The Bucket List, Invisible Identity and Privilege

The Woman at the Washington Zoo:

In two months I will mark the year 3 B.T.- my third year of Borrowed Time. (Or, as I think of it on my best days, Bonus Time.) When I was diagnosed with Stage IV(b) liver cancer in early July of 2001, every doctor was at great pains to make clear to me that this was a death sentence. Unless you find liver cancer early enough to have a surgeon cut out the primary tumor before it spreads, you have little chance of parole. The five-year survival rate for those who can't have surgery is less than one percent; my cnacer had spread so widely that I was facing a prognosis of somewhere between three and six months. I was forty-three; my children were five and eight...

I try to remember that I'm one of the luckiest cancer patients in America, by dint of good medical insurance, great contacts who gained me access to the best of the best among doctors, an amazing support system of friends and family, and the brains and drive to be a smart and demanding medical consumer, which is one of the very hardest things I've ever done. I'm quite sure that if I were among the 43 million of my fellow American who had no health insurance- let alone really good insurance- I'd be dead already. As it is, I never see a hospital bill that hasn't already been paid. And there is no co-payment on the many medications I inject myself every day for a week after chemo to boost my bone marrow's production of white cells- costs about $20,000 a year. (Williams, 320&329)

How does someone survive cancer who is not a journalist for the Post or Vogue? not very easily, as even Williams points out. Therefore, where will my dad's friend, who was just given 2 months, fall? Does he have the money or the support system to beat out his time prognosis? Yes, inevitably he will die, we all will. But my question remains, how does society decide how long someone will linger after a diagnosis of death?

and more so, what does one do with such a fate? what do you do with two months? that question is also answered by class. maybe if you're rich you'll bounce off to Italy for that vacation you always meant to take. or maybe you'll travel down to Mexico to go on one of those alternative therapy retreats. i don't know. but if you're poor, do you try to work during those months, that is if you physically can? do you spend time with family? how do you prepare? and is it fare that most often than not, only the rich and upper crust afford to create a 'bucket list'?