My friend has cancer, really bad stage four-fuck up your life-this ain’t no joke-fucking cancer.

When we first found out she was sick we wanted to take her to the Cancer Treatment Center in Philadelphia, about 80 miles from home. But that would make too much sense, so her insurance company in their profound wisdom, decided that she should go to the cancer treatment center in Newnan Georgia. A fine center it is, filled with fine, very capable, very kind and knowledgeable people. Quite possibly some of the most caring people I’ve ever met in my life. There is only one downside, if you don’t factor in the fact that she has stage four, fucking-fuck up your life cancer, the downside is that she is 1000 miles away from home and family and friends and people who love her and care about her.

My friend has made this journey to Georgia at least seven or eight times in the past six months, Hell, I’ve gone to see her two or three times in the past six months.

This is not a rant about insurance companies or the vile stupidity of this government or anything else, this is a rant about the complete lack of sympathy, empathy, and common fucking sense then exists anymore and that we somehow find a way to accept this lack of common sense as the norm.

My friend is so sick today, it is almost impossible for her to walk from her living room to the bathroom, yet some insurance company finds it acceptable and quite all right to put her on a plane and fly her back to Georgia, again, and again, and again.

It seems that lately she spends more time flying back-and-forth to Georgia then trying to enjoy what time she has left here among us. These flights do her no good. I see the wear in her face each time she returns home. Home now seems to be where she comes to visit, between trips to Georgia.

In case no one in charge of these insurance companies knows, and I’m quite sure they don’t give a fuck, cancer all by itself sucks enough. Do you really need to throw into the picture traveling with your bile bags attached to the outside of your body, as you make your third trip in the past two months to Georgia.

I suppose we have come to be somehow comfortable with abject stupidity from corporations, insurance corporations and the government. I have lost sight of where one ends in the other begins. This isn’t even about stupidity, it’s about a lack of compassion, it’s about pissing away the final days of a life that is going to be taken from us too fucking soon, flying to Georgia with bags of bodily fluid strapped to the outside of her body.

Because the insurance company finds it acceptable and justified.

The cancer treatment center in Newnan Georgia is a truly amazing place, staffed by some of the kindest, smartest people I’ve ever met. I’m sure the one in Philly is too.

Cancer doesn’t suck bad enough, let’s make you travel across the continent to get treatment…