As you may know from my vague and sporadic tweets and all my allusions to stress, last week was a tough one.

Dad and me. The inclination to make stupid faces when a camera's in view is genetic. I was able to fend off the urge here, but I think I compensate well by being bedecked so ridiculously in crochet.

See, the day before we left town for Greg’s grandfather’s funeral, we got a call from my parents after one of my dad’s routine pancreas screenings. He gets those about four times a year. The short story is this: About 10% of pancreatic cancer cases are hereditary, and my family’s one of those affected. My father’s mother, brother and sister all died before the age of 70. After my uncle Bruce died several years ago, we discovered the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research, and it has given my family something to rally around instead of feeling like walking cancer time bombs.

One of the main reasons pancreatic cancer is so deadly (95% of patients don’t survive five years) is that the cancer is asymptomatic until it’s too late. And if there isn’t a familial link, there’s no reason to do the invasive, expensive screenings to test for it before symptoms arise.

So the bitter irony of the story I’m about to tell you is that the only reason my father gets routine screenings is that so many of his loved ones died young.

Mom, Dad and Greg at Webs for my book launch in 2007. I loved that they all came, all the way to Massachusetts.

Dad, and some of my older first cousins, participate in a study of hereditary pancreatic cancer that’s funded in part by the Lustgarten Foundation. At his last screening, about ten days ago, his local doctor in Albany, NY, found a mass in the tail of his pancreas. They sent the results to the leader of the study at Johns Hopkins, and she said she wanted to see Dad as soon as possible. Six days later he flew down to Baltimore for more tests. It was the day after Greg and I returned from the funeral.

That one full day waiting at home was one of the most stressful, trying days of my life. There was nothing to do. No emergency flight home to arrange. No doctors to call. Just me and my overactive imagination, doing dances around each other.

I did my best to hold myself together. I didn’t pace too much. I spent lots of time on the phone with friends and family.

It was only come evening that Star Trek made me cry. Greg and I decided to distract ourselves with television. We’ve been watching The Next Generation. Surely great sci-fi would do the trick.

Irony, however, seems to be the theme of the month. Season 3, Episode 5: The Bonding. The entire damn episode is about a boy whose mother died on an away mission, leaving him an orphan. Wesley Crusher, teen phenom with some astonishing ’80s coifs, played by Wil Wheaton, was brought in to talk to the boy about his own father’s death a few years earlier.

Seriously, people. Give me a break.

I lost my shit.

Actually,  don’t let my overdeveloped tendency toward melodrama fool you. It felt pretty good to lose my shit. I love fiction for its ability to help us work through the confusing and overwhelming plane of reality. As Wesley talked about his anger and his grief, I sobbed and thought about how much I love my dad. I acknowledged how terrified I was that the tests would show a metastatic tumour. That the prognosis would be grim. Grim prognoses are what we’re used to when pancreases are involved.

Poor Wesley Crusher was like the Dawn Summers of the late ’80s – decried as a dreadful whiner and as just plain annoying – but after the moment we shared the other night, I’ll forever be his champion.

Did I mention I'm a geek because I grew up in the presence of my father's love of sci-fi?

I got a call much earlier than I expected the day of the tests. It was my brother, who told me it seemed to be good news. Excellent news. Preliminary findings didn’t indicate cancer at all. No dire prognosis. No emergency flying.

My dad still needs surgery. At a minimum, he needs to have the tail of his pancreas removed, and along with it his spleen. He’d like to take the whole damn organ out, which is something people with a family history like ours can do. If he’s able to work that out with his doctors, he’d live the rest of his life like a diabetic, dependent on insulin and also digestive enzymes to survive. But he wouldn’t feel like a time bomb anymore. He’d know he wouldn’t again experience the same terrifying shock he did this month.

And all this six weeks or so before the annual fundraiser. The fundraiser that takes on new meaning for me this year because I credit the study, and the foundation whose money helps fund it, for catching my father’s tumour before it could morph into a deadly beast.

The boy on Star Trek was twelve. I may be thirty-four, but I’m certain I’m too young to lose a parent. My parents have a lot of life left to live.

