Victoria Brownworth Profile picture
Sep 21, 2017 51 tweets 25 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
#DyingIs
Being sick in America.
Being poor in America.
Having your healthcare stolen in America.
#GrahamCassidy
1/
#DyingIs
Having the Speaker of the House lie to America repeatedly & no one hold him accountable.

2/
#DyingIs
Knowing if I were screaming "Help me! I’m dying!" SOMEONE would try to save my life, but people will let #GrahamCassidy pass. 3/
#DyingIs
Gasping for breath, heart pounding with Afib cause by a PE & not being able to get people to help prevent #GrahamCassidy. 4/
#DyingIs
Tweeting about having cancer & MS & how #GrahamCassidy will kill me. Screaming for help. Pleading for a viral response. 5/
#DyingIs
Focus is on #singlepayer, which folks think we’ll have after #GrahamCassidy passes & 35M lose health ins.
It needs 60 votes. 6/
#DyingIs
Sanders’ M4A bill, "borrowed" from @RepJohnConyers, who’s put it up every year for 20yrs, but never been invited on a talk show. 7/
#DyingIs
Knowing there are 49 votes for #GrahamCassidy NOW(needs 51).
Only 16 for M4A (needs 60).
And no plan for implementation of M4A. 8/
#DyingIs
Being dxd with #cancer at 26, MS at 30, fighting to hang onto health ins, able to change jobs, newspapers, but never ins co. 9/
#DyingIs
Your mother getting very sick at 60. Must go to a nursing home. #Medicaid pays for part of it. Your sibling pays for the rest. 10/
#DyingIs
You agree to pay for Dad if anything goes wrong, because your mother died slowly & painfully, miserably & SO expensively. 11/
#DyingIs
Your father, who plays tennis every week & has a wife younger than you, has a sudden stroke. He made you power of attorney. 12/
#DyingIs
Putting your handsome, reads-a-couple-books-a-week,now-paralyzed dad in a nursing home.Feeding tube,can’t read,barely speaks. 13/
#DyingIs
#Medicaid pays only so much. You pay the rest. It crushes you. You go bankrupt. Then YOU get a new diagnosis. 14/
#DyingIs
Watching your dad die slowly. Painfully. #Medicaid won’t pay for a hearing aid or new glasses when someone steals his. 15/
#DyingIs
A close friend gets #cancer. She survives. But goes bankrupt.
The husband of another friend gets cancer. They go bankrupt. 16/
#DyingIs
Relaxing a little after #ACA is passed. Thinking you are safe. Then your GOP governor refuses #Medicaid expansion. Files suit. 17/
#DyingIs
Signing up at healthcare.gov but making too little money to qualify for subsidy. Being sent to #Medicaid expansion. 18/
#DyingIs
Your state & others doesn’t have #Medicaid expansion because Dems never thought GOP could be so cruel. You pay full price. 19/
#DyingIs
Losing everything to medical bankruptcy–for your father & you–like millions of others. Watching legislators ignore your lives. 20/
#DyingIs
Being desperate. Thinking you can sell your painkillers–$40 a pill on the street–to pay for your health insurance premium. 21/
#DyingIs
Having a conscience.
Knowing you can’t contribute to someone else’s addiction by selling your pills.
