The media thinks it's funny, the fight over healthcare reform. Rick Sanchez was yukking it up, showing the various strident speeches from members of both parties. I guess he had a better day than mine. Or maybe he really does think it's funny, all of us prolies scrambling to survive. Maybe the view is different from that platform of privilege. I don't really care. All I know right now is that real people are dying because they lack access to health care. I watched as they buried one today.
Nadja was a friend and co-worker. She immigrated from Eastern Europe when she finished high school, bringing her widowed mother with her. She learned English, worked hard, earned two Master's Degrees. She fell in love, got married, had a child. Like me, she chose to homeschool that child, and that's where I first met her. She was amazingly strong, courageous, and smart. She was one of the most resourceful human beings I ever met; there was no challenge she was afraid to face, no obstacle that drove her to her knees. She was the first person I knew who used "freecycle", the most dedicated thrift shop maven imaginable.
Nadja was married to a very talented and many-degreed math teacher. During the Bush II years, his salary was slashed, and he found it harder and harder to find teaching positions. 18 months ago he was laid off. Nadja worked part time with me - no benefits of course. She was a dedicated afficionado of natural healing, but she did not disdain traditional medicine. She just couldn't afford it.
She knew she was having a problem. The clinic she went to - it was hard to get in and not really free - told her that she had endometriosis and an ovarian cyst. They recommended frequent scans to monitor it. She went as often as she could. But as their finances worsened, it was often a choice of paying the electricity bill or getting that scan.
Eventually, she was told that the situation was worsening and she needed laporascopic surgery. It took her weeks to find a surgeon who would take payments, and she had to go to a different state for the surgery. She left work the day before it saying she should be back in a few weeks - we'd get together then. I loved talking to her - she was one of those people who always believed things could get better, that there were solutions out there - it was a matter of looking hard enough.
She never came back. The "cyst" was a tumor; Nadja had Stage IV ovarian cancer and she lived 7 and a half months. She died in the hospital, in the arms of her 11 year old son and her husband. Today at the wake, her husband showed us the notes she'd written in her last days. She was intubated, could not speak, but she still had things to say. She wrote to her boy, saying, "Michael, I love you - forever. 11/17/09". She wrote a note to her husband telling him that her doctor had told her she might not survive the night but that she would be okay. She wrote about the mundane and the profound, in 2 and 3 sentence messages, in an increasingly shaky hand.
Her son kept hugging her, plucking flowers from the arrangements and putting them in her hands. Her husband looked literally ripped in half. Her elderly mother, who speaks little English, just wept.
For Nadja and for the millions of others dealing with the cruel joke that masquerades as a health care system, this is not a matter of amusement, not a political football. Would those who think it is change their views if they had to watch what I did today? Maybe not. But they would if they had to live it. If the Nadjas of this world cannot get health care access, neither should our congresspersons, nor our media elite. Only then will this suddenly become a true "crisis".
To my friend, z'chrona l'bracha. May your memory be for a blessing.