So this year for the fundraiser I’m again asking you for money. Even the tiniest donation can go a long way, but I know times are tough and you have your own causes to support. So I’m also asking you to go shopping, which as we all know is different. Some very special crafters have volunteered to donate some or all proceeds from some of their products to the Lustgarten Foundation as part of my campaign. They rock, and you probably want their stuff anyway. If you’re a maker, please consider donating some proportion of the proceeds of something you sell. This way you can jack up your prices, and help to spread the word about this very important research. If you’d like to participate, please fill out the form in the middle of that page, or drop me an email.

Ah look, a not-ridiculous candid shot. This was at Dad's 60th birthday party four years ago, which, as you might be able to pick out from the banner behind him, he coupled with a fundraiser.

Right now the research supported by these funds is important to me and my family in ways I hope you can understand from this post, but as the research advances I hope it will produce answers that will be important to absolutely everyone.

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Glee got me thinking tonight. It got me thinking about hate.

I had like the anti-high school high school experience. Not “anti” like “against”. More like “anti” like “antimatter”. I hibernated. That’s the way I think of it. I put my head down and woke up on the first day of university.

It wasn’t a conscious decision. I had all the self-awareness of a seahorse when I was fourteen. I don’t know why I hibernated, but I did. I had some friends, but not close ones*. I barely dated. I was super active in the youth group but that was like a separate world to me.

But there was one week. One week when the ground thawed and all the high school crap seeped in. I was seventeen years old, accepted to college, impatiently waiting to get the hell out, just like everyone else. For one week in the spring of 1994 I experienced four years’ worth of full-on pain.

My cousin was dying. We’d known he was sick, but there were a lot of hushed conversations about it. More speculation than frankness. I sat one night with my parents and asked if he had AIDS. They said he did, but it wasn’t to be told. And my aunt, especially, wasn’t to know I knew. She thought of me as a child. It was too much for me.

I freaked out. If I could put together how sick he was, and from what, and how he got it, damned if I was going to accept being thought of as a child.

I couldn’t sleep at night. I’d doze in an uncomfortable chair in the school library.

That semester I was taking a sociology class that made me want to poke my own eyes out. The teacher was so smart, but the other students were freaking idiots. We could have all learned things, but instead we collectively rolled our eyes and popped our gum. The teacher never gave up, though. And one day that happened to be during my week of insomnia and angst, he decided to make a point.

We were learning about deviant behaviour. As our textbook told us, as far as sociology is concerned “deviant” bears no value judgment, it just means the behaviour isn’t performed by the majority of people.

And the example our dear, well-meaning teacher gave was homosexuality. In his mind, homosexuality isn’t bad, it’s just that the majority of people are straight.

Picture me sitting across from the biggest asshole I’ve ever known. His name was Justin. He was a mean kid and my only run-in with him was in t-minus two minutes.

Justin goes nuts. I can’t remember what he said, but it was homophobic and it was passionate. Hateful. Cruel and mean and I hadn’t slept in a week.

So I interrupted him. I asked him what if I were gay. Would he still say those things, knowing he was saying them to a gay person?

That’s when everything stopped. He stopped. He stared at me and I had no idea what was going on. I heard the blood rushing in my head.

And then a whisper from somewhere behind me. From one of the eye-rolling girls. “Oh my god. She’s gay. That explains it.” More whispers.

I remember walking out of that room and feeling such an overwhelming number of emotions simultaneously that I may have stumbled. I have no memory of that night. I don’t remember if I talked to my parents. I don’t remember if I slept. But I do remember having the suffocating feeling that I couldn’t go back to that school. I had visions of every student pointing and staring. Nobody would talk to me. I’d go from being a benignly awkward A-student to being a reviled freak.

But those thoughts were nothing. The part that broke me was knowing it wasn’t true. I wasn’t gay. But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t say so, because if there’s nothing wrong with being gay, why should I care if people thought it of me? I was misunderstood and I was lost and the injustice was so massive that I can barely put words to it even now.

And honestly, I don’t remember what I did. I don’t remember if there were stares the next morning. I don’t remember if I even talked to any of my peers about it at all. All I remember is that I finished the year just fine. I eventually slept. I came out of my years-long hibernation the first day of college. I buzzed my head in the fall of 1997 and then I went to an Indigo Girls concert and many of my friends thought I was coming out, and they loved me and I loved them and I was still straight.

I’m straight, and I’ve experienced crushing homophobia. And I cry every damn time they address it on Glee because we didn’t have Glee when I was in high school. And I wish with all my heart that no one ever has to feel what I felt. And I know that every day people do.

