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AS THE STRANGER'S VOICE on the telephone started to lay
out her story, my first thought was, ''Not this again.''
So while Kim Slivinski talked, I began to mentally
compose a polite refusal, an explanation that, no, I don't do that kind of
story, but let me find someone who can take a brief item and then I'll pass it
on to an editor, and . . . .
It was a sad story, a new one - but yet, one I have
heard so many times that it is becoming impossible to contain the rage stirred
by the tale.
Part of it was Slivinski's
voice. Calm, controlled, just the facts. When she had every right to be
screaming.
Maybe it's up to us to scream for her.
I'm the mother of a 4-month-old daughter who has a
rare liver disease, Slivinski said. Without a liver
transplant, they say Danyelle will probably die
before her 1st birthday. We live near Harvester.
We were supposed to go to Pittsburgh this week for
an evaluation, to get Danyelle on a waiting list for
a transplant, but we had to cancel at the last minute, the mother said. We
found out the insurance will cover only $10,000 of the $25,000 for the tests.
We need to come up with a $15,000 deposit to get things started.
So we've set up a trust fund. Can you write
something?
She said it all just like that - clearly,
logically, completely organized.
You could hear that she was tired. When asked - and
only when asked - she admitted that yes, she was tired. Yes, this was an
ordeal.
In short, Kim and her husband, Russ Slivinski, have spent the last two months watching layer
after layer stripped from the bundle of hopes and dreams in which they had
wrapped their new baby girl. And they will go on like this for - months? Years?
No one can say.
There will be pain, and they will suffer.
But for Kim Slivinski,
right now, that is not the point.
Last month, my colleague Bill McClellan wrote a
beautiful and touching column about the medicine-by-bake-sale that has become
so much a part of our world.
He talked, in particular, about a little boy who
needs new lungs and, in general, about the letters and calls that come to us
here at the Post-Dispatch - and every other newspaper and magazine and
television station that might get the word out - every day of the year from
people caught in similar nightmares.
Bill also tried to explain how difficult it is to
do one story, because it only brings another call from someone equally needy,
equally desperate, equally worthy of our words and time.
I thought then - and I still do - that Bill had
said it all.
But Kim Slivinski called
Wednesday morning. And I wanted to scream. It suddenly became impossible,
almost immoral, not to repeat what had already been said.
Earlier this week, another random contact arrived
in the mail. It was a commentary piece from a think tank that has of late been
filling my mailbox with studies and editorials ''for your consideration.''
That's what people at think tanks do - think and commit those thoughts to paper
and then scatter them to the four winds of the U.S. Postal Service to see where
they land.
The latest to land on my desk was
written by a professor of philosophy at some university. He said our health care system
had become a costly, inefficient mess.
It's the fault of too much government regulation,
the professor said, and those ninnies screaming for national health insurance
will only make it worse.
The professor went on to say that government ought
to leave people alone, to quit forcing them to buy insurance they don't want,
and to stop stealing tax money from hard workers to pay for the other guy's
needs. If someone can't afford something, the professor said, they can always
beg. What do we have all these charitable organizations for, anyway? he asked.
I would give you more details, but I pitched the
thing into the recycling bin and someone emptied it last night. Still, you get
the picture.
He would be proud of Kim Slivinski.
She knows just where she stands. She is making the phone calls. She is doing
what she has to do and doing it quickly.
The family has set up a trust fund at Boatmen's
National Bank. Checks may be made out to the bank, with a note that the money
is for the Danyelle Lee Slivinski
fund, account number 730207314942. You can make a donation at any Boatmen's
outlet, or mail a check to Boatmen's National Bank; Branch Services Division;
510 Locust Street, LTC-8603; St. Louis, Mo., 63101.
So the Slivinskis join
the ranks of anguished Moms and Dads, counting on the kindness of strangers.
That is the system. That is how we cover, in 1991,
our hopes and our health.
The
professor likes it. Do you?