Words meant as true consolation for Dick.
Peccantem me quotidie, et non poenitentem,
timor mortis conturbat me.
Quia in inferno nulla est redemptio, miserere mei,
Deus, et salva me.
"Sinning daily, and not repenting, the fear of death disturbs me. Because there is no redemption in hell, have mercy on me, O God, and save me."
---Medieval Hymn
"No matter what you're gonna do you gonna die, just like everybody else!"
---Rose Castorini
-Moonstruck
Major cardiovascular episodes (year and month)
1978 - Heart attack #1 (age 37)
1984 - Heart attack #2
1988-06 - Heart attack #3
1988-08 - Coronary bypass surgery
2000-11 - Heart attack #4
2000-11 - Coronary stent placed
2000-11 - Abnormal heart function
2001-03 - Unstable angina
2001-03 - Coronary angioplasty
2001-06 - Cardiac defibrillator implanted
2005-09 - Popliteal artery aneurysm repair
2006-01 - Congestive heart failure
2007-03 - Venous thrombosis
2007-11 - Atrial fibrillation
fromdoctor zebra
And as history slowly accepts that this man disgraced his office more profoundly than any before him, as it sinks in that this man did not merely make mistakes, as all flawed politicians do, but committed war crimes, with pre-meditation and elaborate subterfuge, he slowly realizes what's happening to him. He can feel it. And so he resists the way he always resists - by lashing out, attacking, smearing, sneering, and grabbing every inch of the limelight he can.
---Andrew Sullivan
Dick,(and I hope I'm not presuming too much by calling you Dick) I think we both know what is happening to you.
You're dying, Dick.
I may not know how it feels to sink from the Olympian highs of having my own personal Navy Steward and man sized office safe, to being - well - mortal, but I know first hand how it feels to face up to mortality as a cardiac patient, Dick. Do you?
I'm only fifty, but my cardiac history is such that I can reaasonably only expect maybe a dozen years of additional lifespan. I know how hard it is to have a first heart attack in your thirties, Dick. But its a definite and positive life changer, if you let it be one.
I quit smoking and changed jobs and lost weight and lowered my stress and went back to school and investigated lifestyle changes in a monastery and travelled halfway around the world and fell in love and got married in a few short years after my first heart atatack at 31.
After your first heart attack you tried to give up smoking, I hear, and got the really neat job of House whip by pretending to be from Wyoming.
Dick, you must have been made aware that denial, stress and control (and control of stress) are real issues with cardiac patients. I know that my genetic background, my past habits and my heart history limit my options and paint a broad swath of my reality. I work within constraints, and - although with regret - I have accepted my mortality and condition and I deal with both.
Brother Dick, it appears to me, that you may have not.
After my second (and more serious) heart attack I took steps to alter my lifestyle and choices and approaches further. When it looked like I was in danger of having a third "event" I took drastic measures in my family life and career. These seem to have worked.
What have you sacrificed, Dick?
For eight years you rode a great looking pony, Dick. But the pony rides are over. Someone who hasn't bulled their way through at least four cardiac events might say that the carnival is over and it mught be time to pack up gracefully - but that ain't you, is it Dick?
I am genuinely concerned for you, Dick. I hear tell that you are getting up at 6:00 in the a.m. to pund out screeds for delivery to Politico.
This can't be good for you, Dick.
Pack it in, Dick. Do some recreating. Go hunting. Maybe do some watersports fishing. Travelling to anywhere but some countries in South America might be out of the question (given the pesky possibility of war crimes prosecution) but you can still make the scene in any number of scenic Hoiday Inns in Republican held districts right in the US of A!
What do you say, Dick?