And it breaks my heart.

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* ETA: I was exhausted and emotional when I wrote this, and I’m embarrassed to correct myself – I actually did have a couple of very close friends in high school who were also youth group friends, which is why I just didn’t think of them. My forgetting of them in the heat of this post doesn’t diminish how important they were to me then, or now.

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The Sadness

I started off this morning crying before I even had a chance to drink my coffee.

Last September when I went to Albany, NY, to participate in the fundraiser for pancreatic cancer research my parents spearhead every year, it was bittersweet to bump into Janice, an old high school friend. We hadn’t been close friends, but I’d sure liked her a lot. It was sad to see her because her family was at the fundraiser to support her father, who’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

It’s very hard to talk to people who love someone who’s recently been diagnosed, because unlike with many other cancers, there’s very little hope of survival. When someone tells me their father’s been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I know it’s likely they won’t survive a year. That’s a shitty context for reconnecting with an old friend.

Last night, Janice’s father died. Jay was a journalist and he blogged prolifically throughout his illness. If it won’t derail your day to get a little emotional, you should head over there and witness the honest, rich life he lived during the last eleven months, and meet his family. They’re lovely people and I hope they can keep Jay’s strength with them as they learn to live their lives without him.

The Upside Down

Shari & Neil Piper (aka my parents) at last year's walk

As my friend Chris has been saying so frequently recently, fuck cancer.

There’s four months until the big Albany fundraiser on 12th September. I don’t think I’ll be able to get out there this year for it, but I’m going to participate in the walk on my family’s team in spirit, cheering on the several hundred walkers and trying to raise some serious cash.

Last year you helped me raise almost $2,000 USD for the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research, the recipient of the more than $45,000 raised during the Albany event. Lustgarten is able to put 100% of raised funds toward research because a corporate sponsor – cable company Cablevision – covers all their operating costs. The research they help fund will hopefully lead to the discovery of early-detection tests that will allow pancreatic cancer to be discovered before it’s too late (it’s usually discovered too late; that’s part of the survival problem). My father and several of my cousins participate in some of that research. Hopefully by the time my brother and I are in our 60s, the results of that research will allow us to feel a little less inhabited by a cancer time bomb.

(See in the photo how they call it the “Walk for Hope”? Hope would be a pretty freaking amazing advancement in the realm of pancreatic cancer where, as I mentioned, very little hope exists.)

The Big Time

I had a dream (it might have been a hallucination) about the crafts world knocking pancreatic cancer out of this world. In my dream, this was quite literal. There was like a war of rainbows and glitter and felt and glue and pins and needles and a hell of a lot of wool and jewelry and monsters and creatures, and pancreatic cancer was outta here.

I think we can, within the natural bounds of physics, maybe make this happen.

If you’ve got some money…

Please donate to support my virtual walk. Every dollar counts, so you don’t have to have a lot of money.

If you live somewhere near Albany, NY…

Please consider attending the walk and raising funds on your own. I guarantee it’ll be a fun time, and my parents will love to meet you. (If you attend, you simply must march up to them and introduce yourself.)

If you’ve got an audience large or small…

Please talk with them about pancreatic cancer, and please send them over here so they can help out and maybe make a donation, too.

If you sell your handmade goods…

Please consider donating some of your proceeds according to any system you’d like. For example, you could designate one item in your shop and say you’ll donate the sale price of that item. Or you could designate June or August, or even July, as pancreatic cancer research month, and donate some percentage of your sales for that month. Or you could make several items of a particular sort and donate those sales. However you’d like, according to whatever you’re comfortable giving. (And of course, feel free to inflate your prices as much as you think your customers will endure!) This would be a great way to inform lots of people about the huge need for pancreatic cancer research, and I bet they’ll enjoy knowing they support a generous seller such as you.

No good deed will go unnoticed!

If you participate in raising funds via sales of your handmade goods, in addition to loving you in that ooey gooey cyber way I’m known to feel for people who support my family, I will promote the hell out of you on a very special page right here on my website. On that page, I will put a link to your shop or to the particular item you’re selling as a fundraiser, with a description of how you’re helping. And I will tell everyone I know about this special page.

