Care To Kill Cancer

I read The Design Legacy of Covid? It’s All Around You and got to thinking about the fingerprints past crises have left on my life. Think airport screenings and masks and QR codes. But rather than carefully sculpted scars, undesigned legacies came to mind.

Undesigned legacies of past crises scatter around me like fistfuls of ashes. They are nearly invisible irritants tossed up in the air. They become particulate matter showering down around me. I collide with these particles of the past in the most unexpected ways. Yesterday, I hit one example head-on while driving a well-worn road. I was heading towards the city’s center for a simple errand. Like on autopilot, I daydreamed while driving. I was thinking up a friend’s future baby shower gift.

Let me back up. A colleague at the academic cancer research center where I work will soon have a much-wanted, highly unexpected baby. The colleague, a physician-scientist, is dedicated to understanding life and her patients’ medical problems. She thinks big and boldly and has a strong belief in the common good. This rebel female over-forty has her sights set on starting a cancer research lab of her own in the future. She is a tremendous mentor and will make a world-class mom; I am over the moon for her and her budding family and volunteered to organize a baby shower.

Baby showers are an onerous task under normal circumstances. There are additional burdens given pandemic precautions and restrictions. For twenty-plus months, with safeguards to protect patients and each other and families…