Trying to Find Perspective

I’ve struggled a little bit with how to try to put some of this into perspective. It’s overwhelming, isn’t it? To think of an actual GLOBAL PANDEMIC? One where thousands have already lost their lives in just a few short months, and where we are doing things we’d never imagined to try to keep the US lives lost to under a quarter of a million people in the next few months?

If you know me at all, you know I’m an advocate for pediatric cancer research. The idea that an entire classroom and then some of kids faced a diagnosis of cancer each day always was stunning to me. 43 children each day are diagnosed with some form of cancer. 12% of them, or 5-6 kids each day, do not survive. 60% have long term, lasting effects – infertility, hearing loss, heart failure, secondary cancers. That’s about 26 of those kids.

Our first confirmed US case of Covid-19 was January 21^st, in Washington State. As I write this, we have statistics, as shaky as they may be, through April 7^th. The US showed 400,335 cases.

10 days in January.

29 days in February.

31 days in March.

7 days in April.

That’s 77 days. 

That’s 3,311 pediatric cancer cases, which so many of us find abhorrent.

It is four hundred thousand cases of Covid-19.

Deaths in the US through April 7^th? 12,841. That is nearly four times the pediatric cancer diagnosis numbers.

Understand that this is in no way a competition, I’m not stepping away from the pediatric cancer fight. What I’m trying to do is help us collectively understand that we have a responsibility to our friends, our neighbors, our loved ones. If we knew that taking some time and limiting our activities would protect our kids from cancer, we’d do it. Shoot, for kids who did stem cell transplants, THEY DID THIS! With a stem cell transplant, they destroy the immune system completely, and rebuild it. As part of that protocol, there is a period of around 100 days of isolation. Social distancing on steroids.

We have the ability to do that for each other right now. We have the ability to protect someone we know, someone we love, from an illness that could kill them. Could put them in the ICU, intubated, sedated and alone.

Those same kids, the ones who fought the cancer and survived that? They are higher risk. Your parents or grandparents are higher risk. My husband is higher risk. More likely to be that one who is intubated, sedated, alone in an ICU. 

Yes, I know people are beating this thing. That’s AMAZING, and I’m so thankful for that. But this isn’t the flu, (In the last five years, Indiana has averaged 154 flu deaths each year, with flu season generally about 7 months long. In only a month, 173 Hoosiers have died from COVID-19, with many more expected.) It’s not a cold. You might be young and healthy and not high-risk, but you can be a carrier, and unwittingly pass it along to someone who is higher risk.

Is it worth it?

I guess, if it is, if you want to still behave as if all of this is normal, and that the scientists and the media are blowing it out of proportion, and that we’re just stirring up mass hysteria, I can’t fix that. We can call it a difference of opinion, but I hope your opinion doesn’t kill someone.

"You won't ever know if what you did personally helped. That's the nature of public health. 

When the best way to save lives is to prevent a disease rather than treat it, 

success often looks like an overreaction."

Credit to Mari Armstrong-Hough

via Twitter, Mar 11, 2020.

That day that I Louis C. K.ed

I shared this on my Facebook the other day. When I did so, I did while mostly thinking about it from the side of the person who was hurt, not the person who had committed the hurt. 

Yesterday, I had an interesting experience. I was volunteering at an event where I was selling programs. At one point, I had 3 people approach me nearly simultaneously. From directly in front of me, a gentleman approached, and there was a woman right behind him. Mere moments later, as the first man reached into his pocket for money, a second man approached on my right, asking if I had singles to be able to make change for his $2 bills. (Programs are $5.) I did not, as I had not received any singles so far in the day, but the man already pulling out his cash said he had a couple of singles, and would be able to help the man to my right. 

The man in front of me, with the woman on his heels, purchased two programs, handed two one dollar bills to the man on the right, took the two dollar bill, and walked away. The man on my right then handed me one of the singles and two two dollar bills, took his program, and walked away. Then the woman stepped up.

"How much?" she asked. 

"Five dollars." I replied.

"Well, you just lost a sale. I was here before that man, you should have waited on me first. Stop giving preferential treatment to men." 

I had begun to interject with an "I'm sorry" - you see, I had thought she was with the first gentleman. She wasn't interested, however, and walked away. 

I was left a little dumbfounded. I certainly had not intended any slight, and there was only a few seconds between the first man walking away and the second walking away. Less than 10 seconds. I didn't view any of it as preferential treatment, as the first man and the second man held the bulk of conversation between themselves, while I waited to hand them their programs in exchange for the cash. Frankly, I was offended by her reaction. I'm standing alone with a cart full of programs (we usually have at least 2 or 3 of us together, but we were shorthanded, so I was flying solo) and three people come up within mere moments of one another. I'm making eye contact and responding to direct questions, smiling, and trying to be as helpful as I can, and it wasn't good enough for this woman who perceived my (volunteer!) work as insufficient. 

As I thought back about the entire exchange, trying to determine what went wrong, this quote came back to my mind. She was hurt by my actions, or at least offended enough by them that she was going to stand there long enough to make her statement. While I didn't intentionally slight her, she felt slighted, and that was real enough to her. 

Was I responsible for her feelings? No, I don't think so, but that doesn't mean that her feelings were invalid. I hope that she felt better after scolding me, and I hope that just maybe she stopped at one of the other spots where the school kids who we are selling the programs to support were standing and bought one from them. 

Gold with Envy

I was never a girl who was in to pink anyway. These days, I have to really fight to not be bitter about it.

I don’t begrudge them their month. I’m even continually impressed by how many organizations step up and promote the pink.

It crushes me, however, to watch it push into September.

September is for the kids.

September is gold.

