Calli, I hope everything works out the way you want. Courage! Forward! I admire your spirit!
Sheryl, I'm so sorry. Maybe this time they'll find a treatment that works better.
Y'all, I just had a revelation about the Repubs long game. And it's a long, long, deeply held and treasured belief that they're right and will guide the rest of us in the Way.
The last few decades nonsense about public schools teaching to the test and teaching less and less about subjects people need to live, work and improve conditions for everyone in the world have been no accident nor careless wishing on their part. It's all clear now. Public schools have been dumbed down on purpose, slowly but surely, for the purpose of warehousing children of ordinary people and the poor. Public schools will funnel graduates into the military, into field work, housework, janitorial and sanitation work, childcare all at low pay and no exit strategy. Children of the rich will attend private schools tailored toward careers in finance, medicine, law, politics, and government. They will never see or experience the life of the lower class, will have no empathy or understanding, and will work and live and legislate for their own class. Deporting all the immigrants and funnelling our kids into doing that work will insure that nobody has to have servants of color around anymore.
And meanwhile we have stupid TV bread and circuses and no opportunities to learn facts about government and our own circumstances. Well played, Republican long game.
I'm not normally given to conspiracy theories, but it isn't conspiracy when it's becoming reality, right?