It hurts me too, bud.

I had some beautiful little portable players too. A nice sony with a rechargeable gum stick battery thingy and an in-line remote.

Going to use it to make some mixes of my LPs so I don't have to play them over and over.

REALLY wish I had kept my old Sony CD/MD MDLP deck and my portable players. But alas. I literally recycled them in like 2015 because no one cared, and I was convinced I never would again. T___T

This is all terrifying.

But ultimately, it is so so easy to see that we can just do better.

If we remove the profit motive. If we make care and quality of life the foundation of our medical system instead. If we center prevention and the patient.

How many more could we save?

If ccRCC was only caught in me when I was pissing blood and painfully passing stones, there wouldn't be a 95% cure rate. My level of treatment, the urgency of care, the possibility of serious injury or death would just go up. The quality of my life would plummet.

My cancer has a 95% cure rate. And it's not killing me today.

But if it hadn't been randomly found at the end of 2022, I wouldn't know it was there.

If the growth threatening my insides had not been cut out in 2023, I'd have no signs of its malice until I started pissing blood.

And both of these things are common for a reason. Because the American medical system is a backstop- not a defensive player on the field. It's a gutter, not a gardener. It's reactive, not proactive.

Nearly 15 years ago, I heard a similar story while I was having my spine repaired.

You see, my worst symptoms had appeared when I slept. I woke up with part of my body numb. A slipped disc had worsened, torn, and a nerve was being severely pinched.

This, apparently, is common.

And it taints everything. This idea of profit in the process of serving health. Profit off of keeping families whole during tragedy. Profit off of curing a thing that cannot be felt or noticed- except randomly or accidentally. Not that all diagnoses are accidental- but MANY are.

Politicians pave the way for insurance companies to stand between doctors and patients. They reduce regulations in order to line each other's pockets with money that should be used to care for people.

In a devious chorus, they all demand profit over service.

Even as a layperson, it is so obvious that our system is set up backwards. That we give piles and piles and piles of money to organizations that do not want us healthy. They do not want to pay to provide the care we need. In fact it is their imperative to NOT spend on treatment.

So I see this system. Where people get cured accidentally. Randomly.

I'm told, and it is reinforced, that it is frequent that most people in similar conditions to mine only find out they have this kind of cancer when they are being checked for something else entirely.

I hate how lucky I feel. Because I know there are people who aren't. Because I know that, even in the "richest country in the world" not everyone gets access to medical care. I almost didn't. And there's a chance I won't be able to easily access it again soon.

I don't know if I was told this previously, but in my situation, the operation I had results in a 95% average "cure" rate. Meaning the cancer is taken care of and does not come back.

But that doesn't stop me being afraid of it. The data doesn't preclude the worry.

I have some friends that would get a real kick out of meeting a pope