A Brave Blog

WICHITA, Kan. – In my last post, I rather ridiculously admonished a 91-year-old woman for straying from her mother's story in her self-published biography. That might have been slightly tasteless. Today, perhaps as a form of redemption, I wanted to highlight a piece of a writing that's completely serious and incredibly brave.

Tamara is a local woman, probably in her 30s. She's been through some hard times. A decade ago, she was addicted to cocaine for a period. But she cleaned herself up, and married a by-all-accounts decent man. They live in Wichita.

A few months ago, Tamara started throwing up frequently. She couldn't keep anything down, including her anxiety and depression medications. She become jittery, nauseous. Her husband took her to a doctor, who referred her to a specialist. She saw doctor after doctor. Tamara wasn't getting any better. By July, she was having trouble breathing. She was admitted to the hospital.

Doctors continued to examine her. For a while, they thought it was a case of pneumonia. But she kept getting worse. She needed a breathing tube, and later a feeding tube. She wasn't responding well, so she had to be restrained and sedated. Then, the doctors came back with the final diagnosis: advanced cancer. Her doctors believe she has months to live.

I've never met Tamara. I know what I do about her because of her husband, Josh. He's transformed his blog, "I Got The Poison", (a line from a Jason Mraz song) into a log of Tamara's illness. He's been incredibly faithful in updating it. His entries have only gotten more frequent in the last couple weeks, as Tamara has been in and out of the hospital.

I don't want to say much more about it. The journal is online, and deserves to be read. My interpretations of it, what it means, why it might exist and how it helps are all beyond the point. What matters is that this journal exists and makes for sobering reading on the often-frivolous Information Superhighway.

Go here to read it.