Zach and myself at the safety seminar we had to attend

the ladies at the same seminar (they were trying to look tough but I guess Gen didn't get the memo)

Zach and I with our friendly neighbors.  Notice I'm grabbing some titty.  All the women on that trip and the only titty I get is from a dude...oh well, I don't look too conscious.

Sara and I at the deck party.  I'm lighting a cigarette with another cigarette because of the wind.  Everybody had to do that so it was like the olympic flame of cancer passed around the ship.

I'm either enjoying a song or pretending to suck a big dick.

So that's that...the rest of the trip was either too rainy to bust out the camera or we were too f*cked up to remember.  I would probably go again but not anytime soon.  I'm still rocking back and forth.  Also, you don't notice it from the pictures, but Gen accidentally gave me a black eye during a scuffle we had on the ship.  I think it's hilarious because by the end of the trip everybody involved with the groove cruise was scowling at her like she is an abusive girlfriend.  I don't recommend cruises to anybody unless they have a party like this to go with, the "regular" cruisers had stupid things to do.

Effinger scrambled for insurance. He said he was told that the school's health plan for students wouldn't have adequately covered chemotherapy treatment at the nearby University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital. He had no luck on the private insurance market outside the university.

"After making a couple calls explaining the situation, it was pretty much discussions of blackout periods and 'We wouldn't be able to do it,'" he said. "And it was frustrating and frightening."

Meanwhile, his leg hurt more and more. He was afraid the cancer would spread.

Staff at the hospital, St. Vincent's East in Birmingham, Ala., came up with a solution. "I spoke to someone at the hospital and they mentioned there's a certain number of patients a year they grant charity to," he said. He was eligible because he had zero income. He was indigent.

"They called me that later that day and told me they would grant me 100 percent charity. I broke down in tears. Somebody told me they were going to let me live. It was an amazing feeling."

Effinger finished up chemo and got married in July 2008. He even managed to finish law school on time and score a job with an employment law firm in Birmingham.

But Effinger is still on the hook for about $9,000 for other parts of his treatment. (That's on top of $100,000 in student loan debt, but, he said, "at least the student loan people are being cool" by comparison; debt collectors harassed him over the medical bills.) His credit is wrecked.

And the warm, fuzzy feeling Effinger got from the kindness at the hospital was tempered by the realization that he had to beg to survive, that he owed his life to charity and had added considerably to his debt all the same. He's become an advocate for health insurance reform, going door to door for Organizing for America.

"I'm a pretty humble guy, but it's really demoralizing to have to beg a hospital for your life, to be to be able to be treated for this thing you just found out that you had," he said. "I don't just have a right to be healthy? I have to beg for it? I have to show that I am poor? It's frustrating. It's embarrassing. It's really unacceptable."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/02/uninsured-and-sick-studen_n_306639.html