In Stephen King’s book “The Shining,” a father brings an empty wasp’s nest into a haunted hotel and places it next to his sleeping child.
As you might expect, that doesn’t work out great for anyone.
As Cardinal & Pine this week formally wraps up its Bad Medicine series, an in-depth look at the state of healthcare in North Carolina, I keep thinking about how often children suffer the most immediate consequences of adults’ bad choices.
My colleague Dylan Rhoney and I have spent the last three months looking at the dangers that changes in federal health policy pose to North Carolina and the state’s existing health disparities. These dangers fall directly on children.
Bad Medicine covered President Donald Trump’s Medicaid cuts, which could strip children of vital healthcare; the lapse of Affordable Care Act subsidies, which will cause hundreds of thousands of children nationwide to lose access to basic care; the rising vaccine disinformation under Robert F. Kennedy, which exposes North Carolina children to deadly and preventable diseases; and the return of measles, which is especially dangerous to kids.
We also looked at the General Assembly’s delay in addressing the state’s Medicaid shortfall; the increasing strain on Emergency Rooms; and the ‘moral injury’ the federal cuts pose to nurses, all of which, sooner or later, pose specific threats to children.
The Shining’s Jack Torrance may have inadvertently unleashed a swarm of ghost wasps on his son, then terrorized his family and chased them around with a gore-streaked mallet, but he did not pass legislation that will make it harder for children who’ve gotten heart transplants to afford the medication keeping them alive. That was all federal and state lawmakers.
Stories yet to tell
We didn’t get to every story we wanted with Bad Medicine, and there are several left to tell. So just because the series is ending doesn’t mean we will stop reporting on these issues. But we started it all trying to make sense of the state’s healthcare challenges, and after dozens of interviews and months of reading and reporting, that sense remains elusive. What is clear, however, is that few of these issues are acts of god. They can all be traced to the decisions made by adults in charge.
My final feature for Bad Medicine profiled Naomi Reeves, 10, and Finley Thomas, 11, children with significant health issues who have depended on Medicaid to stay alive.
Naomi had a heart transplant when she was four months old. Finley has a neuromuscular disorder and respiratory issues that require 24/7 supervision. Their care is super expensive and non-negotiable, and Medicaid has been essential for them both. The looming cuts are policy choices that threaten their complex care.
But amid the dangers and fury our reporting has shown, we also found hope, and so much strength.
‘She has to fight just to be here’
The science behind a successful organ transplant is staggering. Doctors can cut the malformed heart out of an infant and replace it with another. It’s marvelous, it’s miraculous. But it’s only the beginning. The immune system, if left alone, would see that new organ as an invader, and would start to attack it as if it were a virus. Naomi has to take immune suppressing medication every 12 hours every day of her life to prevent that from happening.
“Naomi fights so much,” Naomi’s mother told Cardinal & Pine. “She has to fight just to be here.”
There is a tremendous amount of work to be done to address the healthcare challenges in North Carolina, but there are still people trying to do it. The parents and caretakers of children like Naomi and Finley. The nurses like Kerri Wilson and Zoe Clarke at Mission Hospital in Asheville, who keep showing up every day despite the trauma of being overworked and understaffed. The local doctors who help their patients navigate an internet haunted by lies and half-truths about vaccines.
Things may be dark, but hope is not lost.
At the end of “The Shining,” (spoiler alert) Jack Torrance, possessed by the worst of the hotel’s malevolence, stands menacingly over his child, poised to do the unspeakable and unforgivable. But at the final moment, his last threads of humanity and love for his son finally, if briefly, push the demons from his head.
He sees what he’s done, and he tries, at long last, to do the right thing instead.
