A Sense of Purpose

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

I don’t know if you guys heard, I mean, I only tweeted about it and shared it on Facebook like ten thousand times with all caps freak-outs, but I was on Huffington Post for the first time last week. Am I bragging? Fuck yeah! It’s made me reflect a bit on this whole blogging thing, as has the whole rock-smoothing I’ve been doing. Pardon me while I navel-gaze even more than usual.

One of the biggest things that is now covered in lava and can’t be restored is my legal career. It’s pretty hard to hold down a job when you’re in treatment, and honestly, the stress of finding a work-life balance is more than my stress box can hold now that it’s got two big ass trauma rocks in it. I’m mourning that loss, in ways I didn’t realize I would when I decided to take a disability retirement. It was a part of my identity more than I realized. It feels really raw and for a while I felt kind of lost and alone about it.

Then I pulled my head out of my ass and realized two things. First off, shitloads of moms have to go through that loss of their career all the damn time in this country, because of the shitty way we treat parents in the workplace. I know other lawyers who left their careers to be parents. Daycare is fucking expensive, and even more so if you work in a job that requires long hours and doesn’t respect that the child care center closes at 6PM and charges $5 for every minute you’re late. The forced-from-your-career thing doesn’t just happen to lawyers either, it happens especially to low-wage workers for whom daycare literally costs more than they make. That makes me feel mad about losing my career instead of sad and alone, which is somehow easier.

Secondly, one of the things I got from being a lawyer was a sense of purpose. My work made me feel useful. There were many, many days when I just felt like a bureaucrat, but there were also days when I’d talk to a parent whose kid was struggling and they’d cry on the phone and tell me thank you for being the first person who listened and tried to help. Those days were fucking amazing, and I was missing them a lot. And then BAM! Huffington Post, y’all, and I had other bloggers sharing my words on their blogs and on Twitter. MY WORDS. And saying how my words made them feel less alone, or how they were going to approach their friend with cancer differently, or how moved they were.

Oh hello sense of purpose, it’s nice to see you again! Turns out you weren’t destroyed by the lava, you just floated downstream in it and landed someplace new. Damn, sense of purpose, you’re STRONG.

I don’t have a ton of readers here. The Hubs keeps joking about how his wife is “famous on the internet.” In fact, the other day he said, “Not only do I know someone who’s famous on the internet, I’ve SLEPT with someone who’s famous on the internet.” Famous isn’t really what this whole thing is about, though, I mean, I’m not monetizing this blog and casting a wide net isn’t my goal here. It’s about me sharing my thoughts, and hoping they mean something to someone else someday. That the someday turned out to be last week? Yeah, that felt fucking AMAZING.

Which is why I want to say thank you, to all of you who read this blog, and to all of you who’ve said such nice things about my writing. It means so much to me, and to my sense of self-worth, that what I have to say means something to you.

Smoothing the Rock

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

You guys, I love a good metaphor. They really help me understand things that might be otherwise totally beyond comprehension for me. When I first started this blog, I wrote a post about trauma and PTSD and the NICU, and the metaphor my therapist gave us for understanding how we process trauma and move forward. She talked about how trauma is like a rock, and you’re stuck with it, like, it’s superglued to your soul and you can’t get rid of it–its weight will be with you forever. But over time, you can smooth down its rough edges, so it doesn’t cut you up all the time anymore.

Well, I’ve been doing a lot of smoothing of my cancer rock lately. I hadn’t done much to try to sand it down until recently, because, frankly, my rock was still growing as I went through treatment. It was still a hot river of lava, oozing out from the volcano that is Mt. Cancer, still growing larger. But treatment is over, and Pele is quiet again, quiet enough for me to be able survey the new landscape and start the work of taking that rough, scratchy volcanic rock and polishing it down.

A big part of that for me is figuring out what damage the volcano has done, and what remains. There are little islands of my psyche that I keep finding that the lava didn’t destroy–my dark, inappropriate sense of humor; my begrudging respect for Ernest Hemingway; my love of all things Wes Anderson. A deep and abiding love for my husband. A hatred of injustice. My right breast. Those are the victories, the neighborhoods spared as the lava flowed down a ravine instead of into a cul de sac of homes.

