Some have asked about my condition. Some don't know me. Hope is a theme, and so is frustration. I think that hope trumps frustration, which is a mere obstacle on the way.
Grandaddy used to live up on Bullhead, but his family moved down to Reagan Wells so that the children might attend school and go to church. Reagan Wells was sparse enough a place, but Bullhead was was almost deserted. The family left Grandaddy behind to tend the goat-herd until they could send for him, and for the goats.
He was only twelve years old at the time.
Grandaddy never ate outdoors again. No picnics. No dinners in the yard. Period. He didn't want to rough it. After serving state-side in WWI, he worked his way through a business college in Bryan, and got a job as an accountant in the grocery trade, working for Kay Kimball. Citizens of Fort Worth my know the Kimball Museum.
Kay Kimball tried to promote Grandaddy, but this didn't work. Grandaddy was uncomfortable with secretaries who laughed at his bad grammar. He founded a grocery wholesale in Uvalde, trading across the Mexican border.
The Great Depression came along, and Grandaddy supported his family by honest effort, and a bit of bootlegging. When the Second World War came, all of his employes had to give him their ration stamps for fuel and tires, that he might make sales trips. Somehow, he kept going, supporting four children.
By the 1950s, Grandaddy was fairly wealthy, by the standards of South Texas. This standard was not very high. One car accident reduced him to subsistance living - he had paid for insurance, but his son-in-law had embezzled the payment without providing the insurance.
Rather than suing the (rat-faced) son-in-law, Grandaddy sold all he had, and retired. He got coverage from the VA (he was a WWI vet) for his health, and a Social Security pension upon which to survive.
Why did Grandaddy do this, rather than sue? He was a true Christian. He turned the other cheek. He simply lived in hope, faith, and charity.
These values remain.
Of late, I have received heavy news. I was diagnosed with lung cancer. I did not despair. Not because I had hope, but because I did not fear death. Each of us traverses the valley of the shadow of death. One foot in front of the other, we go. Our cup floweth over, if we consent to drink.
A biopsy revealed that my tumor was fairly benign - sqammous cell, slow-growing, not too invasive. Chemo-radiation-chemo and a bit of surgery should do the trick, the surgeon said.
A port leading to a catheter into a large vein in the chest was to be installed. This is an outpatient routine. And yet, I nearly died while anesthetised for the surgery. I spent nearly two days in the hospital, being monitored.
Tonight, having passed through this valley, I join Grandaddy on the other side, fearing no evil.
He trusted that goodness and mercy would follow him. So should we all, if we follow the Path.
My prognosis is good, still. I must admit that I did not submit to the doctors and nurses entirely. I was annoyed by a monitoring machine which beeped too often while I was in the recovery room, so I disconnectd the connection which led from sensors on my torso to the machine. To my relief, the beeping stopped.
When I decided the next night that my de-admission was going too slowly, I unclipped all the wires which enable EKGs, and turned off my oxygen. I took out my own IV - there was a spurt of blood, but I compressed it with a tissue. The nurse was surprised when I turned up fully-dressed, ready to leave. She barely had time to complete the paperwork before I marched off to the pick-up spot where my vey helpful niece awaited (I had called the niece just in time). I did not wait for a wheel-chair, although the nurse was perturbed, and tried to prevent my approach to the elevator.
Take your fate in your hands. Life is too short to turn your destiny to nurses or lawyers.
Thurday, I will have an appointment at which my dressings will be removed. They will be quite loose, by then. I have peeled most of them back. They itched, but now air has made them comfortable. I patted them back in place. Decency required this: the oncology team must have the illusion of control. The bandanges no longer itch.
Vicodin was prescribed, but the port only hurts when it is touched. Is Vicodin a solution for itching, or a method of reducing me to not care whether it itches? Whatever, I will fill the prescription. What the heck - I may need Vicodin some day.
I expect to pass through the Valley, as did Grandaddy, with dignity intact. This doesn't mean yielding to to custodians who seek to force you through the Valley on their terms.
My own news is very good. To those who fare not so well, I add in commentary: each day is sacred; the past is not past; fare thee well, if you are leaving, or merely paasing by. One day, we will all be One. There is no future, only a blissful moment, if we can make it so.
What does this have to do with electing Democrats? Without Medicare and Social Security, both Grandaddy and I would have been paupers. Neither of us would have been other than a burden on our families.
In my travels through the Memorial/Hermann hospital system over the last few weeks, I was not presented with a bill. I live within driving distance of the greatest Medical Center in the world. Grandaddy survived until he was eighty, after his accident, courtesy of the government. I have even better treatment.
We must all resolve to keep options for healing open for all. No matter what happens in my own case, I pray that every American will be covered by a single-payer health system, and that the disabled will receive a pension adequate to their needs.
My head spins, when I think of my own fortune.
Only because of sixty years of Democrats pressing onward, defeating all efforts to turn back Social Security and Medicare, has my own life been spared.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a great Democrat. Lyndon Baines Johnson should be mentioned more often in the Pantheon. The one established Social Security. The other established Medicaree - and Medicaid, for that matter.
This is why we need more, and better, Democrats. These days, we are the conservatives, fighting back to retain the institutions which have brought such blessings to so many.
We Democrats, in some respects, have fought a rear-guard battle. It is time to go on the offensive. Health-care for all must be the goal.