If you’ve already listed your pancreatic-cancer-research-supporting goods, please tell me all about it right here:

If you’d like to donate an item to the pick-a-prize auction that’ll be held on the day of the event, please email me and I’ll let you know how you can do so. Donated items should be valued at no more than $50 each.

If you have ideas or suggestions for how to raise even more money and thus possibly save many people from tragedy…

I’m all ears!

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Last week a woman in Indiana shot off a quick blog post in response to a report in the Chicago Tribune about an Iranian Muslim cleric who said immodestly dressed women corrupt young men and spread adultery, and consequently cause earthquakes.

“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,” Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran’s acting Friday prayer leader.

Jen McCreight’s response, between putting down her university coursework and watching television?

Time for a Boobquake.

On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that’s your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I’m sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn’t rumble. And if we really get through to him, maybe it’ll be one involving plate tectonics.

Now, let’s talk about science, theism and feminism.

Science. I think Boobquake is brilliant. In a paragraph, McCreight sets out an (admittedly unrealistic for strict scientific exploration, of course) experiment to test Sedighi’s assertion. Yeah, it’s cheeky, and yeah, she meant it facetiously. But who cares? This is an important lesson, kids: Question people’s assertions – especially the ones coming from those you hold to have such great authority that you make decisions in your life based on what they say. Question them often and when you do, question them responsibly. If they make an assertion of fact you’d like to question, gather a large enough sample, allow for scientific controls and analyze the data without bias (even if you have bias). Then come to your own conclusions, keeping in mind how flawed your experimental design might have been.

Theism. People invoke god and religion to keep other people down. Not everyone does this, of course. But there’s no denying that it happens a lot. To an appalling extent, really. On my most cynical days, I wonder how we’ve managed to survive this long having used religion against ourselves for so many millenniums. It’s not okay. It’s not okay for women or men to be held to have different rights, different privileges, or less power in society simply because of their sex. Ever. It’s not okay EVER. When religion is used as some sort of justification for inequality and oppression, the people using it that way are WRONG.

Feminism. Boobquake has become this week’s excuse for a feminist pissing contest. There seems to be constant competition to be the best feminist (and really, when it comes to realms of activism, this holds for all of them – animal rights, environmentalism, etc.) in the world. The best feminist (environmentalist, vegetarian) in the world is the most righteous (and therefore earns the privilege of being the most self-righteous), knows which products of culture are acceptable and which ones aren’t, knows the most about history and philosophy, knows which decisions are okay and which ones aren’t, knows which jokes are funny and which ones aren’t, and earns the right to live her life within perfect feminist (environmentalist, etc.) harmony while verbally abusing those whom she thinks are wrong and who therefore contribute to the evils she’s dedicated to fighting.

For me, it’s the science that makes Boobquake important. Oh man, science is important. Science that challenges institutionalized, religion-based misogyny, with humour, is a special kind of important.

Oh, and I totally own a good cleavage shirt. I wear it sometimes, too, not even to make a point about some or another dogma I subscribe to. Tomorrow, though, I’m going to wear it so I can be one of hundreds of thousands of data points for McCreight’s experiment. Maybe I’ll schmear some glitter on my girls while I’m at it, but probably not. That’s just not how I roll.

There’s a Boobquake meetup in Gastown in Vancouver tomorrow night, too. I hope you’ll make it. And if you’re a dude, I hope you’ll come, too. Not to oggle, because, really, I doubt anyone there will be dressed much differently than they might be on any other night out on the town (the invective instruction is, after all, to wear something you already own) and I’m sure you only make eye contact when you talk to women in bars anyway, but to support the effort to chip away at misogynistic religious nuttery, one viral boob joke at a time.

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That’s how my friend titled an email to me Monday night, after hearing the news that Patrick Swayze lost his two-year fight against the disease. This just a day after my parents put on their big fundraiser to support research into early-detection tests and a cure.

The event was a huge success. Well over 200 people walked the short route in perfect weather. Of course, it wasn’t the walking that was the point. It was the community and the fundraising. How much fundraising? By the end of the morning Sunday, the event had raised over $41,000 (USD) for the Lustgarten Foundation for pancreatic cancer research. And we’re still accepting donations (hint).

My cousin Bonnie spoke before the walk began. She recently had a prophylactic pancreatectomy (translation: she had her pancreas removed before it was cancerous). After five years participating in the same study my dad’s a part of, doctors agreed her pancreas wasn’t looking good. She lives now as a diabetic; she looks and feels terrific.

