(late December 2017)
My dentist will extract my problematic tooth later today. I know that sounds ominous, but I'm an old hand at enduring tooth extractions. I'm not worried. My experience is that there is a sense of relief in the body after an abscessed tooth is removed.
The dentist said the tooth might be saved with a root canal, but it would be "messy," with an uncertain outcome. At this point, I can't afford that uncertainty. Saturday was one of the most miserable days of my life; the tooth just needs to come out. He could have removed it on Tuesday when I saw him but he worried that the freezing wouldn't be effective because of the infection, and he didn't want to cause any further pain, which I appreciate. He expects the tooth will pop out easily.
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If you've been reading other blogs, you'll know that I have been feeling immensely grateful for my circumstances. My experience of cancer seems pretty much as good as it can be—a stable income, sick leave, a great health care team, amazing friends, a kid who is a relatively independent teen (not younger), a lovely home that I enjoy, an online support group, and more. I can't imagine going through this without any one of those parts. Some of these components are (relatively) individual (e.g., the friendships I've cultivated, nourished, and appreciated) but others involve a fair bit of chance or luck (e.g., that I live in Kingston, where there is a medical school, and Kingston Heath Sciences revamped its Cancer Care to be much more patient-centred).
I've been thinking a lot about paid sick leave. My experience of cancer would be much more stressful, difficult and exhausting if I had to work. I can't imagine it. I keep thinking about the cashier at the local Loblaws at the beginning of the pandemic, in March 2020, before masks and plexiglass screens, who was working during chemotherapy. Her story has haunted me (you may have read about it in The Case for Basic Income), and doubly so now that I'm also in chemotherapy myself.
Our premier likes to talk about such essential workers as "heroes" but he has repeatedly voted down legislation for more paid days for Ontario workers. In the midst of a global pandemic, paid sick days would help keep COVID from spreading and literally save lives. It makes a lot of sense from a public health perspective. And surely it would be compassionate public policy.
But we live in a cruel, mean-spirited, unkind society where profit trumps all, and the lives of some don't count as much as others.
This is why exhortations "to be kind" at an individual level and celebrations of individual "heroes" of generosity really irk me, when the real problem is weak, inadequate public policy. Why can't we have kind and compassionate public policy? (you know where this is going, right?)
Along these lines, my colleagues, Paul Taylor (FoodShare Toronto) and Val Tarasuk (University of Toronto), and I recently wrote an op ed about CBC's Sounds of the Season, published by the Toronto Star, entitled Food drives are not the answer to poverty and hunger. With Sounds of the Season, CBC is "celebrating community and kindness" and is urging us to "make the season kind" by donating to food banks.
Of course, I'm not against community and kindness, but individual kindness cannot substitute for just and effective public policy. This is what is so irksome about the CBC Sounds of the Season celebration — there is never any sense that food banks do not and cannot prevent people in Canada from going hungry.
Only public policy that eliminates poverty can do that. Such public policy would embed kindness and compassion at its core.
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