Celebrating Larissa Gionfriddo Podermanski Five Years Later

My daughter Larissa died of Metastatic Breast Cancer five years ago, in May of 2018.

She had only two wishes at the end. One was that we plant a tree for her. We did - in a Middletown CT city park - and it has grown straight and tall. The other was that she not be forgotten.

Larissa's family and friends took pains to reassure that she could not be forgotten. If you were fortunate enough to know Larissa, you would know why.

Still, I wondered how I might celebrate her a little more now that some years have passed, while sharing some of her memorable spirit with others (some who knew her and others who did not), while reminding us why she was such an extraordinary woman.

In early 2017, Larissa started a blog called Metastatically Speaking, through which she chronicled her life with MBC. Unfortunately - and through no one's fault - her blog disappeared some time after her death. So, if you search for it now, you can't find it.

However, I was fortunate enough to see and retain drafts of a small handful of her blogs, which together create a special portrait of a courageous young woman living, shining, and thriving in the face of dire health realities. So, a few weeks ago, I decided that I might republish these, with some additional light editing.

So, those are the 11 blogs that follow this one, in reverse chronological order (her final blog is the next one, the oldest furthest down the list). Together, they comprise roughly 5,000 of Larissa's own words describing her MBC journey. They are filled with humor, optimism, and strength, as well as some sadness and grieving.

They are an extraordinary gift to all of us who lived these days with her, and I hope to many others who will find hope and meaning in them.

Larissa was inspired to write her blog in part because of the emotional support she received from two nonprofits - the Pink Agenda and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. She would encourage anyone with an interest in breast cancer to support these organizations.

by Paul Gionfriddo, May 8 2023

Comments

States and Rebates

If you run a small business in Florida, are self-employed in Texas, or work for a large corporation in New Jersey ( see an update below ), then your state insurance regulators probably haven't been working for you. The news that 15.8 million people can expect $1.3 billion in rebates from insurers this year because of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) underscores how weak health insurance regulation has been in states across the country. It may come as no surprise that Florida and Texas, two leaders in the fight against ACA, have been exposed as anti-consumer. But they are not the only states with an anti-consumer bias. First, the good news: last week, the federal government announced that three-quarters of us will get letters beginning on July 1 telling us that our insurance plans paid out at least 80 to 85 cents in benefits for every premium dollar they collected. This means that under ACA they met the minimum standard for a reasonable benefit payout (which i...

Why the Republicans Have No Health Care Plan

There's a simple reason why (after more than a decade) Donald Trump and the Republicans have no plan to replace Obamacare. I'll explain in a few minutes. But first, some background. When the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) was passed in 2010, it was an effort to expand health care coverage to a lot of people who needed it, while controlling their costs. It had certain key provisions, not the least of which were that people couldn't be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, that all chronic diseases needed to be covered fairly, and lifetime coverage caps had to be lifted. The problem was that if you left matters to insurers to set insurance premiums based on what this would cost, the price of insurance would rise dramatically. So the government took a look at three different programs and ultimately put them together into one system. For people whose income was so low that they couldn't afford any real cost-sharing, the government expanded Medicaid. For elders...

The Ten Best and Ten Worst States for Your Mental Health

Connecticut spends four times more per capita on state mental health services than Texas. In Florida, 25 percent fewer people report having mental illnesses than in Washington. Across the nation, there are significant differences in the amounts states spend on mental health services. Connecticut spends $189 per capita, while Texas spends only $39. But there are also significant differences in the reported prevalence of mental illnesses. For example, fewer than 18 percent of Floridians report having a mental illness during the past year, but in Washington almost 24 percent do. But what happens when you put spending and prevalence together? Some new rankings emerge that give you a measure of each state’s real commitment to protecting mental health – and treating mental illness – in their population. This week, I have ranked all fifty states using both spending and prevalence data. I have taken per capita m...

Our Health Policy Matters

Search This Blog