From Dec. 30th - Is it because of Dartmouth?

I felt kind of bad today at the doctor’s… more like guilty. I was thinking, I’m there to have my knee checked out – it swells up and so I see an orthopedic surgeon… I may have arthritis, so it would be a good thing to see a rheumatologist, and bam, there I am having an hour long consultation with a rheumatologist. We pay, for the appointments with Dr. Bhanusali, the blood work, the x-ray, the MRI, and today’s appointment, something like $50, and it all happens within about 10 days. Meanwhile, there are people dying of leukemia because they can’t even get on the waiting list for a bone marrow transplant. I didn’t do anything to deserve this treatment… sure, my parents worked their asses off, and that is the American Dream (and my dream) – to work so that your kids have better lives and more opportunities than you had, but at the same time, kids my age and younger didn’t do anything to not be granted operations that would have saved their lives. At the same time, 3.5 million people are displaced, 2.5 million are starving, and 400,000 people have already died in Darfur, yet we’ve heard nothing about it. If not for the campaign for divestment at Dartmouth (which was successful), I would not know there’s any semblance of a problem there, much less genocide. But people here hurry home from whatever they’re doing to make sure they catch Laguna Beach. I know it’s not even close to true, but sometimes it feels that I’m the only one who cares. And even then I don’t do anything about it.