Category: suffering

One Thing

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One thing. Name one thing great about America? One thing? Name one thing we all agree is great about America. I’ll wait.

I went to the grocery store again. And, again, over 90% of people were not wearing masks. Why? Because we got bored, we’re selfish, and we all know better. Except boredom is not an excuse, narcissism is ignorance, and we don’t know better. Madison Cawthorn, the moronic Ken doll in a wheelchair from North Carolina, said as soon as the Republicans regain control of Congress, he’ll bring Dr. Fauci up on charges. Republicans aren’t bored; they’re ignorant, dangerous, and vindictive—freedom at any cost, including the labored death of 700,000 Americans.

One thing. I’m still waiting.

There are parts of the world dying for the vaccine. And yet we have 70 million self-appointed physicians in America who have decided, based on their evidence-based research, that COVID-19 is a hoax, the vaccine makes you magnetic, contains a microchip, and is part of a globalist control program. The virus is ravaging parts of Africa. Our federal government is sending millions of doses of the vaccine across the globe because our citizens are too stupid to help themselves.

Do you know what Americans send to Africa? Bibles. Do you know what corporate America sees Africa as? A market. The problem is Africans can’t afford to buy anything we want to sell them. Do you know what China thinks of Africa? They think of them as resource-rich partners. All our cell phones, televisions, talking refrigerators, and sentient washing machines require minerals and raw materials found in Africa. Guess where all these products America craves are made? China. China buys the resources from Africa. With money. China gives cash to Africa. Not bibles. The people of Africa can purchase food with cash. They can’t eat bibles.

The asshole carrying his boom-boom stick AR-15 in Starbucks is the “good guy with a gun,” he’ll tell us. Except there’s no flashing purple light over his head or a vaccine card to verify it for those of us who just see a weapon of war in a coffee shop. It’s the same with masks. Maybe everyone in the grocery store is double vaccinated and has qualified for the booster. But there’s no flashing purple light over their head. I don’t trust you. Sorry. I wear a mask to protect those too stupid to believe in science and their fellow neighbors and family members. And for those under 12 unable to be vaccinated yet. And for those with compromised immune systems leaving them vulnerable. You’re not because why? Oh, you know better? No. You don’t care.

What constitutes American exceptionalism? Still waiting. Oh, I know what they’ll say. “If it’s so bad, why don’t you leave? America is the home of the free because of the brave!” Fuck you. If people like me leave, that only lowers the national IQ and it’s already hovering dangerously close to the floor. So, no, I’m not going.

And stop taxing your tiny brains. There is no one great thing about America. American exceptionalism is a fantasy broadcast by the right and the ignorant to cover up an infantile worldview and those with an absolute abdication of responsibility. American exceptionalism isn’t a reality. It’s a goal. But goals cannot be achieved if the lowest common denominators make policy in the absence of fact, truth, and understanding and in the presence of fantasy, jingoism, and malice.

One thing. Couldn’t do it.

Sandra

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My former mother-in-law, Sandra McIntosh, died on Friday. She had had multiple sclerosis since before I met her in 1987 and finally succumbed to ovarian cancer at age 81. This is a difficult piece to write.

I met her in 1987 when delivering her daughter’s baseball glove after she broke her leg during a company softball game. It was an excuse to see Lisa. Nothing more. We weren’t even dating at that point, but I had my sights set on her. Indeed, with a broken leg, there was not much need for a baseball glove! Sandra met me at the door and was very courteous if confused. That initial reaction held for the entirety of the time I knew Sandra.

Her husband, Doug, was my friend. When he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1999, Lisa, our two young children, and I moved in with him and Sandra to care for him. He and Lisa had similar, effervescent personalities. It was a fool’s errand to try to keep up with them. But, oh, did we laugh.

In December of that year, he died in my arms as I tried to help him to a chair on the one night in all those months that Lisa left the house with her friend Naomi. Telling Sandra to stay in the bedroom while I called 911, and then Lisa felt like juggling cats underwater, my head drowning. Immediately after that, Sandra came to live with us. She lived in assisted living facilities off and on after that, sometimes living with us, sometimes living in ALFs.

