Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the death of one of my favorite bloggers, Steve Gilliard. Steve was and remains an inspiration to me. I am not at all certain that I would ever have started my own blog without his brilliant example. Yesterday I paid tribute to him here.
Also yesterday, at the Group News Blog, a site started by several of the regulars commenters at Steve's old site, Jesse Wendel had this to say:
He [Steve] got decent care at the hospital, but yes, institutional racismplayed a role in his death -- and I'm not talking only about hismedical care, but how everyone involved interacted with the system. That conversation isn't one I (or anyone on the inside) is going to talk about the details of now. (Ask me again in a decade.)
Those words are almost too painful to hear. As the many Gilly tributes that were posted yesterday can attest, to this day the man is keenly missed. The idea that his death might have been preventable makes me sick to my stomach.
But I can't say I'm surprised. At the time, if you read between the lines of the medical updates that were being posted on his site by his friend Jen (but which appear to have been taken down), you could find ample cause for concern as to whether Steve was getting the best treatment.
I'm not sure what Jesse meant by the "institutional racism" comment. But I suppose he meant the following, alone or in combination: the quality of care Gilly had access to (through whatever type of insurance he had, or didn't have), the quality of care he actually got, and the extent to which his loved ones were or were not able to effectively navigate the system on his behalf.
Last year I read Joan Didion's acclaimed memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, which deals with the sudden death of her husband and the protacted illness and death of her daughter, who passed away at age 39. To tell you the truth, I did not much care for it. I found Didion's writing to be cold, mannered and pretentious, as I often do.
