Ella Does Squamish

An "inadvertent" act of civil disobedience.

 

There were 15 of us in on it, most of us cancer survivors of one form or another. We were amateurs with limited resources and only 2 weeks to get her done.  Plans were finalized on May 30. PR’s were put out and advocacy groups were notified 3 days before June 2nd. Advocacy Groups posted notification and alerts one day prior to the event. Additionally, if doctors as a group know very little of this therapy you can bet that patients know next to nothing of it. In short, we weren’t expecting any groundswell.

Folks made great effort getting there. One PC survivor came from as far as CA. Torrential thunderstorms socked in O’Hare much of Friday evening. PAH was bumped off a few flights and drove all night to another city to catch a flight that would get her to Chicago. Talk about gumption. Everyone was assigned tasks and executed flawlessly.

Now we all knew this would be executed a bit on the fly. We just didn’t appreciate how much. At 0900 some set up base in the park while others arrived at McCormick Place. Towards 1000 as more showed up at park, including Judy Peres and Luke Timmerman(from the Chicago Tribune and Bloomberg respectively). After a hasty cell phone conference with our "on site consultants" and utilizing the large pool of intelligence-Humint available, the decision was made to direct all participants to the "Bridge".

Let me describe the Bridge. This is an elegant pedestrian bridge as wide as a 3 car garage and opulently designed. The foot traffic was like being at a main gate at the end of a major sporting event or concert. Wall to wall oncologists, drug reps and other professionals passing between the stadium sized buildings and over a major freeway.

And there we were. All of us passionate considerate and articulate. All of us with signs around our necks and posters in one hand and flyers in the other. Big colorful signs! Now we were on that bridge for a little over an hour. Sorry if that sounds lame to some, sorry if we were all too busy to snap some pix. But i’ll describe the picture. We were all standing unobstructively but HIGHLY visible along both walls mingling. With us were at least four reporters who many of us spoke with, three advocacy group executives including the current and former Ustoo chairmen,  and a couple of analysts i think. So there were actually more than 20 in the group so to speak. And then the cops started showing up a half hour after we got there. Over the next half hour, there we were with the reporters and advocacy group execs while a dozen of Chicago’s finest, McCormick Place and ASCO security personnel told us we had to go. Of course our intel indicated that the Bridge was unequivocally a legit Weapon of Moral Demonstration(WMD). So it took the very patient peace officers quite some time to get this through to us. All the while thousands, yes thousands, of oncologists et al continued to push by us around us and through us, looking, watching, gawking. It was all in all a polite, respectful interaction.

None of us expected a groundswell, just a dent or even a knick. But for the first public response i think we did pretty darn well. Much thanx for all who made the tremendous effort and spent thousands of dollars out of pocket. And thanx Kris, for leaving out those compromising pictures of hemo(the arm candy)miracle.

A deep debt of gratitude goes out to our comrades:

artavia2007(kris)

hemomiracle(arm candy)

PAH

cben(chuck&melody)

pb(patrick)

fred 

berlinda

scriccio(scott)

ammass(arnie)

isabel

luvella

john

jim

mrs.jim

ED.  Warms my heart that these folks did such a wonderful job raising awareness around Provenge as well as the poor FDA decision of not approving it as a treatment for prostate cancer patients!