Where are those organizations when the kids are involved? Why isn’t my soup can gold, and why aren’t  my favorite receiver’s gloves gold, and where are the gold ribbon displays at the grocery, and the convenience store, and, well, dammit, where is the gold?

I see it here and there, in part because I am looking. Because much of my social network is looking, and we share the images. We celebrate the businesses that support the kids that are fighting. We hunt it out, the gold.

The pink? It’s everywhere. My emails are full of it, my stores are flooded with it. They’ve worked hard for that, and I know we all know someone who has been touched by breast cancer, but I know so many who have been touched by pediatric cancer! I know how drastically underfunded research is where the kids are concerned. I know what the ramifications can be of the limited treatment options that exist for our kids. I’ve seen the young athlete battling his way back from a wheelchair to a walker. I’ve seen the aspiring singer suffer such dramatic hearing loss.  I’ve visited the grave of a little girl who spent more of her short 10 years on this earth fighting cancer than she did living without it.

So, I try to not be bitter, I know that cancer is hard for anyone, but I cannot help but want the gold to be as recognizable as the pink. For it to be as supported as the pink.

I at least want it to get to use its whole month, without being crowded out by the pink….

Pity Party

I’m having a bit of a pity party today. Part of me even has the audacity to feel guilty over my pity party, because really, in the grand scope of things, my stuff is pretty trivial.

But the “my” stuff isn’t really “my” stuff at all. It’s bigger than me, and not something I have a lot of control over, or say in. I’m just along for the ride, and right now the ride SUCKS.

So many of my friends are hurting over so many different things. Last week involved 2 different kids being diagnosed with cancer. This week includes some big changes where a number of my friends work. There are huge, scary, lingering unknowns out there for all of these folks, and I’m hurting and frightened for them. I want to fix things, and make it all be better, and I can’t. And I hate it.

I want to look each of them in the eye and say “It’s all going to be fine!” but you can’t do that. You don’t know that. It’s scary, and overwhelming, and consuming me from the inside.

I’ve cried a lot today. I’ve also had a 3 Musketeers and a Cherry Coke. I’ve used about a million tissues, and undoubtedly look like something even the cat wouldn’t bring in. And none of that is going to change anything. None of that is going to help any of the people who are hurting, and who need some support, or answers, or whatever they need. It’s certainly not making me feel better. But it seems to be all that I can do right now. Cry.

So, I’m going to push on for now. That’s all I can do. Be thankful for the good in my life, do my best to hold up my friends, and push on. What else is there, right?

When Facebook is faceless…

I’m grasping for a little normalcy, which I think is funny because it’s tax season, and I don’t remember what normal looks like in tax season. I’ve been sick, which doesn’t happen often, certainly not to the level that I was this last few weeks. I’ve started my next two courses and have decided already that I may well be in over my head.

I decided today that I was going to take a little break from Facebook. Every time I logged in, I was inundated with posts about how stupid someone is for not agreeing with someone else’s position. On guns, abortion, Presidents, stem cell research, what basketball team is best, what Kardashian is prettier, whatever. People have lost the ability to recognize that each of us are different, and have different opinions, and that that’s ok. And frankly? People are mean about it, mostly because they’re hiding behind a computer screen.

And I’m over it.

I used to really enjoy logging in to Facebook – people shared a funny story, or a cute picture, or shared that they were getting engaged. Sometimes, people shared that they weren’t having a very good day, or that they had lost a loved one. I spent much of December asking for prayers and well-wishes for my own family as we lost my grandmother, and nearly lost my grandfather. We wished old friends  happy birthday, thanks to a friendly reminder in the corner. Even spirited debate was held in a friendly, conversational way.

Now? My feed is overflowing with negativity. And it’s crushing me.

And so I decided that was stupid. Why let something so silly leave me feeling so negative all the time? Why log in looking for something fun, light and joyful, and log off feeling angry and depressed?

So, for now, I’m done. I’ll be back, I’m confident of that. But not until I’m in a better place for it.

Do you have a Facebook? Have you ever felt like you just needed to walk away?

Scare Tactics

My friend Heather tweeted this :

All kids are going to die. Parent-Scare time. MT @latimes: Bounce house injuries rocket; child hurt every 46 minutes lat.ms/10YUnS4

— heather (@operopis) November 26, 2012

I went & read the article, and it talked about how injuries from bounce houses “skyrocketed” between 1995 and 2010. It did NOT  go into how many new bounce house related centers were opened, or how many new bounce houses were made available to rent by rental centers, or anything else to address the relationship between accessibility to the bounce house and injuries, because that might be helpful and even factual, and destroy the scare tactic aspect of the whole thing.

In a time where childhood obesity is at an all-time high, and our kids are difficult to peel away from televisions and video games, does it make sense for us to keep employing scare tactics against physical activities? When the media attempts to take a compilation of data from a scientific article (this one from Pediatrics, the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics) and make it into a money-generating news story, are they doing us any favors?

It’s stated, both in the actual journal article and in the LA Times piece, that guidelines for use are needed. This is partnered with a photo in the LA Times piece of someone holding a small child while jumping. The issue here will be that the one sentence in the Times article that talks about improving guidelines is overshadowed by “broken bones” and “one injured child every 46 minutes”. People will read this and think “death trap” instead of “I should make sure that my child(ren) is following the posted rules of use for this activity to reduce the risk of injury!”

Folks? Can I encourage you to encourage your kids to still bounce? To ride their bikes? To play like kids should play? Yes, there is every likelihood that at some point, your child will have an injury that requires medical attention. We all hope not, but it happens. Teach them to follow the rules, but encourage them to play with abandon. A broken arm is easier to heal than the long-term effects of obesity, and frankly, I’d rather have great memories of the bounce house than of a Happy Meal anyway.