This the face of one seriously relieved mother.

I’ve watched the heath care legislation being volleyed across Capitol Hill in Washington, DC for the past several months with what one might call significant personal interest. I’ve refreshed APNews, The Guardian, Fox News, CNN, and Twitter more often than any other moment in my life, trying to get a sense for what might happen next, tracing the path of my family’s future as it zipped past us, back and forth. Protections that allowed me to focus on the moment with my daughter as we unravelled her mysterious health challenges over the first nine years of her life have spent the last few months in question, threatened by elected officials who seemed to favor the interests of huge insurance companies over those of children like mine.

Last night, it seemed that compassion tipped the ball over the net, just barely.

On my kitchen counter is an envelope containing a CDROM with nine years of medical records on it — nine years of information that, had last night’s Senate vote for a repeal of the Affordable Care Act been successful, would be the information that sealed my daughter’s fate forever. Now, for the moment, that information is just a record of her past.

On my bathroom counter is an inhaler on which I rely heavily. In my purse is an epinephrine auto-injector, which could save my life. Had last night’s repeal been successful, they would be symbols of my future economic hardship. Now, they’re just tools to keep the breath in my lungs.

I have little else to say about the game our elected officials played with my body and the bodies of my family these past months. I am just glad, for the moment, to hold my daughters close and see the fog lift over our futures.

by

by