Lisa was diagnosed with cancer in 2008. As many of you know, she, the kids, and I moved to Texas to treat her. Forgetting the dye had already been cast, and despite her Herculean efforts, she died in 2015. Sandra was with us in Texas from 2010 until the kids, Sandra, and I returned to Rhode Island in 2016 after the kids graduated from the University of Texas at Austin.

Before Doug died, he made me promise to take care of Sandra. It is a promise I have always tried to uphold. Lisa made me make the same promise. Two peas in a pod, those two. I promised her, too.

I don’t know why them and not me. It makes no more sense to me than knowing why cancer is, ultimately, suicidal, that it kills its host. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, “Why me?” “Why not,” said the universe.

Sandra was an only child. So was Doug. So was Lisa. We used to joke that Lisa didn’t have a family tree; she had a creeping vine. And now, they are all gone. However, the family tree/vine continues in Lisa’s children, my children: Samantha and Cameron. Thanks to IVF, they exist. Thanks to luck, they are not only children.

Sandra did not have Doug or Lisa’s electric personalities and never tried to keep up with them. Looking at family photos (or even photos from her high school yearbook), she rarely smiled in them. Most of the time, she isn’t even looking at the camera. However, that is not to say she didn’t enjoy herself. She loved crocheting, painting, drawing, family get-togethers, “cousin’s parties” at the Cape, and Christmas Eve’s at the DeCesare’s.

She learned to cover her not knowing something with wit, exaggeration, or obfuscation. She was either a graduate of a nursing school or any number of four-year universities to listen to her talk. Over the past twenty years, I’ve spent many hours with her in Emergency Departments. Invariably, she tells the nurse that she spent many years at that hospital as a nurse. Once, at dinner, she bonded with the waiter, who told us he was Hungarian. “I’m Hungarian, too!” she said. She put other’s minds at ease with her exaggerations and obfuscations, blending into conversations rather than dominating them. She made everyone feel they belonged indeed, that she belonged.

She did attend and graduate from a nursing program in Boston in the early 1960’s. After that, she worked briefly at a psych hospital. She then spent her adulthood watching Doug’s meteoric rise through the business world, attending board outings, professional dinners, and weekends at the Cape. She settled into life as a quiet wife and mother. She taught ceramics out of their basement and signed her works “Sugar.” Lisa never acquiesced to Sandra’s request that she sign her pieces “Spice.” Indeed, signing them “Oil” and “Water” might have been more appropriate. Mothers and daughters.

Now she is gone like Doug. And like Lisa. The family I married into, all gone. I feel bad for my kids. The unlived memories and stolen years with their mother and grandfather hurt more than the memories and years stolen from Doug or Lisa because the kids still exist to feel the pain. I can only offer stories and hope I did right by their grandfather and mother and the promise they made me make.

Funny thing about promises: anyone can make them to anyone else. I know Lisa made Naomi promise to look in on me occasionally, to see how I was doing, to see how the kids were doing. I appreciate it and, like everyone else, am doing the best I can to live a meaningful, productive life. I have remarried and am allowing myself to be happy. May we all have a reprieve from grief for a while? I wish I could promise.

Freedom…

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The First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution reads:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Can someone, perhaps a Constitutional scholar (or someone who attended the University of Hard Knocks because, apparently, that’s the same thing), explain to me how these “rights” as written by James Monroe came to be interpreted as freedom from responsibility? Please?

Reeling from a global pandemic, science handed us a way out. And it was made free and accessible to everyone! And yet, after sitting on our asses for a year, we cannot be bothered to get vaccinated. We can’t be bothered to do what is right for our family, our neighbors, our nation, the world. Because FREEDOM! But freedom from what? Can someone answer that question? What’s the end of that phrase? Freedom from what? 

I see yard signs now saying UNMASK OUR CHILDREN! Unmask? Oh, you mean to leave the decision to protect your child, my family, and everyone too stupid to vaccinate themselves to you and your internet search medical degree?

