"Don't say, 'happiness,' you undeserving throngs of lowly citizens. Oh no, not on my watch! Your happiness means nothing to me; you are to do my bidding and make me happy! If you don't see things my way, you need to just shut up and do as I tell you."
The above silent quote may well be in the far back reaches of the mind of any one of a large number of today's Republican members of the House of Representatives. So far back in the brain that they don't really recognize it in themselves - much as they don't know what racism is. Just who is being represented by these Tea Party-type elected members? Themselves first and their benefactors second. Constituants? Those low-lifes who happen to live in the member's district? Well, certainly they have no say in anything a Congressman does. They just vote and then shut up!
Last week, SCOTUS handed down a decision to toss out a major segment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Next day, several (red) states were eagerly diving into the privilege of redistricting and other maneuvers that allowed total inequality in voting rights to prevail. After the next day's ruling by the high court, one that threw out the unconstitutional provisions of a law discriminating against LGBT folks, the people of that community (finally!) immediately took their advantage as well.
So the august body of SCOTUS made it clear that the second matter was within their domain to render their decision of unconstitutionality, therefore the DOMA business should be considered settled law. But in the first matter, the court gave responsibility of voting rights protection back to Congress to handle in fairness and logical legislative fashion. Then what did we first hear from those marvelous servants of the law and of the people of our nation? Boehner's minions wanted to immediately jump onto the business of fixing the DOMA law back into viability and they haven't yet shown any interest, in any overt public way, of re-writing and passing the Voting Rights Act - the one job the court gave them to handle.
We have often heard it said that Republicans do not seem to be able to feel shame. But what most pundits will avoid saying, so they don't sound too harsh or judgmental and maybe lose audience, is that Republicans seem to be very capable of feeling hatred. They appear to hate actual freedom for any individual and they seem to hate all who do not line up with their personal beliefs. Oh, sure, many of these same hateful people dutifully wear the proud and preachy badge of Christianity - speaking of love whenever it might help them gain votes - but they do not know how to love anyone but themselves.
I have made it clear that I am not a Democrat; my own attitudes toward freedom and happiness are far more democratic than that! And the Democrats as a party are often too spineless, even when they are totally in the right. But at least Democrats have a general tendency to want to do whatever will help most of our citizens. Republicans apparently have one over-arching tendency and that is to do all they can to control the citizenry. Freedom? Happiness? Mere words that land on deaf ears in our hateful Republican House of "Representatives."
Please, American electorate, wise up for the 2014 elections. We deserve actual representation.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
FORE ! ! !
The fingers are crossed for the upcoming surgery to begin rebuilding my body which now has a rather large hole in it where cancer was removed. But I am also using the fingers even on the right hand! That's right, no damage at all took place during all that cutting deeply into my right shoulder and downward into the upper body. Now the hole is stuffed with some kind of material to keep it prepared for plastic surgeons to begin their work.
Yesterday's meeting with the oncologist relieved me of any more worry about cancer, showing the pathology report that all cancer was extracted. So tomorrow the plastic surgeon needs to look me over and set a date to perform the first of the surgeries to fill in the cavity.
Even though some of the concerns are still there - concerns that accompany any cutting into the body - I am relatively comfortable with the likelihood my body will respond well and that no damage to nerves or other important body parts will pilfer any beauty from the positive picture. It is very likely (and only a golfer can understand this) that the surgery which will weaken my right side will improve my swing. So a new day in golf may be on the horizon for me. Watch out, 2014!
UPDATE 6/29/2013
We are not quite yet into July and I am now saying I may be on a new fast-track toward the above goal of playing golf again. Yesterday may have been my final surgery that will start my last flight-path to the return to good health and activity. My body responded so well at each step of the cancer removal and new flesh growth to fill the void that yesterday the plastic surgeons placed a skin graft over the wound. The pain today in that area of my right thigh where the skin was borrowed is something just short of excrutiating and I'm glad again for good pain meds. But the best medicine for me is the knowledge that my body is well along the way to full recovery. I just might be playing golf before Thanksgiving! Now there is something for which I will truly be thankful.
Thanks for hanging in there with me through this misery; good cheer and good health to all!
Yesterday's meeting with the oncologist relieved me of any more worry about cancer, showing the pathology report that all cancer was extracted. So tomorrow the plastic surgeon needs to look me over and set a date to perform the first of the surgeries to fill in the cavity.
Even though some of the concerns are still there - concerns that accompany any cutting into the body - I am relatively comfortable with the likelihood my body will respond well and that no damage to nerves or other important body parts will pilfer any beauty from the positive picture. It is very likely (and only a golfer can understand this) that the surgery which will weaken my right side will improve my swing. So a new day in golf may be on the horizon for me. Watch out, 2014!
