Cathy Seipp, one of those contrarian non-smokers with lung cancer, has died at 49, five years after her diagnosis gave her only six months. Though current postings at her blog are filled with sympathy from myriad friends she never met (I met her once in 2005, so there!), her archives are a great place to discover her unique, funny, and well-reasoned perspective on LA life and media. Besides, it would be the coolest twenty-first century-style tribute to hoist her to number one on Technorati today. She was already ahead of Paris Hilton by yesterday. Click a link and share the love. Also, consider the horrible fate of lung cancer victims- frequently stigmatized as morally-corrupt smokers- though Cathy never was (nor was Dana Reeve) and always lived a healthy lifestyle. This disease is aggressive, painful, and greedy to kill. Once my great aunt Katherine was diagnosed, they simply tranked her to the gills on morphine, and she never saw her own bed or home again. I hope Cathy is pleased to know that she's brought today's spotlight to this disease that's quite underfunded and studied compared to its virulence and the number of yearly fatalities it causes. Maybe the needle will move a little today.
Cathy's World
Update March 23: Cathy's Number 1! Take that you vapid celebritards. Back seat to a real human. Shine on.
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3 comments:
She certainly does deserve her props...but she and I are philosophically politically opposed. I salute her for her work with the Lung Cancer Alliance.
Lung cancer definitely needs to be more seriously explored, and I think it will be, now that more non-smokers are being affected. Us smokers and ex-smokers can go to hell, I guess.
I'm pretty sure that any cure developed for "virtuous and deserving" non-smokers will be usable for former and current smokers, too, so I doubt there's a go-to-hell medical segregation at work, regardless of the "dirtiness" of anyone's habits or souls.
I want to doubt it...LOL! I remember reading a long time ago, before the internets, of a surgical team's grudging transplantation of a liver into an alcoholic. They'd have rather given the liver to someone who "deserved" it. Did their work on the patient suffer somewhat for their attitude?
I'm cynical, always, about the medical establishment's real urgency in curing cancer. There's a hell of a lot of money made treating it.
The successful treatment of my mother's breast cancer was incredibly expensive, and paid for by medicare. What would happen if cancer was cured? All this money would go away. Yes, I'm that cynical.
Jah bless anyone with any type of cancer, or liver disease, no matter how they were acquired....they need empathy, not judgement.
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