Madness

Three weeks ago, my dad was fine....
No problems at all! Then, one day, he starts experiencing this neck pain. It gets worse, and after a series of tests, it's discovered that he has a brain tumor. Then, as if that weren't bad enough, they find he has lung cancer. Crap.

Two days ago, my mom was poking fun at him for complaining about a simple neck ache; now, we're all sitting around a hospital room, waiting for the next bit of bad news, and adjusting to this frightening new reality.

I always rationalized my own smoking habit by saying, “Hey, who cares if I get cancer when I'm 75?” In fact, I believe most smokers look at the world that way. As Denis Leary said in "No Cure for Cancer", tobacco takes away the WORST years of your life -- the ones at the end. Who wants to be 90, anyway? In principle, I agree...but now I wonder if that's somewhat faulty thinking. I mean, Dad's only 56. This wasn't supposed to happen for another 20 years.


Not to say pessimism reigns, however. You've got to stay positive in situations like this. I dunno....The whole thing puts life in perspective. Our destinies are a product of equal parts choice, random chance, and genetics. It's all a roll of the cosmic dice, really.

Anyway, I'm just writing this to explain why I may be absent for a little while. I've got priorities other than crappy movies to deal with for the time being. Hey, on the bright side, at least Obama's health care plan hasn't passed yet! That's good news since, according to Glen Beck, under Obamacare, Joe Biden would personally come to the hospital and shoot my Dad. Then, he'd send us all to Siberia.

I shudder to think of that possibility. Hopefully, cooler heads in Washington will prevail, and healthcare reform will simply end up being a reasonable compromise that involves fining people who are too broke to purchase insurance in the first place. Now, THAT would be a brilliant solution! We can all hope, can't we?

b.