March 21, 2024
She was diagnosed with a brain tumor and then she had surgery for it. It’s a very strange article in that Frum uses ~20 times as many words to talk about her dog, Ringo, then he does about the final months of her life and those “colds”. It smells like guilt to me.
The pandemic passed. Miranda rented an apartment in New York.
[…]
Through the winter, Miranda had suffered a series of bad colds; getting her on the phone had become hard. I texted her, but unusually for her, no swift answer came. […] The next morning, February 16, we received the devastating news that Miranda had been found dead in her Brooklyn apartment. Illness overwhelmed her depleted immune system and stopped her heart. She collapsed at about three in the morning. When she was found, Ringo was lying beside her.
In other news she lived in Israel for a while because of course she did. Frum rants about her HMO in the usual right-wing way. US healthcare impacts somebody he loves - so he cares.
When Miranda returned from Israel, she had signed up with the least-expensive HMO she could find in California. She was only 26; how much medicine could she possibly need?
The inexpensive HMO had no intention of allowing access to the right doctor. It insisted on assigning Miranda to its in-house team. That team proposed slicing off the top of Miranda’s skull and then groping down to her brain stem. The doctors candidly confessed that the chances of success were meager.
When Danielle protested that she had found a doctor who promised a less invasive technique with a better hope of success, the HMO’s chief brain surgeon pooh-poohed her. I could have advised him that patronizing Danielle was unlikely to go well, but he kept at it. Then he addressed her as “dear.” The room exploded. “I know why you think this operation cannot be done,” Danielle said. “Since this variety of tumor was first identified in [I forget the year, but Danielle knew it], there have been [again, Danielle knew the number] successful operations in the United States. You’ve performed none of them. Maybe that’s why you misdiagnosed the tumor in the first place. The doctor we want is the only one who has even recognized it for what it is.”
The HMO never relented. Mercifully, we found an opportunity under the Affordable Care Act to shift Miranda to a different insurer that had the right doctor in its network. Miranda’s surgery was scheduled for April 2019 at Stanford University Medical Center. In the meantime, she and Ringo came to live with us in Washington, D.C.
Frum, presumably is a millionaire several times over at this point. When his daughter revealed she was struggling to get adequate treatment, you’d think he’d rush in and be a good dad, promising to pay for her to get the best treatment no matter the cost to him. What’s the point in being a ghoul for the monsters in the world if you can’t even use that misbegotten wealth to save those around you?
There is after all stories by the hundreds of parents mortgaging their houses, selling off heirlooms or retirement accounts to try and save loved ones when the health crisis hits. I guess Frum is made of tougher stuff he’s not downgrading the lifestyle he has come to know and love just to save his flesh and blood.
Or his daughter knew he was a giant piece of shit who worked for some of humanity’s worst monsters and has been refusing to talk to him because of the obvious reason.
Regardless Frum comes off terrible. I wish him a miserable torment for the rest of his days. May a bird shit in his eye each morning and a fire consume him before the end. May he receive no pleasure from his actions and only pain. May he see his western civilization crumble before his eyes and only then be granted a release from existence.