UPDATE 6/29/2013
We are not quite yet into July and I am now saying I may be on a new fast-track toward the above goal of playing golf again. Yesterday may have been my final surgery that will start my last flight-path to the return to good health and activity. My body responded so well at each step of the cancer removal and new flesh growth to fill the void that yesterday the plastic surgeons placed a skin graft over the wound. The pain today in that area of my right thigh where the skin was borrowed is something just short of excrutiating and I'm glad again for good pain meds. But the best medicine for me is the knowledge that my body is well along the way to full recovery. I just might be playing golf before Thanksgiving! Now there is something for which I will truly be thankful.
Thanks for hanging in there with me through this misery; good cheer and good health to all!
Saturday, June 1, 2013
I'd Give My Right Arm ...
To the best of my considerably good memory, I have never used this old expression. It's of course one of those purposely flamboyant, totally untruthful statements meant to draw emphasis to this or that desire of the speaker. Rarely has the expression meant anything in a reality world. Even the man who is caught under a heavy weight in an accident with no rescue in sight for a day or days while suffering with his right arm smashed and completely preventing his escape, probably does not verbally utter that line, that he would give his right arm to be free of this trap. Yet it has happened, and we have heard of the overwhelming determination, courage and desperation of this kind of predicament, finally causing a person to use any sort of tool available to sever his own arm to get free rather than allowing himself to die.
Without even considering the life-or-death factoring, which at the moment, I am not, it is entirely possible that I have made the no-brainer decision that may ultimately mean I'm giving my right arm. But if it happens, the only overwhelming (and maybe flamboyant) statement about it would be that I gave my right arm to poverty. This does not mean that somehow I was able to offer my right arm in some gesture of selflessness and altruistic fervor in order to stand bravely against the ravages of poverty in general. No. It would mean that strictly due to my unenviable condition of senior citizen living in poverty, I eventually was forced to lose the arm - or the effective use of it.
Within 2 days I am to report to the hospital for surgery that is required to remove a cancerous growth that somehow found my right shoulder a good host where it could take root and thrive. I've pointed out to many that this is not "Cancer" in the way most people experience it - not actual cancer as I often say. It is a locally aggressive malignancy that does not seem to have the capacity to attack in the usual cancer manner, so I am not having my own cells eating themselves. This thing is distinctly not me, but it depends on my body for its nutrition. It bleeds my blood and it compacts my nerves, causing the intensity of pain I have tried earlier to describe. But I think of it as an alien life form that somehow crept onto my shoulder and burrowed inside, sending tentacles down into my flesh to pilfer nutrients. The doctors tell me it can be completely removed with no left-over fear of some spreading, life-threatening disease. Naturally I picture the operation happening in the sci-fi movie mode, with the alien sensing it is being attacked by knives and then beginning to snarl and fight back, reaching with tiny fibrous fingers to grip some solid flesh around the excision path, disallowing the surgeon complete success in removing and discarding it. It's easy for me to imagine it in this way because the surgeon has explained that he will need to remove a good deal of "good" tissue surrounding the lesion in order to be assured that all of the diseased tissue is out. Then I am due to wait a minimum of a week with the large hole in my body left open and being treated and tested so that when reconstructive surgeries begin, there is no chance for any remaining disease hiding beneath the replacement flesh which doctors will have borrowed from other areas of my body to fill in the cavity.
While the surgeons who have been dealing with this mess are being most positive and up-beat about the ultimate outcome we can expect, I am not unaware of the papers I have signed that absolve anyone of any potential problematic outcome that might surprise us. There is most definitely a possible danger to those many nerves that have brought my pain to such high levels recently. Which of these could be cut and potentially destroyed, rendering my arm less workable? What knife stroke might accidently cause the total loss of my right arm's future functioning? Which artery might reject the whole idea of being responsible to support this replacement flesh business and refuse to carry blood to its needed destination? What disease could result from any of this, requiring amputation of the right arm?
And as I ask these very real questions, I am painfully aware of the fact that I could have avoided this condition entirely if I had acted sooner. Without great detail, I will merely say that due to our financial stresses over the previous two years, I dilly-dallied over having a tiny, unimpressive cyst removed. To be fair, I did go once when it was nothing more than a bean-sized bump and I paid an Urgent Care physician to tell me if it posed any threat. He didn't think so at the time but said I could learn more by consulting a dermatoligist. Logical. Also logical was the assumption that a specialist of this discipline would require me to get a biopsy and have lab testing done before he/she would remove the little lump. Having no insurance at the time (wisely having skipped "Part B" of Medicare when I signed up because of my poverty and my nominal monthly social security income which is about one third of the maximum the system provides most retirees), I decided it was not worth the hundreds of dollars this whole bean-removal business would surely cost. When the eruption in early January revealed something far more serious than an infected cyst, I had already signed on to pick up the important "Part B" coverage but was told that it could not be accessed until July.