But the many pieces of me that the lava destroyed must also be acknowledged, and then mourned, in order to allow me to rebuild. I can’t just live in those tiny islands that remain, as beautiful as they are. Smoothing down the scratchy volcanic rock is hard work, exhausting work, but necessary work.

How do I do it? Well, there’s a lot of allowing myself to feel again, which means a lot of tears. Water can cut through rock over time, and break it down into soil where new seeds can grow. I write about it, and I talk to friends, some who understand too well, and some I hope will never have to understand. Their listening, and yours, helps tremendously. And when I don’t have the energy to work on the rocks anymore, I retreat to one of my islands. I hug my kids. I re-read an old favorite book. I binge watch a TV show. I bake too many muffins and give them to the oncology nurses.

My hands are pretty torn up from all the rock-smoothing I’m doing right now. But in the end, I know it’ll be worth it. The new me that I will build from the islands that remain of the old me, and on the new landscape that has formed, will be different than the old me, but she’ll be just as lovely. And just as good at metaphors.

Cocktails with the Cult: Midnight Moon Apple Pie

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

No, this isn’t a sponsored post. You may have noticed by now that I don’t do sponsored posts. I just talk about the products I enjoy, because I’m a nice person.

A few months back, one of our neighbors brought us over a basket of awesome treats, including some amazing dulce de leche candies for the kids, and a jar of Apple Pie flavor Midnight Moon. Midnight Moon is a small batch distiller that makes moonshine. They make it from corn, and you can get it in just the plain old moonshine flavor, or you can get it like my jar of Apple Pie flavored moonshine, with juice (there’s several flavors, including blackberry, which I can’t wait to try) and spices. When I got the jar of Midnight Moon, I wasn’t at a place in treatment where I could drink alcohol, so I stuck the jar on our liquor shelf in our pantry and promptly forgot about it.

Fast forward to now. I’m cleaning out my pantry because there’s shit in there that expired in 2010 (oh hello old bag of pistachios that The Hubs bought and never ate because I stupidly put them in the back of the pantry where he’d never find them) and I come across the jar of Midnight Moon. And I thought, “MOONSHINE!” Because I’ve just finished binge-watching all of Boardwalk Empire (shit, you guys, that was a long series–it gets a little Scorcese for my taste the last couple episodes, but otherwise it’s good) and of course moonshine would go fantastic with Emily’s latest album, especially Big Butter and Egg Man.

Drinking straight moonshine sounded like it would be a bit much for me (I talk a big game, but seriously, I’m a lightweight) so I just started with a tiny sip to see what it tastes like. HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS, it’s like drinking apple pie! Loads of cinnamon and apple flavor, really delicious. On the other hand, that tiny sip plus the alcohol fumes coming off my glass was enough to make me buzzed. So then I then I thought, “Dude, I wonder what kind of delicious cocktail you could make with this?” Turns out, their website has recipes, so I don’t even need to make one up for you guys. Which is good, because I’m lazy. Thus, I give you a link to their recipes that you can make with their Apple Pie flavor. I’m partial to the Ginger Johnson, but let me know which one you like best in the comments. Cheers!

“Your hair looks great!”

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

When I was a senior in college, I went home for winter break and decided I wanted to cut off my long hair. It had been long for a few years, and I just wanted to do something different with it. So, I went to my mom’s salon and told the woman I wanted it cut short. The conversation went something like this:

 Me: I want to have it shorter.

Her: Super! You’d look great with a shoulder length style.

Me: No, I mean short.

Her: Like a chin length bob?

Me: No, short. Like, above my ears. You know, short.

Her: Did your boyfriend just dump you?

Me: …uh, no, I’ve been single for a while now.

Her: Are you flunking out of college?

Me: What?!?! No!

Her: Are you coming out or something?

Me: No, I’m straight, why do you keep asking me these questions?

Her: Because usually when people want to go from long to super short, it’s because they had something bad happen or they’re trying to make a big change in their lives.

Me: Wow. No, the only change I want to make is to the actual hair.

Her: Are you sure? Because, if I cut it that short, I mean, it’ll take a long time to grow back out.