One woman on the organizing committee had pancreatic cancer twenty-six years ago. She’s in great health, and she’s pretty awesome.

Still. The overwhelming majority of walkers were there because they’ve lost a loved one, a friend or a colleague. One woman, whose husband was recently diagnosed, asked my mom, “So many people are wearing cards in memory of someone, not in honour. Does anyone survive?”

It’s not an easy question to answer. The answer itself is easy; it’s just not easy to say.

At the end of the event, on a high from the successes, I ran into an old high-school acquaintance. There are few people from my adolescence I’d be happy to randomly bump into, but she’s one of them. She looks just like she did fifteen years ago. Except it’s her dad who was recently diagnosed. I wish I’d bumped into her at a bar so we just could’ve had a pint and caught up. Instead, we skipped the small talk and went right into the thick of it – radiation treatments and prognoses. Her dad is a journalist, and he’s writing a blog about his daily life.

I’m so proud of my family and the community they’re a part of in the hometown I so often deride. There’s much work left to do, but they call it the Walk of Hope for good reason. My own spirits are bolstered, and it just feels good to face my fears with action.

Thank you. Thank you all so very much for your support in words and donations. You’ll hear from me about this again next year.

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Let’s talk about health care. You know I’m happy with the care I receive here in British Columbia; I don’t think the system’s perfect, but I’ve had no major complaints about it, and it compares favorably against the care I got when I lived in the U.S. But I don’t want to talk about my personal experience.

I have a nagging knot in my gut that tightens the more I read about the state of “debate” on health-care reform south of the border. In an attempt to untie it, I’m confessing the following:

I think it’s wrong—capital-W, amoral Wrong—to deny society’s responsibility to take care of its members. It’s not an issue of whether you’ve pulled yourself up by your dead-horse bootstraps, it’s not an issue that’s in any way related to killing old people or the infirm, and it certainly shouldn’t be an issue that’s even remotely related to corporate interests.

Most countries of the developed world spend less per capita on health care than the U.S. does and provide coverage to all citizens. Decent coverage.

Given all these things, I don’t understand why people oppose universal health coverage so vehemently. Please tell me why.

(If necessary, I’ll moderate comments that don’t contribute to productive discussion. But I’m sure I won’t have to.)

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Thanks to the stunning generosity of friends, family, blog readers, Twitter followers, and perfect strangers, I blew past my original goal to raise $500 for pancreatic-cancer research by the second day of my fund-raising effort. By the end of that day, I’d raised over $1,000. I’ve upped my goal to $1,500.

The fundraising walk outside of Albany, NY, is Sunday, 13th September. If you’d like to come to lend your support, please do! Drop me a line and I’ll fill you in on the details. If you can’t make it in person, please consider making even a small donation. My whole family has been watching this blog and they’ve  been touched by your comments. I, myself, have gone from feeling somewhat crotchety to feeling overwhelming gushy love. Your words here touch people everywhere. Thank you so much for sharing them.

As many people have pointed out to me in the last few days, cancer is cancer whether it’s dressed in a pink shirt, a purple shirt, or no shirt at all. We have all, every single one of us, been affected by the disease, and every breakthrough is a triumph we can celebrate together.

If you have any creative ideas about what I can do to meet my new goal, or if you’d like to help in more or different ways than simply donating, I’d love to hear from you. As always, it helps so much when you spread the word.

Again, thank you!

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When I got off the bus to meet my friend for a hungover shopping date in Gastown on Saturday afternoon, I greeted her with this gem:

“I am such an asshole.”
“Um, hm?”
“Ok, so 4th Avenue is closed between Arbutus and Burrard today for Hippy Daze*, and on the detour I saw a bunch of women in bubblegum pink with ridiculous hats and realized I think it might also be the breast-cancer walk today. And before my conscience could kick in I thought, ‘Oh for god’s sake, can’t another cancer have its turn yet?’ Because, hangover notwithstanding, I am an asshole.”

So, ok. I don’t actually think ill of breast-cancer victims or the people who love them or who raise money to fight the disease. I have nothing but sympathy and compassion for people suffering through cancer of any sort, and I feel nothing but joy for cancer survivors.

