Post by ck4829 on Jul 8, 2017 13:04:06 GMT
‘I was offered a .22 bullet’: Mom who shared son’s surgery bill online got deluge of death threats
A former pediatric nurse who shared her son’s surgery bill on Twitter as a reason to fight the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — also known as ‘Obamacare’ — received waves of support when her post went viral.
But then, as Alison Chandra wrote on Vox.com Friday, the death threats started and introduced her to “the darkness lurking in the savage corners of the internet.”
Chandra’s now-3-year-old son Ethan was born with a birth defect called heterotaxy syndrome, “a rare condition that can cause any of the internal organs to be malformed, misplaced, multiplied, or missing altogether. Ethan’s insides are a math all their own: two left lungs, five spleens, and nine congenital heart defects. It was his heart that had brought him to the operating room to have his chest opened four times in his short life.”
The bill she posted online was for a surgery totaling $231,115 in fees. Thanks to rules put in place by the ACA — President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement — Chandra was only charged $500.
She posted the bill and Ethan’s story on Twitter, only have it retweeted thousands of times. Calls and messages from reporters were pouring in, along with a great deal of support.
“But as more and more people saw the original tweet, the tide seemed to shift,” said Chandra. “I was still seeing lots of people on our side, but as articles were churned out and shared, it was clear that people weren’t reading much past the headlines. They came at me swinging, picking fights I’d never asked for. They called me ungrateful, a thief, a lazy mooch, an attention whore.”
The attacks grew “increasingly personal and increasingly violent,” she wrote. “Strangers were telling me it would have been cheaper to make a new kid, as if anyone in the history of the world could ever replace this bright light of mine, the boy who loves animals and can’t keep himself from kissing babies and always wants to sleep with one arm wrapped around my neck.”
“I was offered a .22 bullet, although I’m still not sure whom he meant it for, me or my child,” Chandra said. Right-wing commenters began spreading rumors that Chandra was “a foreigner or, worse, a terrorist” because a self-described “white girl from New Jersey” couldn’t possibly be named Ali Chandra.
www.rawstory.com/2017/07/i-was-offered-a-22-bullet-mom-who-shared-sons-surgery-bill-online-got-deluge-of-death-threats/#.WV_oCjJb7uw.twitter
Troglodytes.
A former pediatric nurse who shared her son’s surgery bill on Twitter as a reason to fight the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — also known as ‘Obamacare’ — received waves of support when her post went viral.
But then, as Alison Chandra wrote on Vox.com Friday, the death threats started and introduced her to “the darkness lurking in the savage corners of the internet.”
Chandra’s now-3-year-old son Ethan was born with a birth defect called heterotaxy syndrome, “a rare condition that can cause any of the internal organs to be malformed, misplaced, multiplied, or missing altogether. Ethan’s insides are a math all their own: two left lungs, five spleens, and nine congenital heart defects. It was his heart that had brought him to the operating room to have his chest opened four times in his short life.”
The bill she posted online was for a surgery totaling $231,115 in fees. Thanks to rules put in place by the ACA — President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement — Chandra was only charged $500.
She posted the bill and Ethan’s story on Twitter, only have it retweeted thousands of times. Calls and messages from reporters were pouring in, along with a great deal of support.
“But as more and more people saw the original tweet, the tide seemed to shift,” said Chandra. “I was still seeing lots of people on our side, but as articles were churned out and shared, it was clear that people weren’t reading much past the headlines. They came at me swinging, picking fights I’d never asked for. They called me ungrateful, a thief, a lazy mooch, an attention whore.”
The attacks grew “increasingly personal and increasingly violent,” she wrote. “Strangers were telling me it would have been cheaper to make a new kid, as if anyone in the history of the world could ever replace this bright light of mine, the boy who loves animals and can’t keep himself from kissing babies and always wants to sleep with one arm wrapped around my neck.”
“I was offered a .22 bullet, although I’m still not sure whom he meant it for, me or my child,” Chandra said. Right-wing commenters began spreading rumors that Chandra was “a foreigner or, worse, a terrorist” because a self-described “white girl from New Jersey” couldn’t possibly be named Ali Chandra.
www.rawstory.com/2017/07/i-was-offered-a-22-bullet-mom-who-shared-sons-surgery-bill-online-got-deluge-of-death-threats/#.WV_oCjJb7uw.twitter
Troglodytes.