Last week, Liz Dickinson, a candidate for the Kansas State House lost her sister, who passed away from an auto-immune disorder. Liz is running in a high profile race, a race that in 2012, she as a candidate with very little money - but a lot of shoe leather, took a member of the Republican Leadership to task - and had unexpected results.
This time around, Liz is battling an unknown. A minister who has said he opposes the Department of Education, Opposes Medicaid Expansion, And at one point listed the "Freedom of Religion" (Turn Gay Away) bill at the top of his list.
I sat with Liz for lunch today, and she asked me to publish the below, a letter from Liz to the DailyKos community. WARNING: There are difficult issues (death) addressed below.
The Friday before last, around 8 pm, I got a call from my birth mom, Cindi. (I was adopted. My biological family consists of Cindi, Dana, Angela, Sarah and myself, Liz. Sarah and I were both given up for adoption at birth.) My sister, Sarah, is in the hospital, she says. She came in with blood in the urine and fifteen minutes after walking herself in to the ER she is coughing up and then vomiting blood. She tells me she can’t keep it together and hands the phone off to Lesa, my cousin, who was an EMT for 25 years. Although I tend to believe Cindi, I had hoped she was exaggerating in some way. Lesa very matter-of-fact tells me that Sarah’s on a bed machine that rotates her body- there’s only ten in the state of Texas, where she lives- the doctors put her into a chemically induced coma and on paralytics. They couldn’t get her lungs to stop bleeding so they did chemotherapy on her, which, apparently, is one way to get the bleeding to stop. I ask her if it could get any worse. Surely- I think, she’s hit rock bottom and there’s no way anything worse could happen. She doesn’t say anything. Could she die? I ask. Yes, she says.
I get that much and tell her that I don’t care if I have to sleep in my car but I’m coming to Texas. I left and drove through the night. I couldn’t see anything except lots of fog, lots of dead things on the side of the road. Luckily, no one was really on 69 South that night. It all seemed like a blur.
I didn’t know where in the Dallas area they were, so I called twenty minutes North of Allen. Cindi and Lesa are staying at Sarah’s apartment. Chrisitan, Sarah’s eleven year old son was staying at his grandparents’ house. I meet with Cindi and Sarah and we go to the ER, finally. I learn that overnight her kidneys have majorly declined and so has her liver. Her blood isn’t coagulating. That day she had a gushing nose bleed that wouldn’t stop. Bags of plasma, bags of blood are pumped into her. We ask the Doctors what on earth is happening to her body and they say they think its ANCA vasculitis/ Wegener’s granulamatosis, both autoimmune diseases. Our family is rampant with autoimmune diseases.
Sarah and I had both, the same week, about a year ago been told by Doctors at a clinic that they suspected lupus. Both of our tests came back inconclusive.
Doctors tell me they have to do dialysis or she will go septic, but they can’t do dialysis if her blood isn’t coagulating. We wait. She stabilizes. My birth Mom sends me to the ER to check out a vicious looking group of bumps to make sure I’m not dangerous to Sarah. I am told I have vitiligo and chigger bites. I’m sitting in the ER and waiting for my discharge papers when I hear over the intercom “Code Blue. ICU-2”. I jump up and head across the hall, passing the desk I tell the woman that I’m sorry, I NEED to see if that’s my sister. She asks me her name, she says that it is. I arrive and see the room swarming and they announce they are defibbing her. She comes back. A few minutes later they have to defib her again. And again. And the last time. I learn about crash carts and epi pins and chest compressions. I watched as they cut some sort of vein catheter into her upper thigh. It didn’t help. They did twenty minutes of chest compressions on her. The bed that they had put her in was a special kind of bed that rotated her – 18 hours facing the floor and 8 on her back with slow angling in between to keep her from getting a blood clot. That bed was about five feet off the floor, at least. Her body was so swollen she looked like she’d gained 60 pounds. So, when they had to do the chest compressions they had to get a step stool. I watched as about six different people loomed over my sister- trying to keep her heart going. Her body flounced each time. Cindi was red, and her face was soaking wet. Sarah’s husband had to leave just fifteen minutes before she passed to pick up their son, Christian from school.
When it was over it was like a little bomb went off and everyone went their separate ways. But, because I’d only been able to be in the room with her when other people were in the room with her, earlier, I decided to stay. They said they were excavating her so that Christian could see her.
I wish I hadn’t. I saw the transformation from life to death- even though she was in a coma previously- everything was different. They pulled out all the machines keeping her alive- and there was a room full of them. They pulled out the tubes- her tongue went back into her mouth… it had been hanging out, swollen and crusted with dried blood from her lungs. But, her hair was still crisp with the hair gel she had put in four days previously, before she came into the hospital. It was bright, yellow, crimped and had a crunchy feel when I had touched it earlier.
