Thread by @KWestSavali

This #JoeBiden/Cancer debate is triggering me, so I’m just going to talk about it. Pardon me in advance.

My husband, my partner of almost 20 years, was 41 when he died in December. Our sons are 14, 10, and 6.

He was misdiagnosed multiple times before we finally got the correct one in June 2017: Stage 4 lung cancer w/ a salivary gland profile. Rare.

Oncologists at @MDAndersonNews gave us so much hope, until there was a lapse in care due to the negligence of the clinical research staff, specifically Dr. Apostolia Tsimberidou. I’ve talked about this before.

Fast forward to the meeting where I was told by the head of clinical research at @MDAndersonNews that we shouldn’t have been given hope in June, that we should have been told to start hospice.

Let me stop right here for a second, because this is not a “story.” This is my fucking husband. And I really don’t know what this life is supposed to look like without him. I feel like I’m in a parallel universe.

Our last wedding anniversary together 11/13/2018. Our 14th.

So, this woman actually told me that my advocacy on my husband’s behalf made the lead oncologist feel “cornered” into giving us hope where there was none.

So, from June until he died in December, we were stressed, scared, wondering why doctors didn’t act with the urgency one would expect. We plugged holes—pulmonary embolisms, pleural effusions, brain, spinal cord, cervical spine metastases, pneumonia—only for another one to appear.

Only to find out after he died in my arms on 12/17/18, that @MDAndersonNews, among the top cancer treatment centers in the world, believed in June they’d done all they could do. And they KNEW it for about 6 months and didn’t say that.

Time wasted that we could have gone somewhere else, made another choice, before the cancer moved to his bone marrow and he was unable to walk.

Time wasted until our second opinion said if she could medi-vac him to her she would, but he was too fragile.

Until, finally, they told me that if I tried to transport him home, there was 50/50 chance he’d die enroute.

I say all of that to say this: Beau Biden’s death was a tragedy. My heart continues to go out to the Biden family. But here’s what I find despicable.

You can not promise to cure cancer as a means of getting people to vote for you. You can’t give people that hope for political gain. That is politically and emotionally manipulative as fuck.

Allocating more funds for more cancer research? Sure. Universal healthcare? Absolutely. Saying we’re in the fight together and finding a cure is a top priority? Yes, sir.

But to make that promise, using that language, *knowing* the emotional heft it carries; knowing that cancer patients, their families, and caregivers would do anything for a cure, even vote for someone they may be on the fence about, is disgusting. Absolutely abhorrent.

Thank you, everyone. I’m so sorry for your pain and loss. Cancer has stolen so much from us.