Health Care: It’s Personal

Originally Published in the American Thinker

Emotions are running high in America as the country is entrenched in the debate over health care.  Conventional wisdom dictates that rational thinking must always prevail over irrational judgment that almost always accompanies human emotion.  However, as a victim of child-hood cancer, I can tell you as I live and breathe today, it is our humanity that must triumph in our national discussion that may ultimately decide who lives — and who dies.

Twenty-four years ago this month I found myself on an operating table in a suburban Chicago hospital undergoing what was supposed to be routine surgery. Doctors were removing a mass of calcified tissue that was present for a few years in my right arm, but finally, the growth had caused this 14-year old baseball fanatic to lose the zip on his fast-ball, or so it would seem.

When I awoke from surgery, I learned that I didn’t have a harmless calcium deposit – I had cancer.

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