In one of the universe's great ironies for me #WomensEqualityDay is also the anniversary of my being paralyzed.
It has been an incredibly difficult time. My life as I knew it was derailed. Yet the journey from rage to living my life with purpose is worth sharing.
1/
What began as a small nagging pain became the worst pain I had ever experienced--worse than labor,worse than 22 surgeries. The first hospital failed me catastrophically. They didn't listen to the details of what I was experiencing even as the one test they did proved me right.
2/
I was bleeding to death.
Slowly, steadily the treatment I had been on for a year had caused a catastrophic bleed at the back of my abdomen that pushed along my spine, down the neural pathways to my legs & within a week, paralyzed me. I have been in constant severe pain since.
3/
The 2nd hospital save my legs and my life, preventing "compartment syndrome" in which the blood flow to limbs diverts in such a way that gangrene sets in and amputation becomes essential to survive.
I was lucky I didn't die and was only paralyzed.
Yet I did not feel lucky.
4/
During the time I was in the 2nd hospital, I had to fight for care and even survival. Not just for me but for other patients. I had to call hospital hierarchy from my bed in ICU, I had to bring in all my journalistic savvy to hold people accountable, demanding what I needed.
5/
The trauma center saved my life, the after care nearly killed me.Patients are in charge of themselves in American hospitals. I didn''t have the same experience in London or Toronto. I had to plead for folks in my step-down unit to not be put,homeless & sick,back on the street.
6/
I was sent home with no explanation of how to live as a paralyzed person. I had to fight to get a hospital bed for my home. I had huge thigh to ankle braces on my legs & no one explained how to maneuver these. I was in a state of utter despair and had to somehow access care.
7/
The suddenness of the paralysis had left me no time for the stages of grief and acceptance. I got the first twinges of pain on a Friday night, went to the 1st hospital Sunday, was released Thursday night and taken by EMS, screaming in pain, to the trauma center 12hrs later.
8/
It is 1,095 days since I was paralyzed. Within two weeks of being released from the hospital, I had to return to work. I had written a few columns from the hospital. As a member of the much-vaunted gig economy, I had no sick leave. My hospital bill was $260k. It was very hard.
9/
Those 1,095 days have been spent trying to get help. I'm a well-educated white journalist and it has been absolute hell navigating this broken system. I became an advocate for others because I had to. When Bernie Sanders says the system wants people to die, he's not wrong.
10/
For three long years I have had to find a way to do investigative journalism from a hospital bed in my house. I have had to fight for physical and occupational therapists and nurse practitioners to come to the house to treat me. I've had several cancer surgeries in that time.
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I have tried and failed to get durable medical equipment I desperately need for my quality of life: a motorized wheelchair, a stair glide and a wheelchair lift, none of which my exorbitant health insurance will pay for.
Every day I think: we can and must do better for people.
12/
I know many will have already stopped reading, so I'll end saying, I am not at peace with what happened to me but I feel blessed to be alive. I am blessed that I was able to turn my rage into helping others struggling with similar trauma. I am blessed to have a strong voice.
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I am blessed to have a wife of 20yrs who has stood by me and loved me through the rage, the excruciating pain & how our lives have been altered. I am blessed that this community has introduced me to #disability activists so I could learn to be of better service to others.
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I wanted to share this story because I know others have had catastrophic health crises & I want people to know we can never give up: Someone needs our voice, our help, our hope, our succor. We have to model strength & vulnerability. We have to model staying alive.
Thanks.💜🌿
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🧵Throughout this election cycle I've been so disheartened by the disconnect between actual voters who I report on and the Very Online interpretation--largely through a yt male prism--of what the election is "really" about. Some of us--though not many--warned against Biden or Bernie as 2020 nominee precisely because this moment would arise.
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My concern was 2024 would create a crisis of the sort being manufactured now at a time when the GOP was flexing it's power and voter solidarity. Dems consistently run from conflict instead of addressing it, AND don't vote, which is how we have GOP leadership in the House.
