Zeynep Tufekci and opinion writing as trivial pursuit

Okay, out of sheer boredom, an unwillingness to shift my pressure sore, coupled with an unwillingness to lie down and continue to be driven out of my zealous mind, I reread the prompts for Medium, made small edits to my two pieces (I can now embed links, as if this isn't a universal application!) and did not curse Ev Williams once, which I'm sure the mainstream finds gratifying, but I need to compound a reaction to Zeynep's spirited defense of Lisa Adams for continuing to treat a terminal metastasis as the result of breast cancer.

All Miss Tukekci is saying, in a nutshell, is that Lisa Adams was a spirited woman of good middle class temperament, an optimist who faced adversity with courage and realism, and her detractors should not have begrudged the woman decent palliative care in her last months with her family. I wrote this in three sentences, and it in no way adjudicates the crisis in medical model rationing, nor does it offer any real insight on the rising cost of aggressive therapies for aggressive diseases

.Zeynep lost a friend in whom she was obviously invested, just as I've addressed those in whom I invested, with darker residual effects, obscuring more salient issues. Aggressive cancers are one subset of medical rationing, and surgeons like Gawande and his colleagues treat them as best they can, but cancers aren't chronic conditions, and don't address how much of our health care dollars go into keeping people like my ex Frank alive, and my uncle Joseph, neither of whom are functional. Joseph has mild dementia, some kind of anti-social disorder, and it is on his body, clogged with the effects of European susceptibility to heart disease, and thousands like him, like the late Terri Schiavo, on whom we waste precious resources, resources which could have gone toward keeping me employed, giving me a fucking decent set of technologies to substantially reduce dependence on more functionally able individuals.

I have no problem with cancer patients who want to fight, or receive humane easing of pain from tumors. I do have a problem with seeing wasted shells afflicted with a progressive condition like Huntington's being forcibly integrated when their condition is obviously killing them. We cannot seem to ration rationally, and yes, despite horrific abuse due to my mother's bipolar disorder, and the medical model system, I stayed stable, physically, despite the disability center, despite an ecumenical corporation like Presby, but the price I've paid is essentially a knock out punch, decoupling me from the only thing I really had that mattered: the career. Miss Tufekci is being a good cheerleader, but she isn't looking below the tip of the iceberg.