But the thought is there. 22/
#DyingIs
All you want to is less stress.
Recalling how you got sick on assignment in Toronto.
All the hospital charged you was $100. 23/
#DyingIs
Knowing @HillaryClinton will protect #ACA, seek SP/#UHC.
You’re fighting #cancer, never been sicker, but HRC will protect you. 24/
#DyingIs
Trump campaigning on taking everyone’s healthcare.
Folks not caring enough about poor, sick, #disabled to vote against him. 25/
#DyingIs
Tweeting from the hospital over&over
Your arm when they can’t find a vein
Your hand black from the infection caused by the IV.
25/
#DyingIs
Tweeting from the hospital after treatment causes paralysis.
The "gym" where they give you 3 days to learn to "walk" again.
26/
#DyingIs
Learning that the only rehab your insurance will pay for doesn’t have a physical therapist on the premises. 27/
#DyingIs
Being sent home on a holiday weekend, paralyzed, with neither you nor your wife knowing how you’re going to manage. 28/
#DyingIs
Pain. Shock. Fear.
In the hospital they gave you communion every day.
At home you can’t even pray.
You & The Wife fight a lot.29/
#DyingIs
Recalling covering others' illnesses: a Pulitzer nom for writing about pediatric AIDS. The sweetness of abandoned AIDS babies. 30/
#DyingIs
Writing about sitting by the coffin of a 4yr old #cancer victim while doing a story about pesticide poisoning & farm workers. 31/
#DyingIs
Sitting at bedside of an AIDS patient covered in Kaposi’s lesions. There are rats. You're 26. He's 23. He dies. You get cancer.32/
#DyingIs
Knowing everything about the healthcare system yet being powerless to help anyone because it’s so broken & now, so are you. 33/
#DyingIs
Writing 30yrs worth of articles,5 books,about what it is to be sick and/or #disabled in America, yet folks are still suffering. 34/
#DyingIs
Being unable to sleep because you have to sit up to keep breathing, now.
Who can sleep sitting up, night after night?
35/
#DyingIs
Inability to relax because #GOP wants to take what little healthcare you have. People telling you their healthcare nightmares. 36/
#DyingIs
Unable to go outside since JULY when PT stopped coming.
Your insurance decided you didn’t need any more PT.
It's SEPTEMBER. 37/
#DyingIs
Wanting the life you had.
Being willing to settle for surviving.
Knowing #GrahamCassidy will kill you,others.
Being powerless.
38/
#DyingIs
Trying not to hate those who made this happen w/their careless votes.
Trying not to hate those who won't even make a call.
38/
#DyingIs
Writing at 3am & aching for quiet, but the sound of the oxygen generator punctuates every sentence. Oxygen hisses in your ear. 40/
#DyingIs
Knowing how much more you want to do.
Watching your sleeping wife.
Guilty for how your illness has bankrupted her, too.
41/
#DyingIs
Hoping folks will care enough to save your life, the way you have tried to save others’.Hoping they will know it's theirs, too. 42/
#DyingIs
Smiling faces of #GOP prepping to deny 35M health ins.