I still wear a mask inside stores. Do you know why? I’m vaccinated! The CDC says I no longer need to wear a mask indoors. I wear the mask indoors for two reasons. First, because the vaccine has provided cover for those too selfish to vaccinate themselves; in other words, those unvaccinated can claim to be vaccinated and therefore no longer need to wear a mask indoors. I wear a mask indoors with those I do not know because I do not trust them. Their freedom from responsibility leaves them vulnerable to the virus and a prime candidate to join 600,000 other dead Americans. And, honestly, I’m done worrying about their lives. If they’re too selfish and cloaked in the wisdom granted by the Fox News science and medical experts Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity, I don’t care if they live or die. Just as they have rid themselves of caring whether I live or die. Second, I wear the mask because I could be carrying the virus and be asymptomatic due to the vaccine. Despite my anger at the unvaccinated, I wear it to protect them from me.

 Freedom from responsibility has replaced both the first and second Amendments. We have the freedom to say and do anything we want, but we now assume it was granted without responsibility. No blowback is expected or appreciated. We have been locked indoors for a year. And when finally bored enough, we ventured out. Some of us were vaccinated. But the bored move about freely. And as soon as we ventured out of our homes, we did so, not with the vaccine, but with our guns. Free to leave our homes, Americans are now subjected to multiple mass shootings a day. Because Freedom! But, again, no one finishes that phrase. Freedom from what, if not responsibility?

I weigh too much. Guess what? It’s because I overeat. Not because of my boss, my spouse, my government, or my family. And guess what? When I take responsibility for my weight and eat better foods and less of it, I lose weight! If I eat red meat, there is a chance my heart will suffer, or my cells may rebel in cancer. The danger I am subjecting others to is limited. My family will suffer my loss. But my job will be filled within a week, and the world will carry on. However, not vaccinating myself leaves me vulnerable, along with everyone with whom I come in contact. The danger is expanded exponentially—the exposed beyond just me. And to do that to others is selfish and devoid of responsibility. 

The irony of this situation is that those refusing to be vaccinated directly infringe on my freedoms! I may soon be required to wear a mask everywhere again because the unvaccinated will drive us back into restrictions and lockdowns. I did the right thing for everyone, but I may soon be restricted from moving about freely because of the unvaccinated.

The first definition of socialism in the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines socialism as:

Any of the various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

Can we agree that seatbelts are a socialistic response to automobile injuries and deaths? Can we agree that highways are a socialistic response to bad roads being too expensive for each of us to build alone? Can we agree that the military that the right fawns over and spends almost a trillion dollars on a year is a socialistic response to existential or dogmatic geopolitical threats? If so, can we not also agree that solutions to problems need to be made on a granular level exclusive of a nation’s political definition? Can we agree that it is possible and appropriate to have a socialistic response to a problem within a democratic republic? That perhaps reductio ad absurdum or ad hominem arguments against proper answers to issues are simpleminded, foolhardy, and just plain wrong?   

 My rights are being infringed as a vaccinated citizen both by those who will not vaccinate themselves and those who think a gun gives them power and absolution. Freedom from responsibility is now the American creed. 

How?

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How is it okay that the president knew about the severity of the virus and said nothing?

How is it okay that 190,000 Americans are dead because the president hid the truth?

How is it okay that people died because Republican state governors took their lead from a lying White House?

How is it okay that the president called the virus a Democrat hoax?

How is it okay that people die because some don’t wear a mask, just like the president?

How is he not legally culpable for the deaths of thousands of Americans?

How is this not illegal?

How is this not premeditated?

How is this not malice aforethought times thousands of deaths?

How is this not reckless criminal homicide/manslaughter time thousands of deaths?

How is this not depraved-heart murder times thousands?

How is this not reckless endangerment times thousands?

How is any of this okay?

How is it okay that elected Republicans never seem to have ever seen a Trump Tweet or will never hear the interviews with Bob Woodward?

How is it okay that the only loquacious Republican is a “formerly elected” Republican?

How is it okay that evangelicals follow Donald Trump?

