"The imaging looked like a field of stars - a Milky Way of tiny cancers..."
In 2011 my ex, whom I still care about and stay in touch with, was diagnosed with mesothelioma. Her lungs, abdominal cavity, and the pericardium around her heart were riddled with thousands of tiny tumors.
We were all gobsmacked. What the actual FUCK? The doctor said the commonest cause of this (relatively rare) type of cancer was asbestos exposure. But at first we couldn't imagine where it had come from. The places she worked, her home, etc. were all relatively recently built and asbestos-free. Dig deeper, go back further, the doctor urged. It can take 20 years or more for exposure to manifest in the form of the cancer.
Eventually, we figured it out almost by accident, based on a conversation with a friend whose parent had been a co-worker of my ex's back in the early 1990s, when together they worked for Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The parent had recently died of a "rare cancer" and that was the clue - BC/BS had been remodeling their office building, and was later adjudicated to have taken inadequate measures to protect employees working in the building from exposure to the insidious dust. A cluster of cases was identified, my ex was one of them. The settlement from BC/BS helped somewhat with a grueling regimen of surgeries, chemo treatments, and experimental therapies that helped her beat the odds for 14 years.
But now, at the relatively young age of 74, she's had enough of the treatments, and is going into hospice. Our daughter and her family live nearby, they spend time with her almost daily. She is still pretty strong, and I'm hoping she'll last until I'm free to travel back to Minnesota in the Spring. I'd like to spend just a little more time with her, if possible.
She more than beat the odds, she was a soldier in the war on this disease, participating in multiple treatment trials and being part of several studies to learn more about the cancer, its progression, effects, and vulnerabilities. Because of those trials and studies the survival rate has definitely been extended, although there is still no cure.
They couldn't have known that they were being exposed to asbestos. The building they worked in wasn't THAT old, it was built in the 1960s. By the time the company decided to remodel it the risks of asbestos exposure were known, but the degree to which abatement protocols were necessary wasn't fully regulated. So of course they "abated" on the cheap. There were plastic sheeting barriers everywhere, interior traffic was rerouted away from the construction areas, and demo workers wore respirators.
THAT ISN'T ENOUGH.
Asbestos fibers are microscopically tiny, tiny enough to hang in the air for hours, days, even weeks, and to travel on the tiniest of air currents through the finest of openings. And many old asbestos materials disintegrate with even the slightest movement or disturbance. Abatement is incredibly difficult, challenging and requires experienced professionals and considerable time, expense, and effort.
The East Wing of the White House was built in 1902 and extensively renovated in the 1940s, a time when asbestos was widely used in construction of all types.
You can bet your ass the class action lawyers who have won suit after suit on asbestos exposure are already collecting names, addresses, and contact information for everyone who's anywhere near the White House these days. And there will be people suffering and dying from a horrible, horrible kind of cancer popping up all over the Potomac basin the next two decades. And taxpayers paying a vast settlement bill for that suffering and death.
Enjoy your Dancing Chamber of Death, assholes.
disgustedly,
Bright
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