Pink Ribbons and The Comprehensive Health Care Bill

The Comprehensive Health Care Bill is scary for a number of reasons. Currently, I am most afraid of the end of life issues it contains. Those of us who are young and in the midst of raising our own children spend little time thinking about end of life issues. The current bill contains language that will set up a system that requires the elderly to receive counseling every five years about end of life care. The hope is to expand the Hospice Care which provides care for those who are dying. The government hopes to save on costs of people nearing the end of life. Government is always a bureaucracy and will define end of life simply by a random age based on statistical information. If you are above this age, you will not be given treatment as an option; only hospice.

When I was a freshman in high school, a fellow student did a speech on Breast Cancer. Her mother had breast cancer, and she was resigned to the fact that she would have it as well. Her speech talked about preventative treatment and being aware of your risks. I thought this was at best, odd. What fourteen year old thinks about breast cancer at some far off point in the future? Since then, I have found that Breast Cancer Survivors are a unique club. I have seen pink ribbon tattoos on the ankles of fifty year olds, pink ribbons on bumper stickers, pink ribbons the size of a house hanging from office buildings. I have read stories of these survivors and have seen how they continue to support awareness and treatment funding long after they have been cured. Once in the club, you are always a member. If your mother joins, you join in spirit.

My mother was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. We believe we have gotten all the cancer, but she will begin preventative chemo-therapy tomorrow. She is seventy-four years old and in better shape than I am. It is unclear if she would be allowed treatment under the rules of the new bill. Her treatment will continue into her seventy-fifth year of life.

As my fourteen year old friend knew, breast cancer is nearly always hereditary. If your mother or grandmother had it, your chances are greatly increased. Will you get it at thirty, or forty, or seventy-four? If you do get it, do you want the government to determine whether or not you receive treatment? It is one of those diseases, that if a loved one has suffered from it, we are forced to think about our own future. There are other diseases of this nature as well.

I am all for dialogue about end of life care. I do think we need to look at pain management and creating an atmosphere of love and attention over the option of Euthanasia. I hope the elderly and sick will have many options for care rather than thinking they have a responsibility to kill themselves when they are no longer considered productive. I do not think rejecting treatment for yourself is wrong. I think all treatment should be a risk/benefit analysis. But it is one of the most personal decisions a person can make. Quality of life is one of the most subjective things in existence. Some of us are wired to want to live at any cost under any circumstances. Others see death as a welcomed friend. I have seen rewiring based on circumstance and pain but never on a magic birthday.

So, if you are in the Breast Cancer Club or your mother was or your daughter may be, think twice. If you are a survivor of any age, do you want other women to be denied whatever treatment they wish to undergo? What age guarantees a woman should surrender the battle and let the cancer win? For every woman who loses the battle, those in the club mourn. For every success story, the club celebrates the victory. We respect personal choice with regard to treatment, but for the government to deny treatment to one of us should enrage all of us.

If the Comprehensive Health Care Bill should become law, be prepared to mourn more of our fallen sisters and to be enraged.