Me: Yeah, I’m sure. Seriously, can I just have it cut now?

Honestly, I got asked less questions by the minister when I was getting married than when I got that haircut. People take their hair super seriously. There’s a lot of our identity tied up in it. Which is why it seems to be the thing that people focus on when cancer happens. I never really thought about it that much until my hair fell out during chemo last spring and suddenly my hair, or lack thereof, was a subject of conversation all the time.

I fucking hate my hair now. Because, it wasn’t my choice. I didn’t get asked 10,000 questions by my oncologist about whether I was sure I wanted to go bald. Instead, he just told me the cisplatin and etoposide would make it fall out. Cancer does that to you. A lot of the choices you used to get to make, you don’t anymore. Hair is just the most visible one of them.

I get zillions of compliments on my new do. Even when people know I hate it, and even when they know I don’t feel better when they talk about my hair, they seem to be unable to stop themselves from saying how awesome my hair looks. I get told I look great by practically everyone I know. I have been trying to understand why people seem to have such a need to comment on my appearance. Why do we tell the cancer patient “you look great”? Why do we celebrate when a cancer patient doesn’t look like Skellator?

I think it’s this: when you have cancer, or any other life-threatening or terminal illness, people want you to be well. They love you, and they don’t want you to die. So, they cling to every scrap of hope that you are going to beat your disease, and looking like you’re not dying gives them that hope.

But the truth is, you can’t tell that someone is going to be cured just by looking at them. Lots of us folks with metastatic cancer are living with our disease for now, and we look and feel OK for now, but the truth is that we’re going to die of this unless there is a miracle breakthrough in our now-shortened lifetimes. That our hair is growing back isn’t necessarily the sign of wellness people assume it is.

And for me, living with everyone else’s hope is hard. I’m living with my doctor’s hope that science will find a cure in time for me, when we don’t seem to be putting enough resources into research. I’m living with my husband’s hope that we’ll die together in a nursing home in our 90’s, when even the most optimistic estimates of my life span rule that out. I’m living with my former coworkers’ hope that I’ll get well and come back to work with them, when I am probably going to be too busy with doctor appointments the rest of my life to ever hold down a job. I’m watching everyone around me needing to hope I will be well and somehow beat this thing, but knowing I will let them down someday.

And so they say how great I look right now, and how cute my hair is, because they have hope. And inside I want to scream. I want to say, “Wake up! This is going to kill me. There is no silver lining to this. It’s not cute. Every bit of this is ugly. EVERY BIT OF THIS IS UGLY.” But I don’t say it, and instead, I make small talk about how lucky I am to have a nicely shaped head. And I hope it won’t be too hard for them when it turns out that looking good can’t cure your cancer.

Beth’s Classic Film Club: The Best Years of Our Lives

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

It’s coming up on Pearl Harbor Day again, and I’ve been thinking lately about our World War II veterans, who are getting pretty old nowadays. And so, this week seems like a good time to watch a movie that explores the lives of those veterans, and I can’t think of a better film on this subject than The Best Years of Our Lives.

This film was made in 1946, just one year after the war ended, and because of that, it’s able to express the reality of veterans coming home from the war. The plot centers around three men–an older sergeant with two mostly grown kids and a cushy job at a bank to return to; an officer who flew in B-17s as a bombardier, from a poor family who married in haste before he went off to war; and a sailor who lost both his hands on a ship in the Pacific and has come home to his family and a long-time girlfriend.

Fredric March won an Oscar for his potrayal of the sergeant, who is coping with his reentry into civilian life by drinking. A lot. Like, a LOT. It’s reminsicent of his performance in A Star Is Born (the original, not the Judy Garland version). His anger at the people who stayed behind, and their lack of compassion for those who fought, is very moving. Luckily he’s got Myrna Loy as a wife, because she is very sympathetic about why he’s drinking so much. The strength of their relationship is incredible, and the scene where he comes home to her makes me cry every time I see it.

