to help others. She never really missed work. She stayed late so others wouldn't have to. She encouraged every endeavor I said I wanted to undertake. She developed breast cancer about a year ago.
This woman, I'll call her Kiki, lived in the ghetto of Chicago. She worked sometimes 60 hours a week at a small dry cleaners to pay the bills. She commuted to work for 40 minutes, on the bus in the blistering hot sun and the frigid cold. She traveled sometimes before the sun came up and sometimes well into the night.
Now, you're probably wondering what makes Kiki so special to anyone other than the people's lives she was directly involved in? Well, for starters her health insurance was minimal. She had a pain in her knee for as long as I have known her. The "doctors" at the clinic never really gave her a diagnosis. They just gave her pain medication. By the time they caught her breast cancer it was too well developed to do much about it. She had been showing symptoms for well over a year.
The chemical used to clean clothing, "perc", has been found to cause many different forms of cancer. Kiki worked around this chemical for the last two decades of her life. Imagine what happens to the people who spend their whole lives around it. I remember when one of the drycleaners got fired because he spilled a vat of it down the drain. The EPA was called by "an anonymous customer" (also known as the manager of the "assembly department" Whitney S). The water lines to peoples homes had to be turned off. The owner was fined hundreds of dollars. We were shut down for three days. Not enough if you ask me.
The men and women that work in places like this cannot afford the healthcare they need. They can barely afford the three basic necessities of life: food, shelter, and clothing. I was constantly buying groceries for some of the older people I worked with. Many of them turned to drugs like cocaine because it was fairly cheap and it supressed your appetite. When people like Kiki get sick they can truly only hope for the best. Otherwise, they end up coming to terms with their death well before it occurs.
I know most of you support a national healthcare plan, but it never hurts to have more examples of why we need one. Also, many of you are business women and men. Try to buy clothes you do not need to dry clean. I'll give you a helpful secret: dry cleaners don't exactly dry clean everything they get. If you wash dry clean only clothes the only real difference is that they will last a few more years. So, if you keep up with fashion you shouldn't mind anyways. Furthermore, we use "Oxyclean" to remove most stains. That is now available in stores.
Think of people like Kiki and try to give others in similiar situations a little help. Give your old clothes to good will. Donate food. Don't use your local drycleaners (the chances of them losing your order are about 50-50). Most importantly, do everything you can to get every single person in America good healthcare. The same healthcare you want for your families.