On Consequences and Cancer

This week, I finally got to take a genuinely deep breath, one I've been holding for four years. And not a day too soon. Tomorrow, November 9, is the third anniversary of my metastatic lung cancer diagnosis. That's right; one year after our last presidential election, the outcome of which I thought was one of the worst things that had ever happened, I got even worse news. I—a non-smoking, kale-eating, yoga-practicing, peace-loving, 54-year-old healthy woman—had (and still have) late stage lung cancer. There are things worse than President #45.

Today, I am breathing more easily both literally and figuratively. Thanks to excellent care and cutting- edge treatment, my most recent scans show that the very rare form of lung cancer I have is currently stable. And thanks to what I consider to be a hopeful election, I am less fearful about my ability to continue to access great health care here in America.

Americans go to the polls in their own self-interest. When they step into the voting booth, they take with them their parents and grandparents, along with their kids. They take their work, their health, their schooling. They vote with their gender, their race, their age. They bring their religion and/or other ideologies that they probably inherited from their parents. They take their wallets and houses and communities. They take whatever priorities they have and vote for the people they think will best address them.

I voted for myself. I voted for my cancer. So I couldn't vote for the candidate who scoffs at science and scientists, who has allowed a pandemic to rage, unabated, and who, for four years, promised "beautiful" health care reform that never showed, and instead, gutted the plan we already had. I couldn't support an administration that cut funding to important health care institutions and agencies, like the National Cancer Institute. Instead, I voted for a candidate who supports universal access to affordable health care, and who, before he ran for office, ran a cancer foundation to honor his son who died of brain cancer, a candidate who understands that the answers to solving our greatest public health crises are found in science and reason, not hot and paranoid politics.

I am a person of faith who tries, every day, with varying degrees of success, to be compassionate. So I voted for the candidate who went to Mass and then prayed at the graves of his dead children and wife on election day. I didn't vote for the guy who held a Bible upside down for a photo op in a churchyard where resting protesters were teargassed and driven violently away.

I am a person of small means, economically speaking. I voted for the candidate who grew up in a working class community and understands that struggle, not for the one born with the silver spoon.

I have friends and family members of all races. One of my closest friends is blind. I have so many friends in the LGBTQ+ community, and family members who are trans and gay. I have friends and former students who are Dreamers. I come from a family of immigrants. I couldn't vote for the candidate who denies the vulnerable protection and justice, who calls them criminals and thugs.

I am a writer and poet. I couldn't vote for the candidate who doesn't read, who doesn't love poetry and art and good music, who butchers language with hateful rhetoric. And who doesn't like dogs. So I voted for the guy who quotes Seamus Heaney, who has two big dogs, and who married an English teacher who isn't, thank goodness, a supermodel.

Elections have consequences. I like my chances with this guy.