Dana Andrews plays the bombardier, and I’ve always been fascinated by his character because his story is a lot like my grandfather’s. He was a bombardier too, and an officer, and from a non-wealthy family, and when he came home, he had trouble finding meaningful work, just like Andrews’ character. (Luckily my grandmother wasn’t at all like Andrews’ wife.) The shift from respected officer to soda jerk is not an easy one for Andrews, and on top of that, there’s the PTSD, which is explored in more detail than one would expect in a film made in the 1940’s.

Lately, though, I’m feeling a sort of kinship with the sailor, played by Harold Russell, who won two Oscars for this role. Russell actually did lose his hands during the war, in a training accident, and used the hooks you see in the film in real life. That he was not an actor before his accident is astounding to me, because he’s outstanding in this film. What gets me about his character is how frustrated he is about his loved ones not acting the way he wishes they’d act. Not that he seems to know how he’d like them to act–he just knows the way they’re acting makes him feel angry and isolated. Everything everyone says is wrong, and he doesn’t know what to say to them either. So he retreats from everyone, even though they want the best for him. It’s really easy to do that when you’re damaged, and as we see in the film, love and acceptance can help you overcome that urge and find a way to build your relationships back up again. In fact, that’s what all three characters show us–that love helps heal the wounds left by trauma. It’s a beautiful sentiment expressed in a movie filled with a huge amount raw emotion.

I’m also surprised every time I see this film at how timely it is. People who come home from war face the same struggles today that they did in 1946, and it’s important for those of us who stayed behind to understand those struggles, so we’re better able to help.

So, get some kleenex and check out The Best Years of Our Lives, and let me know what you think in the comments!

Explaining privilege to my white son

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

Here is the blog post where you decide I’m too political for you to follow me anymore. Before you go, I just wanted to say, it’s been real, y’all.

Oh wait, you’re still here? Then read on, brave souls, about how a white civil rights lawyer explains about privilege to her white son.

On the second night of the Ferguson protests, I sat down to watch the news with The Boy. Before I turned the TV on, I said to him, “Remember how we talked about how there was a young man killed by a police officer last summer? And people were really upset about it, because the young man didn’t have a gun or anything, but the policeman shot him anyway?” And he said, “Yeah, the kid wearing the hoodie?” And I said, “No, that was a different kid, and the man who shot him wasn’t a policeman. This one was a little older than the other kid.” And he said, “Oh,” in a sad voice.

Which is basically how I felt saying that sentence to him. Very, very sad that this keeps happening so much that my 7 year old is aware of multiple cases of unarmed black men being shot and killed.

And then I said, “Well, there was a jury that decided today that the police officer who shot this young man didn’t do anything wrong, so he isn’t going to have to go to court or anything. Or jail.” And The Boy got mad. He said, “That’s not right! That makes me so mad! That jury is stupid!” (Stupid is a pretty strong word for a 7 year old.)

Which is basically how I felt upon hearing the verdict too. Pretty mad, although, less surprised than The Boy. I’ve seen a lot of racist shit while practicing civil rights law, so it takes a lot to shock me now. But the absence of shock doesn’t mean the absence of anger. Injustice still makes me see red. Just like the people in Ferguson.

Then we talked about the community’s response to the verdict. I explained that there were a lot of people who thought it was unfair and stupid, and that many of those people had gone out to protest the verdict by walking in the streets, carrying signs, and using their voices. I also told him that there were some people, not most people, but a few, who were doing violent things because they were so mad, like burning cars or smashing windows.

The Boy said, “That’s stupid too. Smashing stuff doesn’t make things better.” I told him that’s right, it sure doesn’t.

At that moment, Michael Brown’s mom came on the TV, and I said, “That’s the young man’s mom.” And The Boy looked at her anguished face, and said, “If my sister died, I’d be really sad.” And I said, “Of course–families are sad when someone dies, because we love each other.”

Then I said this to him: “What makes me most upset about this is that I think this young man died because a lot of white people are scared of black people. And so they act out of fear, and think that black people are dangerous, even though they’re not. Even policemen get scared sometimes. It makes me sad that that mom had to lose her son, and other moms have to be scared for their sons, because they’re black. It’s not fair that I don’t have to worry about you, but they have to worry about their sons.”

And The Boy said, “Because I’m white.”

And I said, “Yep, because we’re white.”