Breast cancer is the perfect storm for massive fundraising. It’s very, very common, as far as cancers go (it’s the second most common cancer to lung cancer), which means a lot of women, relatively speaking, get it and even more people of both sexes know women who have had it (a few men have had it, too). Due in part to the massive efforts put forth in education, fundraising, and research over the last couple of decades, the five-year survival rate for breast cancer is wonderfully high, at over 88% according to the American Cancer Society‘s Cancer Facts & Figures 2008. So there are many hundreds of thousands of survivors who have shared similar fears, sickness, and triumph and who are predictably compelled to use that sisterly solidarity to promote further efforts to find a cure for the disease. Also, everyone loves women. There has been a massive effort to educate women about screening themselves, and there are routine mammograms for women of a certain age and those in high-risk populations. Early detection means more cancer is beaten.

There comes a point, though, and here’s where I know I risk treading into asshole territory, when a fundraising and awareness effort gets so successful that it overshadows other causes that might be as, or even more, in need of advocacy.

I’m thinking specifically of pancreatic cancer, which I may have written about before. Not very many people get it, relative to breast cancer. But about 95% of people who do get it don’t survive five years. Mostly this is because pancreatic cancer tends to be asymptomatic until it’s too late, which means early detection is very, very difficult to achieve. Also, around 90% of pancreatic cancer cases aren’t linked hereditarily, so very few people are even identified for routine screening. The disease most often strikes at random, its victims unfamiliar with the community that exists around the disease. The impressive death rate puts a big kink in the solidarity factor of fundraising campaigns for pancreatic cancer. When the cancer victim dies, so does the solidarity they felt with other cancer patients, if they managed to form relationships with any during the nine months or so of their illness.

About ten percent of cases of pancreatic cancer, though, are hereditarily linked. Like in my family. My father’s mother, sister, and brother all died from pancreatic cancer before the age of 70. In my family, there hasn’t been so much a feeling of solidarity against this disease as one of abject fear.

We found out that my Uncle Bruce, my father’s older brother, had pancreatic cancer a few months before Greg and I got married seven years ago. My uncle was already sick enough that they couldn’t commit to travel from Florida to the wedding in Philadelphia, but around a week before the big day I got a call from my aunt saying he was having a couple of good weeks, and unless he took a dramatic turn for the worse, they were coming. I was overjoyed. And I was terrified. I sat at the dining-room table in tears and told Greg maybe getting married was a horrible mistake. Why would he want my genes in his kids? I felt like a ticking time bomb.

We didn’t tell anyone my uncle was coming. When my father saw him in the hotel lobby the day before the wedding, well, let’s just say there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Five months later we flew to Florida for his funeral.

And that’s when things started happening in the family. I don’t know who first brought it up, but someone had discovered the Lustgarten Foundation: a whole foundation dedicated to funding pancreatic-cancer research. It turns out there’s a big ongoing study into hereditary cases of pancreatic cancer. My father and several of my first cousins are participating in the study, with the benefit that the best doctors in the field do regular screenings. My dad’s pancreas isn’t exactly healthy, but so far (knock wood and any other superstition-harbouring surface at hand) it’s not full of cancer, either. One of my first cousins recently had her pancreas prophylactically removed after several doctors agreed it was precancerous. She lives as a diabetic now, essentially, with an emphasis on lives.

My parents, being the energetic people they are, weren’t satisfied with my dad just being a part of a research study. Every year, the Lustgarten Foundation puts on a big walk near New York City as a fundraiser (ok, big is relative. I don’t think it’s as big as the breast-cancer walks). A few years ago, my parents started up a walk closer to home, outside of Albany, NY. That first year a couple dozen family members came to town for it. The following year a few other families joined in. This year, with the increasingly enthusiastic and enormously helpful aid of the staff at Lustgarten who, I’m pleased to say, seem to recognize the magic my parents are making, they’re anticipating 300 people will walk with them on Sunday, September 13th, and they’re looking to raise well over $30,000.

I’ll be joining them for the walk, and this is where I ask you for money. I’m sure people you know and love more than you know and love me hit you up for money all the time. We all have causes that are dear to us, and diseases we feel compelled to fight. I can’t guarantee I won’t hit you up again next year, but for some reason I can’t put my finger on, this year is important to me.

