Before I get to that, I want to clear my tabs in this last post of the year. First, you should read Bob Herbert’s op-ed about the Senate’s plan to fund health care by taxing “Cadillac” insurance plans. I was indifferent to this proposal, but Herbert makes a very good case for why it is wrong, and so I am now against it. We can only hope the mechanism is abandoned in the reconciliation process.

Next, this article from Tony Judt, about what it’s like to live with ALS is striking and moving – and especially resonates when he says, “it is hard to resist the thought that even the best-meaning and most generously thoughtful friend or relative cannot hope to understand the sense of isolation and imprisonment that this disease imposes upon its victims.” I have often thought the same of Crohn’s, and I am sure it’s true of a great many other illnesses.

Lastly, back to Alien: I happened on Dan O’Bannon’s obituary in the NY Times over the holiday. O’Bannon wrote the screenplay for Alien, as well as several other horror and science fiction films. O’Bannon also had Crohn’s disease – in fact, the obit quotes him as saying, “the idead for the the monster in ‘Alien’ originally came from a stomachache I had.” I’ve seen Alien a half-dozen times, and now it makes perfect sense: how I’ve wished the monster gnawing at my guts would just kill me and/or scamper away.

Of course, most doctors will tell you that Crohn’s is incurable but not terminal – so it’s notable that the obit states, “the cause [of death] was Crohn’s disease.” That could mean any number of things, from surgical complications to sepsis to self-assisted euthanasia – there are a lot of ways to die from Crohn’s disease. But the fact that you might identify a proximate cause of death in no way changes the underlying cause of death; so when doctors say Crohn’s isn’t terminal, what they mean is that in theory you could live a normal lifespan, if you can just avoid all the different ways people with Crohn’s disease die prematurely. Props to whomever named Mr. O’Bannon’s cause of death for what it was.

Sad though Mr. O’Bannon’s passing is, I am at least grateful I can finally claim a movie for my disease. People with AIDS have Philadelphia, and people with ALD have Lorenzo’s Oil – but those of us with Crohn’s? We have frickin’ Alien – and that’s a pretty badass movie to have.

That’s it for 2009. See you in the new year.