I will never forget how terrible I felt when I found out she was sick. She was always in and out of the ER. When I get ready to leave the hospital I find out that the lab tests didn’t confirm what they had thought. She had all the symptoms of Wegener’s/ ANCA vasculitis, but the labs didn’t make any sense.
Sarah got a lot of flak from people for not having “something definitively wrong”. Doctors would dismiss her as a hypochondriac. She was sometimes told it was psychosomatic. This is a common occurrence for those with autoimmune diseases. The average person with an autoimmune disease visits 6 different doctors and spends 5 years seeking the right medical care before they get a diagnosis. Autoimmune diseases, combined, kill more women each year than breast cancer. Without health insurance, Sarah didn’t stand a chance.
The only thing the Doctors could confirm was that, yes, 32 was far too young to die, and that it was some sort of autoimmune disease, in which the body attacks itself.
Christian is living with his grandparents and his Dad, Carlos, now. He built my sister, his Mom, a memorial in Mine Craft in the 48 hours following her death. At age 11, it was what he could do for the parent he had lost – a way he could always remember someone so close. All I can think about is how my sister deserved to have a name on what disease killed her and that if she were alive- and I said this in the ER- she’d be participating in a walk to cure (insert whatever her illness was) . She and I would raise awareness for autoimmune diseases and shine a light on the travesty of the lack of Medicaid expansion.
Sarah had been to the ER and the clinics frequently in Texas. She was limited to what was freely available to her. She was part of the uninsurable Medicaid Gap that Kansas and Texas sadly share. Not only was the decision to not expand Medicaid thoughtless, but as my sister learned at the age of 32, and as her 11 year old son, Christian learned, dangerous and life altering.
When I first ran for District 30 two years ago, I ran against a powerful opponent who had tons of resources. What I had was shoe leather. What I had was determination. What I had was an understanding that someone needed to be a voice for people like myself.
One of the most uncomfortable tasks of a politician running for office is call time – picking up that phone and asking someone to donate to your campaign. Small campaigns like mine, in a Kansas City Suburb are easy to overlook. It’s hard to explain to people why they should invest in my race. In 2012, my small campaign took a campaign with 10 times the money on hand to the brink in a race he never
xpected.
He didn’t expect it because he had know way to know how hard I would fight for it. When people donate into my campaign I give them my promise: I will work every day, relentlessly, to earn your support. The loss last week of my sister was tragic, devastating, and heartbreaking. I’ve struggled through the tears, the fears, and loss. But when I called Chris (tmservo433), I told him: I can’t let this happen to someone else. I just can’t. Today, I’m more determined then I have ever been to fight for people in my state to have representation. My opponent is firmly against Medicaid expansion, along with many other issues I care about. Chris had once told me that we are all “red state warriors” that we had to be willing to fight for our message, to believe in it. I will never, ever forget my sister – and how important she was in my life. While my nephew remembered her through Minecraft, I can remember her by fighting for what would have given her more days, more time, a chance.
So, yes, I’m asking for donations to a very small race. Unlike senators and governors, I’m not in a million dollar battle. But my race is important for them, because those candidates rely on me. They need me to hit the streets, to recruit walkers, to canvass and to spread the word. My district is a district that can be won.
In 2012, I shocked people because I simply outworked my opponent. This year, I won’t be underestimated. I’m committed to work twice as hard because it is what I believe. I’m asking in you to believe in me, in this race. $25 covers some real walking. For $50 or $100, we can walk for a weekend. The more we raise, the more noise I can make.
I’m not a candidate who disappears tomorrow – when I get to the statehouse, I will be a lion for issues we believe in – because to do any less isn’t in me.
My sister unfortunately won’t be the last to lose her battle because a state puts politics over lives. I, however, will not be quiet in defense of so many others out there. Join me.
I will admit, for me, Liz is the kind of candidate who represents everything I believe in a state house race. Her work in 2012 is the kind of thing campaign managers wish they had.. a candidate who spends their time every day reaching out to her district.
Why support a race like Liz? Her race is against an opponent who won't have large cash on hand. It's in a district that Paul Davis, Kelly Kultala, Jean Schodorf need to come in for them. She is the one who will be beating the streets - not just for herself, but for them as well.
It's easy to fall prey to the doom and gloom of the Democratic DCCC bulk email chain "we are all doomed". I'm going to tell you: instead of buying into doom, reward a Democrat who is working her ass off in a period of incredible family grief.
You can turn a house district over - a district that launched the Turn Gay Away, a district that launched anti-women legislation, with a woman who is dedicated to look after her district.
Think about the power of that message. So, this is it, my one big small budget race plead to Kossacks who read what I right: support Liz. $50 pays for a day of walking. $100 pays for a weekend of walking. You won't be just helping her, you'll be helping every democrat in her district - because that's the kind of worker that she is.
If I had lost a family member, I might be fired up - but I would struggle to get back out there. Liz, though, views it as a family obligation to do the right thing for her sister.
Help her. She deserves it.
Link to donate: http://lizdickinsondistrict30.org/...