My father's bladder cancer is back. He stopped treatment 5 years ago because...well, because it was painful and he is not logical sometimes. He just didn't want to deal with it. Maybe it would have come back anyway had he completed treatment or maybe it wouldn't have but it seems that ignoring it did not do the trick.
He's depressed and in pain. He's self-medicating and not quite in the present all the time. We're flying into Tampa to visit him this week. Hurricane Isaac and the Republican National Convention are also going to Tampa but that's just a coincidence. A rather shitty coincidence.
My mom seems anxious and stressed. She's normally pretty pragmatic and solid, so it's hard to hear that. She also seems uncharacteristically selfish about my time there. So peculiar. I was such a mama's girl; I would have given anything for her to show that she liked having me around when I was young so it's a bit...unsettling, but warms my heart nevertheless.
I'm concerned...but he is relatively healthy so there is reason to be hopeful.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
parental units
Sunday, August 16, 2009
hats off to dad
Last year I wrote a post about my father. It was, in part, about waterboarding. His retired police friends have a habit of sending mass emails about this or that. Last week they sent him an email that accused the Obama administration of arbitrarily denouncing waterboarding and taking away this effective interrogation tool. This is his response and it makes me proud:
The worst mistake we make as free thinking human beings is that of allowing others to lead us by the ears. Waterboarding is torture and its classification as such predates The Inquisition in the 13th century. It has been denounced for 700 years, give or take a hundred. Neither President Obama nor Nancy Pelosi had anything to do with the promulgation of this as torture, they are just not that old.
Waterboarding is an attractive interrogation technique because it causes great physical and mental suffering without leaving any marks on the body.
In the past when law enforcement authorities in the U.S. (Texas 1983) use[d] waterboarding, a sheriff and his deputies were convicted and sentenced to four (4) years in prison.
In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years in prison at hard labor.
We are the good guys, we do not torture even our enemies.