And he said, “Yeah, it’s not right. I don’t like that feeling.”

And I said, “Me neither.”

That night before bed, The Boy asked me to tell him a story. I often tell him a story about when I was a kid and went on a vacation, or a story about my grandparents, or about the time he pooped on our cat. But it seemed wrong that night to be talking about our own stories, and so I told him about Harriet Tubman instead. After I finished, he asked me to tell the one about the woman on the bus, but I told him it was bedtime and we’d have to talk about Rosa Parks tomorrow.

I feel like this: the best way I can fight for a world where black mothers don’t have to live in fear for their sons, where they can feel as secure as I do when I send my son out in the world, is for me to make sure my white son understands what he has, and what others don’t have. I have to teach him not just that Michael Brown’s family is just like ours, but how unfair it is that a family that is just like ours can’t have the same peace of mind that we do. That it’s wrong for things to be this way, and we need to be that family’s ally in making change happen.

You may think this is too heavy of a topic for a 7 year old to understand. I disagree. I think it’s so fucking obvious, even a 7 year old can get it, if only we’d try to teach them.

Cancer Update: Thankful for Thanksgiving

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

You guys! It’s been a while since I’ve given a treatment update, so here goes. Feel free to ignore this post if this stuff bores you, and just know I’m doing great right now.

You may have seen me live-tweeting the CT scan I had instead of the PET my doctor wanted to run–that happened a week ago. (Are you not following me on Twitter or Facebook? Your loss.) We got the results the following day at my oncologist’s office. The appointment lasted FOREVER because we spent the vast majority of it talking about TV shows (my oncologist and I both love Luther) and my oncologist’s upcoming vacation to Hawaii and a very good bakery on the big island. Because, that’s what we do at my doctor appointments, because my oncologist is rad and we’ve become friends–he even came to Emily’s show. Pro tip: if you’re Stage IV and you can’t make friends with your oncologist, you have the wrong oncologist–who wants to spend that much time with someone and not actually like them?

But of course, we talked about the CT scan too. So, the downside to a CT vs. a PET scan is that a CT finds all the stuff that is out of the ordinary, but it can’t tell you if that stuff is probably cancer. So, like, there is a spot on one of my vertebrae that the CT found, and it showed up on the tests they did in preparation for my radiation this fall. The spot hasn’t changed shape or size or anything since then, so it’s unlikely to be cancer, because it probably would have changed size or shape or whatever if it was cancer–either it would have grown if the chemo I had during radiation didn’t work on it, or it would have shrunk if the chemo did work on it, but instead, it did neither. So the radiologist thinks it’s a bone island (which is the dumbest name for a real thing I have ever heard–it made me think of a brain cloud) and nothing to worry about, but a PET would probably have given us a clearer “don’t worry about it” call than a CT. Fucking insurance.

Besides the bone island, the scan spotted my metastatic tumors on my hip and the on my sternum, and found them to be looking like someone beat them up. Again, if my fucking insurance had approved a PET scan, then we’d know how much of those tumors were cancer, and how much was just scar tissue. But a CT can’t show that, so, fuck if we know what’s going on. Like, good that they look like they’ve been beat up, but how beat up? We dunno.

The best news from the CT is that my remaining lymph glands from the breast system (the ones that can’t be reached surgically, because they cut out the rest) were “unremarkable.” (Pro tip #2: if a medical test uses the world “unremarkable,” that’s good.) And there was nothing else on my scan that needed discussing–no new tumors, and nothing left of the old tumors in my breastal area.

So, to sum up: oh hey look, there’s where we found the bone cancer in the spring. We don’t know if it’s all still cancer or not, but at least it looks like it’s not so bad? Thanks, insurance assholes!

That said, I mean, with no new tumors, and my metastatic tumors at least not growing, this is good news. When you’re stage IV, stable disease is good news. It means cancer isn’t winning. And if cancer isn’t winning, then I’m OK.

