If you live long enough, and I mean really live, you’re bound to acquire lots of great stories. One of the most momentous stories of my life happened 14 years ago when I discovered I had late-stage breast cancer while temporarily uninsured during the Great Recession. My life got saved by Obamacare (I was one of the very first people to benefit from the new law). I was so grateful that my life was being saved by the Affordable Care Act that I decided to use my skills that I had developed both as a writer and a nonprofit leader over a 20 year span to express both my appreciation and regret in an opinion piece that I wrote for the Los Angeles Times in October 2011, thanking President Obama, apologizing for publicly rebuking him because I was really mad at him and the Democrats for fighting with each other and screwing up messaging about a lot of things, and educating people about this very important piece of legislation that nobody knew anything about. I met all of my own objectives by writing the piece but wasn’t prepared for it to go viral overnight, globally. I got so many people talking about me I had to check out. No social media, no email, no phone. I had just found out I had cancer, remember? I was pretty freaked out by that bad news alone and then to be hit by constant calls by journalists, producers, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Re-Elect Obama campaign, and the White House. It was all too much. I had written powerful pieces before that caused a little bit of good trouble, but nothing like this. This piece caused a lot of controversy with the Obama haters. None of them wanted to “pay for my healthcare.” Once I found out that I wasn’t going to die, I decided to keep paying it forward by accepting the many invitations that came my way to speak about my incredible story. Since I had the world’s attention, I might as well keep talking. I kept talking all the way to the steps of the Supreme Court on the day it decided the ACA’s fate. Hell of a story.

To fully appreciate what was in the law, I read it, twice. I read books and interviews about the law and how social programs like Social Security and Medicare got started. Before I knew it I had become a lay expert on health care reform in America. I could answer questions that health care providers couldn’t because the law was so confusing and the Democrats sucked at communicating the many great things that were in the law. I started a blog, “Health Hazards” so I could answer a lot of questions.

Blogging about health care reform gave way to blogging about Trump and the Republicans soon after Trump was inaugurated. I started venting on Facebook at first and then decided I’d better switch over to a blog format because I had a lot to say with no end in sight. I’ve been blogging for almost 10 years.

My cancer has metastasized in my bones so now I spend most of my days lying down. But I can still write! I’m a semi-disabled liberal Boomer with a big mouth, a talent for writing, and a sincere desire to do my part to save democracy. So I write.

I have another op-ed in my future. I’m about to lose my life saving Obamacare. Cuts to Medicaid mean no more subsidies which means everything I make as a grant writer will go towards paying for my health insurance so I can continue to get cancer treatment. I’m going to need to make more money but that’s going to be hard given my situation. If I had to report to an office I’d have to go on disability.

There will be more to write about once people start feeling the Medicaid cuts. The timing stinks for me because I’m too young for Medicare. For young Boomers like me who are on Obamacare, we’re not only being confronted with losing our health insurance, but we’re going to go broke paying for other health insurance plus we won’t be able to afford prescriptions. Or we’ll gamble with going without. We’ll need nursing home care alternatives in our near futures as well. Nursing homes have already started to lose their funding (Medicaid) and patients are being discharged. Where do they go? To live with their adult children or…..?

Blogging is therapeutic but it’s also a great service to truth. While Trump and the Republicans are rewriting history as fast as history happens, I know I’m doing my part by writing it all down, fresh.

Spike Dolomite is the author of the Daily Crime Report on Medium. You can find her new book, Trumped Up: Trump’s First Term and the Beginning of America’s End on Amazon or www.spikedolomite.com.

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