When I first met Kim, I didn’t know that it would only be six weeks until her mother died from cancer. Kim and her family did everything they could to fight the cancer and give her mother a few extra quality years. It was a time of big changes for me and from that, battles with cancer have taken a special place in my life.

I read about Brinn, a student of Gina Coggio’s. Gina is a teacher in New Haven who writes wonderful accounts of her experiences reaching out to students. Brinn’s mother died of cancer in the fall.

Then, our friend Kimberly was diagnosed with cancer. I read her blog and added my comments. Fran, who is also fighting cancer, posted in Kimberly’s blog and her life has become part of my world as well.

So, I’ve got a little sense of how hard it can be on families as they fight cancer, as they try to find the best course of action and as they deal with some, well, let’s be polite and simply refer to them as insensitive comments.

Today, I read about a comment that probably takes the cake. Congressman Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania is being challenged by retired Navy Admiral Joe Sestak. Joe took his five-year-old daughter to the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington as part of her battle against brain cancer. Congressman Weldon is trying to make a political issue of that because Sestak didn’t use a hospital in the congressional district.

I’m sorry. That is about as low as you can go.

It is time that we honor fathers like Joe Sestak who do everything they can for their family during incredibly difficult times and it is time that we get rid of congressmen that interfere with families and their difficult medical choices.