Bernie Mac
just died of pnuemonia. Supposedly unrelated to the inflammatory lung disease, sarcoidosis, which he has (but which, papers/doctors/spokespeople claim, was "in remission since 2005).
here's the brief: http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/09/obit.bernie.mac.ap/index.html
That's right, because SO many people are dying of pnuemonia these days. The fact that Mac was suffering from an autoimmune disease can't have had anything to do with that, eh? Oh yes, the papers failed to mention that sarc is autoimmune, didn't they?
I call bs. And yes, there is a politics of semantics involved here.
Oh, and it's not cancer. Remission seems the wrong word. Yes, autoimmunes can present in periodic "flare ups," but from what I understand of sarc (read: from watching it debilitate my mother), it's far less manageable than, say, lupus. And if Mac was going the standard route for treatment in America, he was receiving massive doses of steroids. Which help mask the symptoms (therefore creating the illusion of "remission," perhaps?), but actually do not actually treat the disease. Who here is surprised that his lungs gave out now?
I'm sad about this. I had no idea Mac had sarc, and I'm sorry for him, for the suffering he must have gone through, and for his family, as I have some idea of how hard it is to live with the uncertainty that sarc injects into your life. On the flipside, high-profile sarc-related deaths raise awareness. So little is understood about this disease, and I'm constantly frustrated by willful ignorance of American medicine that continues to term this disease "manageable" while people sicken and, yes, die from it.
One in ten people in this country have an autoimmune disorder, did you know?