Still Plugging Away

Yes, despair no longer reigns, even though I'm still plenty P.O.'d. Just sent off another e-mail in support of single-payer health care to the whole gamut: the Prez, my Senators, my Congress critter (as Jim Hightower so endearingly calls them -- mine is a rabid right-winger, thanks to Republican gerrymandering of my state which deprives our heavily Democratic city of a rep who is in tune with our beliefs), and more. So, still plugging away. Nor do I intend to desist.

Like Rachel Maddow (nice to do something just like my idol), who has missed two days' work due to a bug, I have been awfully sick for the past four days and am just crawling out from under my rock. A long-standing but not too debilitating (and, unfortunately, constantly repeating) illness was joined by, as my doctor put it Monday morning, an "opportunistic virus" that rocketed me to 102 degrees plus of fever for much of the weekend, complete with chills, sweats, aches -- bleah. Fortunately it burned itself out in less than 48 hours, but it left me very wiped out and the infection has now decided to enter the "cough your lungs out" phase, which means it's coming to an end but after twenty minutes of non-stop coughing, you feel like YOU are coming to an end. And that unhappy circumstance recurs about once every hour and a half, with smaller coughing jags interspersed.

Nonetheless, here I am at my favorite cafe getting ready for a real writing stint on the book, first one in three days plus. So I bid you a fond farewell for now, hope you (anyone who may be reading this) are also plugging away at your representatives at all levels in support of decent, humane, moral and, to top it all off, cheaper health care for all Americans. I haven't given up hope yet. Hail and farewell to Senator Ted Kennedy, whom we will sorely miss on this front, and let us hope his memory will not be dishonored by a patchwork of euphemistic nonsense that does nothing to curb insurance, health care and pharmaceutical corporations' greed or really fix this broken mess that bankrupts you for getting ill if you're not a multi-millionaire. I just read in our local paper that a long-time acquaintance, who has Parkinson's disease, is in danger of being wiped out financially by the cost of her medication alone. This woman has fought for women's rights and other good causes staunchly her whole life long and may now be reduced to abject poverty just because her body has thrown her a whammy. Which is, by any decent standard, plain old WRONG.

Which leaves me to consider: what if my 48-hour bug had been a harbinger of something long-term or permanent? What if I weren't a heterosexual married to someone with a secure job that offers a halfway decent health plan? What if this had been the beginning of not only a terrifying descent into helplessness, but an equally if not more terrifying descent into penury?

Provides me with some real motivation to keep writing, calling and fuming.

More soon from
Sully