This is a very, very sad story.

I've just learned that fellow blogger and grad student Badger lost her young husband to terminal liver cancer on Monday. Badger has written eloquently about the horrors she and her family have had to face at the hands of our barbaric national health care system, as well as the incredible pain of watching her partner die, and many of us in the blogging community have been both angered and saddened by her situation. I'm feeling a lot of sorrow for her and her twelve-year-old son today.

Mary McKinney, a.k.a Academic Coach, has set up a PayPal account through which people can make contributions toward the absolutely astronomical medical costs Badger and her family have incurred. I imagine the funeral costs will not be inexpensive, either.