There are probably a handful of people around here who remember me. Some time ago, I gave a good college try at a weekly column about epidemic plant and animal disease. I had plans for a series of diaries to give Kossacks from non-technical backgrounds a leg up when reading science-based news stories (or even academic papers!). I'm sorry that I haven't had the time to continue writing for this community. I've had some other things taking up a good share of my time lately.
Including a young woman, who I love very much. Which is what brings me here, to do what I thought I would never do, and write a diary that's not about science at all, but about something personal. You see, she and I don't discuss politics. She doesn't take part in the process. It leaves her be, she leaves it be. And that's fine. I suspect we might not always be on the same side of the fence, and there are much more important things to do in life than to bicker with the people you love about our broken excuse for political process, anyway. Life's too short for that.
Especially for us. Because, slowly but inexorably, she is dying.
And now, the politics isn't leaving her be.
You see, I'd known this woman for years. She dated one of my ex-roommates for a little while. We were friends, but hardly close. She had a lot of things haunting her from her past. And we all knew that she sometimes wasn't feeling the best. But she didn't have money for good medical care, and the bad medical care she got missed what should have been obvious. When she finally got the diagnosis, it was too late. Breast cancer. Stage 4. Metastases in her vertebrae and her liver. If they had caught it in time ... but they didn't. When I last saw her then, she could barely walk. She patched things up with her all-but-estranged parents so that she could go home to die.
Except she's a fighter, and she didn't. The number of people with her disease profile who have seen a complete remission can be counted on my fingers, and she's not one of them. Barring accident or unrelated illness, this cancer will be what kills her. But she's beaten 1-in-7 odds to pull through the worst times, when she couldn't stand without assistance. She's several inches shorter than when we first met, because the cancer shattered two vertebrae and crushed the collagen between them. But she still walks, unassisted, every day. Probably more than I do, sometimes! Some days hurt. Other days she doesn't need to take the painkillers at all.
By chance, we met again, and fell in love. We might have three years, or five, or ten, or forever. Her condition is stable, at least for now, and those maudlin sorts of projections don't amount to a mote of dust when you've already been proving them wrong. But we don't talk about politics. We've got better things to do with our time. Except...
There's one cause she believes in. It's not supposed to be a political cause at all, really. Saving the lives of women? Trying to prevent what has happened to her from happening to anyone else's mother, lover, sister, daughter? That's not politics, that's being human. Eating Yoplait was easy, because she always loved yogurt. She's got a collection of pink socks. A couple of shirts. A pair, so help me, of pink pants. When there's a choice of products, she'll always buy the one whose manufacturer is partnered with Komen.
And now that organization has decided to score a political point on behalf of the least compassionate among us, at the cost of the life and health of women. Poor women. Sick women. Women like her. Women like the one I love. So now I have to do one of those things I said I would never do, and talk to her about a political issue. One that should never have been a political issue at all.
The people responsible for this -- Karen Handel and the other people who green-lit this horrible ideal at Komen, the people in Congress whose tarring and feathering of Planned Parenthood made this sound like a good idea to someone, and the raving right who wants to push their issue purity at the cost of actual human suffering -- are all monsters, the lot of them. I hold them all in utter contempt, because this whole notion is utterly contemptible. But beyond that, this decision makes me break a promise. And it is likely to make the person I care about most lose her faith and trust in something that has been important to her.
And for that, Karen Handel and all the rest of you, you have earned more than my contempt. You have earned my loathing, my hatred. I've made my donation to Planned Parenthood. And now I raise my voice about my private life, here in this public forum, so that others can share in my condemnation. And it is still less than what this deserves.