Senate girds for final #Obamacare #repeal vote politi.co/2fiNsFG 43/
#DyingIs
“Vast majority of states will get less money.”
@BillCassidy lying to folks whose only chance is #SaveACA politico.com/story/2017/09/…
#DyingIs people so naïve about healthcare they think killing #ACA will magically erect #SinglePayer/#UHC when even a vote requires 60.
45/
#DyingIs
Any #M4A/#UHC/#SinglePayer (all different) requires 13 GOP votes. There isn't 1. #ACA gives a platform to fight for these.
46/
#DyingIs
Buried in #GrahamCassidy is removal of every preventative for women. Also buried is disallowing #abortion even by private ins. 47/
#DyingIs
MILLIONS of Americans about to be sent into poverty &/or literal death because of #GrahamCassidy.
thedailybeast.com/obamacare-repe… 48/
#DyingIs
#Republicans Rush Toward an #Obamacare #Repeal With Little Time and Information thebea.st/2xhIUpo?source…
49/
#DyingIs knowing women & POC will suffer most from #ACARepeal.
Sign up for ACA while you can.
Help #SaveACA:
obamacarefacts.com/saveobamacare/
50/

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More from @VABVOX

Oct 9, 2018
I don't think men really understand how different it is to be a woman out in the world and how quickly things can turn dangerous.
When I was living in New Orleans, I was walking home from work one night. It was fall--dark early & foggy.
A man came out of the fog toward me.
1/
He said hi, I said hi.
As he started to pass me, he asked me if I had the time.
I looked at my watch, looked up, he had a gun pointed at me.
He hit me so fast I wasn't able to steel myself.
I fell to the ground.
He said, "I could rape you right now, but I don't have time."
2/
He wanted my money.
I had the grocery money for the entire house (I lived with 3 other people) in my purse.
He took it and disappeared into the fog.
The whole thing was maybe ten minutes, start to finish.
I was shaking so hard I could hardly get up.
My head was bleeding.
3/
Read 20 tweets
Oct 4, 2018
The majority of the working class in America is women and POC.
And white men as a group haven't voted majority Democrat since 1964--they stopped after LBJ signed the the #VRA.
Flip the narrative and start listening to the ACTUAL working class--the rest of us.
Stop centering white men for everything.
Stop claiming only white men can save us from the damage white men did to us.
Women are the working class--my investigation here:

damemagazine.com/2018/04/12/wom…
.@matthewstoller is very worried about white men, but it's really women of all races who are facing the worst effects of economic and social stresses.
My investigation here:
damemagazine.com/2018/05/10/why…
Read 5 tweets
Oct 2, 2018
The relentlessness of passing over superb women with strong credentials & election histories in favor of whatever man is a headline at a moment is exhausting.

Two months ago it was Avenatti. Now it's O'Rourke.

Bypassing the majority of Americans--women--is a national disgrace.
O'Rourke is fine. He is not, Harris, Gillibrand or Klobuchar.

▪Gillibrand is Congress' leader on women's rights & sexual assault victims.
▪Harris set NN2018 on fire with her speeches reclaiming identity politics.
▪ Klobuchar highlighted #Kavanaugh's unfitness for SCOTUS.
Americans MUST stop looking past women to find some man, any man to supplant them.

It took THIRTY YEARS of incredibly hard work for @HillaryClinton to get to run for POTUS. The rules for women are so different. No one sees a woman give a single speech and says "president!"
Read 16 tweets
Oct 1, 2018
I lived in NOLA right after college.
I drank most every day, as did everyone I knew.
We were all in the domestic Peace Corps, all in our early 20s, all hardworking activists with stressful work.
We drank too much at Mardi Gras, New Year's.
It's absurd to claim #Kavanaugh didn't.
Those of us who've had alcoholics in our lives--like Klobuchar--tend to be careful about alcohol because we've been damaged by the drunks in our lives. I'm a control freak, so never liked being drunk, but lots of my friends did. What IS true, is most 20somethings drink to excess.
This new tack from the #GOP to dismiss #Kavanaugh's alcoholic drinking--& I am not saying he was/is an alcoholic, but he certainly drank like one--is just wrong. It undermines their own credibility and ignores reality: statistically the vast majority of teens/20s get drunk OFTEN.
Read 6 tweets
Sep 29, 2018
Let's talk about sex, #Kavanaugh & Venn diagram overlap of male entitlement.

I've written a lot about sex in various contexts. In the late 80s/early 90s I also gave safe sex workshops back when folks my age were dying 24/7 from #AIDS. My 1st book was on juvenile prostitution.
1/
Most of us know consensual and non-consensual sex differ. The entirety of #Kavanaugh's defense and his defenders' outrage is predicated on the presumption that no teenaged boy knows what consent is.

THEY. KNOW.

Some, like their adult counterparts, don't care.

This is key.
2/
Since #MeToo we've seen egregious serial rapists like #BillCosby and #HarveyWeinstein exposed & attempts made to prosecute them.

But there are "lesser" sexual assaults we've given a lighter hand to: Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Mark Halperin, Louis CK--too many to list.
3/
Read 28 tweets
Sep 27, 2018
I gotta tell you, folks, I have been so sick for the past 2wks, I have really been scared.

Sept 22 House GOP passed their new cuts to Social Security Medicaid and Medicare out of committee. $1.2T in cuts.

That's the safety net.

I've always hoped I could fall there. No more.
I had to call my bestie today to have her come up and stay with me while The Wife is teaching.

Even with the oxygen, hard to breathe.

I had to cancel interviews for tomorrow, a radio appearance for Friday.

Chronic illness like #cancer is incapacitating at times.
We need to do better for sick and #disabled Americans.

It is so hard to work and be sick.

Never getting better sick.
Read 4 tweets

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