Painting for patients Widow makes murals to urge health-care reform Regina Holliday couldn’t have anticipated a year ago that she would spend her days on a ladder, brush in hand, painting images that are both captivating and controversial. But a year ago her husband, Frederick, hadn’t been diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer. He spent years working retail and going to school to become a film studies teacher only to have his dream cut short. He died less than three months after the diagnosis, leaving his wife and two children.
So Holliday started painting murals.The first one — on the outside wall of her husband’s favorite deli — depicts a reimagined medical chart, which the artist believes could save patients from needless injury or worse. The second mural, spanning 20 feet-by-50 feet on a gas station wall, is a personal piece titled “73 Cents,” which is the amount per page that it costs to get copies of your medical records in Maryland. “These are the two issues I’m focusing on,” Holliday said. “There should be standardization of medical forms so they are clear and easy for anyone to understand. And all patients should have accessibility to data. If your doctor isn’t working with you, then your only recourse is to order your medical records, which in Maryland takes 21 days.” A clear medical chart, Holliday believes, would have kept her husband from several injuries when physical therapists and ambulance workers handled areas of his body where the cancer had metastisized. In July she spoke at a news conference with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada about health-care reform. There she said: “I know this is a very hard time for many people. The economy is bad. Things are uncertain. But that is no reason to turn away. If we all work together good will come of this. My husband did not die in vain. We will change things.” Holliday may have not intended to be painting and speaking about health care, but she said, “I feel God is telling me to do this, and to do it now.” |
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| Jack Labusch - 9/9/2009 |
| Thanks for this article. Do people still believe that getting health care for sick people is a good thing? Maybe so, but too many, especially our medically insureds, believe it's more important to hang on to an odious political equilibrium because they appear to benefit enormously from it, and because self-serving people in authority have told them that change would be bad. |
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