For a few minutes, I'd like to ask everyone to put aside their grievances with politics and look at what cards life sometimes deals out and how scary the results sometimes are. We've all gone off on Roger's politics more than once (and I'm sure we will again), but that's for another day.
Yesterday, while checking out the nets I stumbled onto an interview that Politico did with Roger Simon. I was delighted to see Meteor Blades link to it. He made this notation:
The reason for his hiatus? He says he wanted to explore health care "from the inside," so he had his legs cut off.
http://www.politico.com/...
Eight months later:
A taste of the interview with just Roger's answers, the questions are pretty apparent. The whole interview is worth the read.
A: How about I got an infection and it led to blood poisoning?
A: The doctors had to cut off my right leg below the knee and almost all of my left foot. After a long stint in intensive care, then seven weeks at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington, I am now in a wheelchair. But I can’t wait to get back on my own two — artificial — feet again.
A: It is amazing how brave you can be when you have no choice. Also, I am on a lot of drugs.
A: I believe in what I once read: "Life is a club where they won’t stand for squawks, where they deal you only one hand, and you must sit in. So even if the cards are cold and marked by the hand of fate, play up, play up like a gentleman and a sport."
A: Parking in all those nifty handicapped only spots.
He sounds like he's taking it all in stride, but we can all only imagine the pain, the terror, the shock, and who knows what else he has experience in the past eight months?
To answer my own question, here's who knows. Just look through KosAbility diaries and you will see how so many here have lived through tragedy and "made that lemon-aid out of the lemons. Heroes all.
Here's a small part of Roger's bio. He fits into the, "he's a character" mold...I just picked the "fun" parts.
http://www.politico.com/...
Roger Simon is the Chief Political Columnist of Politico. He grew up on the South Side of Chicago where politics was a contact sport.
At the Chicago Sun-Times, where he wrote a column four times per week, Simon was taught that the only way for a journalist to look upon a politician was down. He now fights against that impulse daily. He was also inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame, whose members include Carl Sandburg, Ben Hecht, Ring Lardner and Mike Royko.
When Simon dies, he intends to be buried in Chicago, so he can still participate in the politics of that city.
I would love to see Roger Simon come over here and do a KosAbility diary.