Which means, the plan for now is, just keep on keeping on with the aromatase inhibitor, and start looking into clinical trials. Next year I’ll be on a new insurance plan (my insurance is changing networks and my oncologist will no longer be in network–thankfully as a retired federal employee, there are a lot of plans to choose from and my doc will be in network with one of them) and if I’m reading their plan brochure correctly, I won’t need preauthorization for a PET scan, which means no more of this fucking around with inconclusive CT scans bullshit come the new year. And my oncologist is happy with me staying on the AI for three months and then doing a PET scan, and then deciding on our next steps for treatment.

So, the good news is, no chemo for Christmas, or for Thanksgiving, and that is definitely something to be thankful for. When this shitshow began, I wasn’t sure I’d see Thanksgiving, let alone be spending it feeling good and able to make my own turkey and mashed potatoes and turkey and OM NOM NOM WHERE ARE MY EXTRA STRETCHY YOGA PANTS. Happy Thanksgiving, you guys!

People Say The Nicest Things When You’re Dying

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

Since my diagnosis, I’ve gotten some amazing gifts, including the coolest gift ever, but I’ve also gotten notes from people with incredibly kind words. One friend shared that she would probably never have become the strong feminist she is if she hadn’t met me. Another said that my non-judgy-ness got her through a very rough patch in her motherhood. One of my coworkers said at my retirement party that I am the best lawyer he’s ever worked with. I had no idea these folks felt that way, until they wrote me those notes. It means a lot to me that I’d touched their lives.

The thing is, why DIDN’T I know they felt that way? It’s because we don’t usually say these things to people until they’re dying. And then suddenly, we forget all the bad shit, and just focus on the good. You forget the million times I stuck my foot in my mouth or was catty or dropped the ball and didn’t show up to help when you needed it, and you remember the time I got you drunk when your boyfriend dumped you and told you that you were so money and you didn’t even know it.

I’m not dying today. As I told my oncologist the other day, I’m feeling the best I have since this shitshow began. Except, I kind of am dying, just in very very very slow motion. And that’s why people send me these notes saying how much they love me and what I mean to them, when they haven’t ever done anything like that before–because I have a terminal illness.

But the thing I’ve learned from having that terminal illness is this–we’re all dying. All of us. Not one of us is going to get out of life alive. We just don’t like to think about it, because we hope it’s so far off in the future, but one day you will be dead. As Bill Shatner said, “This may come as news, but…you’re gonna die. You’re gonna die. By the time you hear this, I may well be dead. And you, my friend, might be next. ‘Cause, we’re all gonna die.”

I’m gonna say this. I think it’s crap that we have to wait until we’re aware that we’re gonna die, before people tell us all these nice things about what we mean to them. That’s total fucking bullshit, you guys. Seriously, this should not be a perk of having cancer, to have people tell you that you’re awesome. It should happen every day. You should be going out and telling the people who have meant something to you, who have been there for you when you needed it, that they’re awesome and that you love them. I should be doing it too, and I haven’t been, but I’m going to now. Because, we’re all gonna die.

Homework: every day, say something nice to someone who has meant something to you. I’m not saying you should look up that ex-boyfriend who treated you like shit–I’m saying, the people in your life who you love, but you haven’t told them so, you should tell them so. Tell them thank you. Tell them what you admire about them. Imagine they’re dying–because really, they are–and give yourself license to forget the dumb stuff for a minute, and appreciate the good. It’s gonna make them feel good, and it’s gonna make you feel good too.

Feminist Warrior Fridays: Ava Gardner

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

OK, look, you guys. I know I was all “I’m gonna write about some women who may not seem to fit the definition of a feminist by today’s standards” and y’all were probably thinking, “Neat, it’s gonna be someone who is a little bit conservative but still clearly an advocate for women’s rights.” But when I said “not a feminist by today’s standards,” I actually meant it. And thus I give you one of my favorite women of all time, Ava Gardner.

I became fascinated with Ava when my grandfather told me about meeting her. My grandfather was a chiropractor and early on in his medical career, he worked for a casino hotel in Reno, in the early 1950’s. Frank Sinatra was staying at the hotel, and he had a headache, so they sent my grandfather up to Sinatra’s suite to give him an adjustment, and Ava Gardner was there with Sinatra. My grandfather described Ava thusly: “She was the most beautiful woman I ever saw in person, but she had a mouth on her like a sailor.”