My dad is turning 64 63 (oops!) this year. I would very much like for him to live another healthy twenty years; giving my support to this research, and asking for your support to add to it, is the best way I have of helping to make that happen.

My goal is to personally raise $500 $1000 $1500**. I don’t think that’s an outrageous goal, and I very much hope you’ll help.

Whether you donate or not, if you know of anyone (or any large groups of people like on Twitter or Facebook or something [ETA: or your blog!]) who might be interested in donating, I’ll very much appreciate it if you’d pass on the link to this post.

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* Hippy Daze is the dumbest name for a street fair in the history of neighbourhood excuses to block off a busy thoroughfare. It’s a nod, I presume, to the history of the Kitsilano neighbourhood that was, in the days of hippies, full of hippies. Now Kitsilano is filled with yoga students in clingy organic cotton.

** UPDATED 18 August: Your generosity is overwhelming. I nearly met my original goal after only one day, so I’ve doubled it. If you continue to overwhelm me with your generosity, caring, support, and most of all with your own stories, I will triple it. Because I’m ambitious like that, and, well, it’s damn important. Thank you!

UPDATED again on 18 August: Just over one day after I posted this, I’ve raised over $1,000. You have raised over $1,000. Thank you. Thank you thank you. As promised, I’ve tripled my original goal. Please help spread the word!

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When I was twenty-five and working at a job that was grueling and thankless and rendered me suffering from stress-induced stomach aches, I eventually decided I’d had enough and I quit. I was engaged at the time, and living with my fiancé. We were to be legally married three months later.

When I told my mother I’d quit my job, the first words out of her mouth were, “What about health insurance?” I might have replied that I’d quit for my health, but I can’t remember. I’m sure I told her that my fiance’s company, in their overwhelming generosity, had offered to pay my COBRA fees for the three months until his insurance would cover me as his spouse. Since I spent the next several months working as a substitute teacher, the $300/month would have been a massive burden. I was very, very lucky. (On the flip side, how unlucky was I that I lived in a place that didn’t recognize common-law partnerships?)

Six months after we got married we moved to Canada, where my husband grew up. And that is why I am able to live the life I want to live, to make the living I want to make.

Because my health insurance is no longer tied to my job.

Oh, and it’s affordable.

And good.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a long time, you might have an idea about how much I’ve required significant healthcare in the last couple of years. Enough that I now have a sufficient medical history that should I ever get pregnant again I likely wouldn’t cross the border at all, in deference to my pre-existing conditions and the pesky travel insurance that might not hold up in the face of complications.

Annie Modesitt has urged me to write about how having guaranteed health insurance has affected my work life, and all I can say about it, really, is that it has made my work possible. End of story. If I need or want to move on in my career, I can do so in my own time, at my own pace, in my own way. If I get pregnant, I’ll be a high-risk case from conception but I won’t have a financial concern about it. Which seems pretty right to me; my concern should be about my health.

In April, if I’ve had a good year, the Canadian government will take more of my money than the U.S. government would if I were living there, and I pay every dime of it with gratitude.

Yes, I’m a lefty and I believe very strongly that people have certain fundamental rights, but my personal experience has nothing to do with my politics. It has everything to do with my own quality of life. Not having to worry about health insurance allows me to be happy in my work in ways I couldn’t be otherwise—not with how variable a freelancer’s living is. It allows me to see a doctor when I need to, without a co-pay, and without concern about paying for tests she wants to run. It allows me to pursue any professional interest I have without going through the gatekeeper of traditional employment. It makes my health concerns my personal concerns, not something I have to argue about with pencil-pushers over the phone. Ever.

So maybe I will make this a little bit political. For the first time in many years, an administration that is open to providing universal health coverage will be in power in the U.S. Regardless of your political leanings, think hard about what you would personally gain from such a thing.

(P.S. It’s a fallacy when opponents to universal health care say the result would be that everyone would get the lowest-denominator, shittiest care. In most of the rest of the industrialized world, people enjoy government-supported health care. Yes, everyone has gripes; no system is perfect. But I’ll take this imperfect system over the pain- and stress-inducing American system any day.)

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I believe everything he says here, and I ask the same questions. If you’d like to chime in on those questions, please do. No fighting, no all-caps yelling. Just discussion.

[Olbermann: Gay marriage is a question of love - Countdown with Keith Olbermann- msnbc.com.]

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