So while my malignancy grew over the winter/spring months (having been biopsied in February at the same Urgent Care facility, at my own out-of-pocket expense), I searched for methods of managing my need for surgery. Again, skipping detail here, I have managed now to get to this stage of preparation for the surgery to remove the alien and I am told to expect several plastic surgery procedures to follow throughout the summer.
And though I have emphasized to the plastic surgeons that I am "no Angelina Jolie; don't worry about how beautiful I am when it's all done," I nonetheless am extremely hopeful I do not have to give my right arm!
Without even considering the life-or-death factoring, which at the moment, I am not, it is entirely possible that I have made the no-brainer decision that may ultimately mean I'm giving my right arm. But if it happens, the only overwhelming (and maybe flamboyant) statement about it would be that I gave my right arm to poverty. This does not mean that somehow I was able to offer my right arm in some gesture of selflessness and altruistic fervor in order to stand bravely against the ravages of poverty in general. No. It would mean that strictly due to my unenviable condition of senior citizen living in poverty, I eventually was forced to lose the arm - or the effective use of it.
Within 2 days I am to report to the hospital for surgery that is required to remove a cancerous growth that somehow found my right shoulder a good host where it could take root and thrive. I've pointed out to many that this is not "Cancer" in the way most people experience it - not actual cancer as I often say. It is a locally aggressive malignancy that does not seem to have the capacity to attack in the usual cancer manner, so I am not having my own cells eating themselves. This thing is distinctly not me, but it depends on my body for its nutrition. It bleeds my blood and it compacts my nerves, causing the intensity of pain I have tried earlier to describe. But I think of it as an alien life form that somehow crept onto my shoulder and burrowed inside, sending tentacles down into my flesh to pilfer nutrients. The doctors tell me it can be completely removed with no left-over fear of some spreading, life-threatening disease. Naturally I picture the operation happening in the sci-fi movie mode, with the alien sensing it is being attacked by knives and then beginning to snarl and fight back, reaching with tiny fibrous fingers to grip some solid flesh around the excision path, disallowing the surgeon complete success in removing and discarding it. It's easy for me to imagine it in this way because the surgeon has explained that he will need to remove a good deal of "good" tissue surrounding the lesion in order to be assured that all of the diseased tissue is out. Then I am due to wait a minimum of a week with the large hole in my body left open and being treated and tested so that when reconstructive surgeries begin, there is no chance for any remaining disease hiding beneath the replacement flesh which doctors will have borrowed from other areas of my body to fill in the cavity.
While the surgeons who have been dealing with this mess are being most positive and up-beat about the ultimate outcome we can expect, I am not unaware of the papers I have signed that absolve anyone of any potential problematic outcome that might surprise us. There is most definitely a possible danger to those many nerves that have brought my pain to such high levels recently. Which of these could be cut and potentially destroyed, rendering my arm less workable? What knife stroke might accidently cause the total loss of my right arm's future functioning? Which artery might reject the whole idea of being responsible to support this replacement flesh business and refuse to carry blood to its needed destination? What disease could result from any of this, requiring amputation of the right arm?
And as I ask these very real questions, I am painfully aware of the fact that I could have avoided this condition entirely if I had acted sooner. Without great detail, I will merely say that due to our financial stresses over the previous two years, I dilly-dallied over having a tiny, unimpressive cyst removed. To be fair, I did go once when it was nothing more than a bean-sized bump and I paid an Urgent Care physician to tell me if it posed any threat. He didn't think so at the time but said I could learn more by consulting a dermatoligist. Logical. Also logical was the assumption that a specialist of this discipline would require me to get a biopsy and have lab testing done before he/she would remove the little lump. Having no insurance at the time (wisely having skipped "Part B" of Medicare when I signed up because of my poverty and my nominal monthly social security income which is about one third of the maximum the system provides most retirees), I decided it was not worth the hundreds of dollars this whole bean-removal business would surely cost. When the eruption in early January revealed something far more serious than an infected cyst, I had already signed on to pick up the important "Part B" coverage but was told that it could not be accessed until July.
So while my malignancy grew over the winter/spring months (having been biopsied in February at the same Urgent Care facility, at my own out-of-pocket expense), I searched for methods of managing my need for surgery. Again, skipping detail here, I have managed now to get to this stage of preparation for the surgery to remove the alien and I am told to expect several plastic surgery procedures to follow throughout the summer.
And though I have emphasized to the plastic surgeons that I am "no Angelina Jolie; don't worry about how beautiful I am when it's all done," I nonetheless am extremely hopeful I do not have to give my right arm!
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