Self-indulgent musings of a social retard.

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07.08.02 @ 4:30 p.m.

The Fourth of July started out well. It was a beautiful day, not the usual summer fog. Bink the dog and I went to Dolores park to watch the San Francisco Mime Troupe's latest show. Good stuff, as usual.

After the show, I ran into an old roommate. She's been living in Arcata, getting an MFA at Humboldt State. I asked about another roommate of ours, someone I should have kept better track of because our kids were friends when they were little. They went to pre-school together, but after her daughter left for kindergarten, it was harder to get together for some reason. Anyway, it turns out that our other rooommate was diagnosed with breast cancer a year and a half ago. She's had a mastectomy. She's undergone several rounds of chemotherapy. The cancer has mestasticized (sp?) to her bones, and she also has a tumor on her lungs. She's 39 years old. She was diagnosed at 37. Or, I should say, mis-diagnosed at 37. She went to the free women's clinic complaining of pain and swelling in her arm pit. Because of her youth, she was told not to worry about it, and that she didn't need a mammogram. When she went back six months later, she was told "You should've come in sooner." She told them to look at her records. Ta-da! She had come in earlier. She was given a referral to an oncologist. The kicker? I used to work at that fucking clinic.

Cancers are particularly agressive in younger people, because our cells divide more quickly. She is now faced with dying within a year. She is a single parent of an 8 year old girl.

What do you do when you're poor? When you're not a citizen? You get not so good care, that's what.

Who knows? Maybe if they'd caught the cancer 6 months earlier, she'd still be in the same place. But what keeps nagging at me is the thought that maybe she wouldn't. Six months can be quite a while in cancer time.

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