Okay, so I said I wouldn’t write about politics, and here I am re-running something I wrote back in 2006, when I was doing my political column for a local weekly. Back then its was entitled “Personal Care.” In my own defense, it’s not intended to be political anymore; it’s my tribute to my father, because it recalls a time when my family had gone through a rough patch, and things were looking better.
So for the dads out there—mine, yours, Ketta B’s (who recently celebrated a milestone birthday and deserves to have many, many more), Kristy’s, and Big John, too: Happy Father’s Day to the men who made us.
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[Oct 18, 2006] My father had Kewpie Doll hair. A single snow-white shock that shot straight from the top of his head and then flopped over like a dollop of meringue. It would have been funny if the arrangement was the expression of a strange brand of male pattern baldness or the product of poor styling choices. Instead, it was the result of aggressive chemotherapy and radiation to combat a fist-sized cancer atop his heart and lungs.
Doctors streamed in and out, an impressive array of specialists to treat his cancer, his heart, his infections. They monitored his radiation schedule, his potassium levels, his weight, blood pressure, food intake, red blood cells, lymphocytes and plasma volume. There was no podiatrist involved, but I’m sure that, given enough time, one would have shown up just to see what all the fuss was about.
My mother stood by, all but living at Pali Momi, watching the man she had been married to for 50 years, the man with whom she had raised three children, now successful adults, whither.
Stand on Beretania Street in front of the State Capitol or on any corner in Washington, D.C., and say the words “health care.” You will draw a crowd. Politicians will make concerned clucking sounds, then wander away to huddle. They will declare themselves a caucus and hold hearings while waiting for the light to change. As they walk away, they will promise an in-depth report before lunch, one that will finally get to the bottom of this, you bet.
Health care advocates will tap you on the shoulder and begin a discourse on cost distribution, availability of services, and care levels. Doctors will chime in and produce charts and graphs illustrating inadequate reimbursement schedules before a seamless segue into patient relations, confidentiality and treatment plans. Someone at the back of the crowd will shout “socialized medicine,” and the gathering will suddenly disperse, eyes downcast, hands in pockets.
When you get right down to it, access to health care is not about politics or economics. It is personal. It is less about the world’s richest country failing to provide medical insurance to millions of its citizens than it is about the mother whose child’s eyesight continues to worsen because she cannot visit an ophthalmologist. It is about the daughter who worries about her father’s deepening cough because she cannot afford antibiotics. It is about an experience with the health care system that is not the benign fear of being stuck with a needle, but the deep dread that this condition could be serious, and the overwhelming frustration that comes with watching a loved one suffer.
We have reduced the fact that millions of Americans lack access to the treatment they need to a pat phrase: the health care crisis. We have allowed it to become an abstraction, a condition that afflicts a great amorphous “they” who cannot get the right job or become a member of the right group. And we will continue to nibble around the edges, continue to hold hearings and produce reports and argue about ephemera until we make the problem personal.
Here is an assignment for every elected official in the country: Find someone you love and spend thirty seconds just looking at them. And then ask yourself, “What would I do if….”
When I visit the house in Pearl City where I grew up, my father’s room is emptier now. The giant hospital bed has gone back to the medical rental company, along with the inscrutable machine that used to pump nutrition through his feeding tube. So he and I are more comfortable as we sit there and talk about the things we talk about: his recovery, my job, our plans to fire up his custom-built stainless steel smoker and make Portuguese sausage from scratch. Every minute is precious to me, and I think to him, too, although we never mention it. And I know that his cancer’s disappearance is attributable not only to the work of excellent doctors in professional facilities with amazing technology, but also to the fact that they were available to him.
Filed under: General