How is it okay that uneducated whites follow “billionaire” Donald Trump?

How is it okay that the DOJ will now defend someone who was a private citizen from a ’90’s rape charge?

How is it okay that I have to pay for it?

How is it okay that the president denigrates the military as “suckers” and “losers?”

How is it okay that the president allows Russia to put bounties on soldier’s heads with impunity?

How is it okay that the Hatch act now seems quaint?

How is it okay that the president lies? All of the time?

How is it okay that this president has taken our once proud country and dismantled it and reshaped it to his liking?

How is it okay that America now resembles a corrupt plutocracy run by a simple crime family immune to the law and respected conventions?

How can this possibly be a close election?

How?

I’m genuinely confused.

Sharks and Cancer

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quint

So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest…”  Quint, Jaws

It has been a very difficult year and a half. First, in November of 2014 my father died after a brief but excruciatingly painful fight with lung cancer which had spread to his bones. Almost one year later, last September, my wife died after a long fight with breast cancer which had spread to her lungs. And then only six months later, my dog died after a painful fight with a soft tissue cancer which had spread to his bones. One year, then only six months, part of me wonders what horror will befall us in three months. But I have to believe that the pain and suffering have ended now.  I can’t help but appropriate Quint’s quote to, “So, five of us went to Texas, three of us come home, cancer took the rest…”

Cancer has targeted my family for far too long now. I don’t want it to have any more power over us. My children have spent fully one-third of their lives living under the threat of cancer taking their mother and then their dog. Almost their entire teenage years, years difficult enough without cancer moving in to live with us, has been spent living under that dark cloud. They are 21 years old now and, in spite of these added pressures, will both graduate on-time from the University of Texas at Austin, each with over a 3.5 GPA. How they have been able to stay focused amazes me and is a testament to their strength of character.

I know people have had it harder than we have. I don’t claim to have a corner on suffering. And I am grateful for the seven years we were able to steal from cancer by moving to Texas and seeking treatment at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. I’ll never regret that decision. But if we could have a break from any additional pain for a short time, that would be great.

Each of us is dealing with these losses in our own individual manner. Certainly, grief counseling has helped, but we still face a world in which neither Lisa nor Delbow will walk with us any longer. We have had long discussions about faith, heaven, philosophy, and all of the accompanying topics. We disagree as much as we agree but the discussions are always lively and fascinating. I hope that we can each find some comfort in our positions.

Finally, there is the issue of moving forward. The house, already quiet from Lisa’s absence is now even quieter without Delbow’s rambling about. The kids are on spring break this week, so I have a respite before facing that still house alone. I now have six months of experience without Lisa and living alone. I hope this serves me well when the kids return to school. But before we know it, school will be over, graduations will have been concluded and we will be packing up for our trip back to Rhode Island. I hope it goes well and we can begin our new lives healthy. No sharks, no cancer.

Coming Around For Another Bite

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Two Novembers ago it took my father. In September it took my wife. Now it wants my dog. I hate cancer. Why won’t it leave us alone? I am reminded of the quote from Christopher Hitchens who, when confronting his cancer diagnosis wrote, “To the dumb question “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: why not?” So it is with my family. And so it goes.

Susan Sontag warns us of anthropomorphizing cancer, but it is so easy to do. Without a face, your foe it is that much harder to fight. What made Jaws so powerful was that the animatronic shark kept breaking forcing Steven Spielberg to come up with other ways to present the omnipresent danger through the use of camera movements and ominous music. The unseen monster is far worse than the seen. So we put a face on cancer and try to fight it from the outside while it destroys us from within.

So now we are awaiting the results of the biopsy which will tell us if the tumor is malignant. If it is, we will be faced with the difficult decision of what to do next. At twelve years of age, my wonderful dog has already battled cancer twice, had both back knees rebuilt, and had his eye repaired in Chicago. He’s been through it all. And yet his only concern in life is that he loves us. We will be faced with the difficult answer to the question: for whom are we going to submit him to more medical treatment? If it is for him, we will proceed, cost be damned. If it is for us, we will need to regroup and face the ultimate question of when is more surgery, radiation, and recovery too much for him leading to the inevitable decision whether to put him down. But I’m ahead of myself. We need the biopsy results first. We’ve been down this road before and will make the right decision when we have all of the facts and in spite of the perturbations it will cause.

