Life is Cruel

John Q is on tv right now. For those of you who don't know, it's a movie starring Denzel Washington as a father whose young son is in renal heart failure and needs a transplant. Problem is that his insurance, his HMO, does not have a provision for treatment of this magnitude, and the hospital is of course all about the almighty dollar. John Q (symbolically referring to "John Q Public") has no choice but to take matters into his own hands in order to save the one thing in the world that matters most: his son.

This movie breaks my heart in that it so vividly illustrates how we have become a nation of greed and indifference. How the value of human life has been reduced to a buck.

I have no idea how much radiation or chemo costs. But I do know that for one person, a 5-hour duration of chemo is $15000. I also know some sort of shot that has to be administered 24 hours after each chemo treatment in order to increase the white blood cell count runs another $7000.

This does not take into account blood work, ex rays, pet-scans, prescriptions, etc that go along with cancer.

I'm not quite sure where I am going with all this. I think it's just more of me feeling angry.

Angry and helpless.

I don't understand why bad things happen to good people. Why innocence has to die.

Why babies die.



Sprout was just a baby. She had done nothing that would warrant penance of life. So why her? And why so many others like her?

I was raised a catholic. I believe in God. But I can't believe that any of this makes sense in the grand design of his plan.

Call it blasphemy. Call it unchristian. Call it whatever you want but explain to the family of Sprout how this makes sense. Explain to my family how incurable cancer makes sense.

Yeh, I am in the angry stage. Hopefully it will pass and I will find the faith that I was raised on....

I just can't see it right now.