Holy shit, you guys, she’s one of us!

Ava grew up poor in the rural south before being discovered in New York and coming to Hollywood, where she worked very hard to become a famous star. She herself would have readily acknowledged that she was no great actress–she wasn’t a Katherine Hepburn or a Bette Davis or even a Lana Turner. Instead, she was just plain sexy.

And here’s where the pearl clutchers will say “Sexy and untalented? That’s not a feminist!” And that’s where I say FUCK YOU. Ava was a woman trapped in an era where women had almost zero power, particularly in Hollywood. Her first husband, Mickey Rooney, cheated on her almost immediately after they got married, including while she was in the hospital having her appendix out, but she had to get permission from the damn studio to divorce his cheating ass, or risk ruining her career. That’s the world Ava lived in, a world where powerful men could tell her she had to stay married if she wanted to keep her job. Are we going to say “you’re not feminist enough” because she used the one tool she had to gain power–her sex appeal? Are we? Because if we are, we’re assholes.

One way we can express feminism is by crossing the boundaries of what it means to be feminine, because one of the ways patriarchy controls us is by requiring women to adhere to arbitrary, unrealistic standards of femininity. Ava was a boundary-crosser. She fucked who she felt like in an era when women weren’t allowed sexual freedom. And she swore like a sailor, which is still seen as unfeminine in many circles. On top of that, she took the patriarchy’s obsession with women as sex objects and used it for her own personal gain. That’s a pretty dangerous game to play in 1950, and pretty damn subversive.

Was she a perfect person? Hell no! I’m pretty sure if you look up “alcoholic” in the dictionary, there’s a picture of Ava there. But she was a strong woman with a drive to succeed, and I really wish I could have met her. Like Julia, I think we probably would have been good friends.

As always, if there’s a feminist warrior you’d like to see me profile, leave her name in the comments!

Fuck you, health insurance industry

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

It was only a matter of time before the honeymoon between me and my insurance company ended. I mean, I know how much love I felt from them when they approved my genetic testing (other friends I know with cancer had theirs denied), but I could tell my insurance was starting to feel differently when they approved just 3 weeks of post-mastectomy radiation instead of the 6 my radiation oncologist asked for. But it wasn’t until they denied me a PET scan that I knew our relationship had really soured.

Here’s what happened. My oncologist, who you all know by now is both awesome and a genius, submitted a request for my insurance to cover a PET scan to see how much cancer is left after all the treatments I have had this year, so we can figure out what to do next. The idea was, if there isn’t much cancer left, or if by some miracle the scan was unable to find any evidence of cancer, then we keep me on the anastrozole and just watch and wait for it to come back. (Stage IV is like roaches. It always comes back.) if, on the other hand, there were big ass tumors, then we’d want to do some more chemo. Treatment decisions being based on evidence, seems reasonable, yes?

Not according to my insurance. They denied the scan. Their letter didn’t say why, just denied it. My oncologist has now submitted an appeal, but we had to cancel the scan scheduled for today, because who the fuck knows when it will get approved, if ever.

Here is the thing. This sort of crap happens ALL THE TIME. And the reason it does is because insurance is a for-profit industry. It exists solely to make money. My care costs them money. A lot of money. So, they keep those costs down by denying me care. It’s as simple and completely amoral as that.

Now, maybe you believe that insurance companies have a right to make a profit. Let’s leave off for a minute that they are companies, and they shouldn’t have rights because they aren’t people, they’re companies. Instead, let’s talk about how their right to make a profit compares to my right to have life-sustaining health care. When these two rights come into conflict, whose right should win? The corporation’s right to money, or my right to life?

Let me also say this. A lot of people oppose a single-payer, government-insured health care system because they fear government bureaucrats denying them needed medical procedures. And yeah, government can be seriously bureaucratic. But, my insurance company is filled with bureaucrats denying me a needed medical procedure. It takes months to get appointments with specialists, just like it does in a socialist country’s health care system. How is the system we have any better than our worst fears about a government-run system?

Until we design a health care system that isn’t built around insurance company profits dictating how my doctor practices medicine, we will continue to have shit like this happen. It’s wrong, and it has to stop.