We will be forced to answer the tough question: for whom are we going to submit him to more medical treatment? If it is for him, we will proceed, cost be damned. If it is for us, we will need to regroup and face the ultimate question of when is more surgery, radiation, and recovery too much for him leading to the inevitable decision whether to put him down. But I’m ahead of myself. We need the biopsy results first. We’ve been down this road before and will make the right decision when we have all of the facts and in spite of the perturbations it will cause.

I hate cancer. Leave us alone. Even sharks need time to digest their latest meal.

Inhuman

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PainPublilius Syrus in the first century B.C. wrote “when Fortune flatters, she does it to betray.” Plutarch reinterpreted this as “I see the cure is not worth the pain.” Somewhere over the past two thousand plus years we have lost the connection between humanity and the humane.

Setting religion aside and ignoring the politics and ethics of Dr. Kevorkian, it is, none the less, barbaric how we treat our loved ones at the end of their lives.

We have somehow bridged the moral abyss with compassion for our beloved pets by “humanely” putting our beloved pets out of their senseless misery, ending their meaningless pain, answering their pleading eyes with the selfless, heartrending compassion of euthanasia.

We have somehow sanitized capital punishment of the worst criminals from fatal and barbaric corporal punishment to a “humane” (although still debatably barbaric) dream-like sleep out of existence.

And yet, we allow our loved ones to face “natural” death filled with a fear, pain and confusion making anything that happened at Abu Ghraib look like Walt Disney World.

This suffering is multifaceted. Of course, there is the physical pain, which is no better controlled today than it was 50 years ago. The opioids still rule as the best we have to offer. The problem is that they are systemic, meaning that they travel throughout the entire body. If the pain is in the hip, the hip gets the morphine, but so, too, do the little finger, the ear lobe and the brain. The result is that the little finger and ear lobe are no better or worse, the hip suffers an incomplete relief of pain and the brain suffers the confusion, paranoia, nausea and narcolepsy unnecessary to treatment. This is the best medicine has to offer in 2014? The other suffering it brings is to the family members who must endure watching the physical suffering of those they love hampered by the incomplete relief of pain. Meaningless suffering is the worst kind. Love of another means the willingness to shoulder their burden. The helplessness felt by the family member watching their loved one jerk in pain or crying out as they try to move them or comfort them is an indelible stain on their soul.

The suicidal mission of cancer adds to the frustration. Bent on destroying its host, even at its own annihilation, cancer never rests. To paraphrase Siddhartha Mukherjee from his book The Emperor of All Maladies, cancer cuts the brake lines of some cells and jams the gas pedals of others, stopping the natural cell regulation process and sending the cancer cells into a proliferating frenzy steamrolling every other cell in its path. In his or her clearer moments, so too, the cancer patient undergoes a civil war; one side, engrained in all of us, pulls us to live, to continue fighting, while another force, armed with logic, understanding and ultimately love, forces the patient to begin facing the inevitable truth with no regrets and peace.

In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, concentration camp survivor and psychologist Victor Frankl describes inmates of the camps as surviving long stretches if they could find meaning in their suffering.  Some held on to the hope of outlasting the Nazis and returning to their loved ones (should any of them have survived), others found peace looking up at the sky and imagining conversations with their loved ones wherever they might then have been. Life was worth living if they held a kernel of meaning in their suffering.

I have searched and considered and yet find no meaning in the suffering loved ones endure at the end of their lives given the current state of medicine. Pain is pain and on a scale of 1 to 10, anything above a 1 means the medical field has failed. The root word of both humane and humanity is human, from the Latin humanus. However, we reserve those words for our treatment of pets and prisoners, not our loved ones. For them, and for ourselves, it is inhuman what we put them through, for them and for us it is nothing short of torture.