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The multiplicity of perils facing the country and more microcosmically the Democratic party, must be addressed and NOW--not at the convention, which would be disastrous and ensure a Trump victory. The lessons of 2016 and party schism were never learned, in part due to the disruption of the pandemic.
3/🧵
So let me say this: A few dozen MAGAs in my mentions are telling me I'm a "self loathing white person," so let me clarify for those folks and anyone else that my support for Black women like Jasmine Crockett (who has been very supportive of me during my recent illness and bereavement) is my being an ally. I am blessed to have some fabulous Black women in my life and I support many Black women politicians and Black women activists. My mentor for two decades was a Black woman theorist and writer. I grew up with strong Black women Civil Rights activists staying in our house because my parents were Civil Rights workers. I was in college before I truly understood how unusual that was--that a Black woman activist would be sleeping in my bed and I would be sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag while she told me stories about her life in Mississippi. I am grateful to have been raised by anti-racist parents and I have tried to carry on that legacy. So no, I am not self loathing. I am proud to stand with Black women (and my many Black male friends as well!). And you thinking I have to hate myself to lift up and support Black women is a you problem that you should work on because racism continues to wreak havoc on this country.
I wrote this piece about a few weeks back about Civil Rights, my parents' activism, my early childhood in the Civil Rights movement and the long ugly history of bathroom discrimination in America and the harn it's done and does. (Gift 🎁 link) epgn.com/2024/03/28/the-
I wrote this tribute to my longtime friend and mentor Audre Lorde 9yrs ago. I can still see us dancing together like it was yesterday, not decades ago. I so wish she were still with us. I love this essay. I hope you will too. (Gift 🎁link.) lambdaliterary.org/2015/02/dancin…
🧵I once filed a column from cardiac ICU when I was 30something and my heart just went haywire when I was out on assignment and started beating in the 200s and I passed out and was taken to hospital via ambulance and they had to shock me several times. It is nothing like on TV.
🧵 It's like having a hot iron (remember those?) dropped from a tall building onto your chest. They never show that on TV. It's pretty terrible. It didn't work, so they had to do a coronary ablation, where they try to re-set your heart's electrical circuitry by threading some wires into it.
🧵I was just thinking that maybe I am being a big baby by not working today due to my having surgery yesterday ("you can work from bed") and then I thought about when I did that column (I was at the Daily News then) and the nurse coming in and yelling at me because the alarm went off on my machine because I was stressing.
OMG. This @ABC special #OnTheBrink with Diane Sawyer and @rachelvscott is absolutely gutting and should make everyone enraged that women are being subjected to this.
Termination committees are being convened to determine whether women deserve an emergency medical abortion. Insanity.
One woman was sent home with bleeding and fever and pain because she wasn't sick enough to be treated. She ended up hemorrhaging into the toilet and is rushed to the hospital, she is put on life support.
#OnTheBrink
Hollywood podcaster "reporting" on Hamas and the IDF from L.A. while real journalists like myself are covering the actual conflict. Yet folks like his narrative more--even as they blame "the media" for real reporting: They don't like what we tell them and how awful it is.
In reality IDF has razed northern Gaza and Netanyahu told hostage families his priority is attacking Gaza, not rescuing the 160 hostages still held. Thousands are demanding Netanyahu's resignation.
Pay more attention to people like @AlonLeeGreen, actually in Israel and doing real work.
Now I am flat out sobbing. Vivian Silver was such a remarkable person. So dedicated to making the world better. Oct 4th she was leading a peace march--she founded Women Wage Peace. Oct. 7 she was abducted by Hamas from a closet where she was hiding.
Vivian Silver worked constantly with/for people in Gaza. She drove Gazans to Israeli hospitals. She fought for wage increases. She was dedicated to a two state solution and put herself out there every day. She embodied tikkun olam.
May her memory be a blessing and a revolution.