On Lance Armstrong's Nuts & Bolts

I noted with interest today the CNN stories on Lance Armstrong's "medical miracle": his bolted-together broken shoulder blade. It's great that doctors are able to put in the screws, bars, and nuts to reassemble the great cyclist's shoulder. But it brings me back to a point that's often on my mind: doctors seem to favor fixing the "healthy" rather than performing the hard work of improving the lives of people with disabilities.

When I suffered the compound fracture of my right leg in 2004, the surgeon chose to fundamentally let my leg heal "as-is." "Your bones are too fragile to put screws in," he announced, which shouldn't be a big deal because "you aren't going to run or ski anyway." So, now I have a short leg, Toulouse Lautrec-style, with a knotted up shin bone that looks like I'm carrying around a baseball inside my leg, when you look at the X-ray films.

My 53 years as a patient in the medical world, makes me believe that the profession, like any other, prefers the easy cases. A cab driver would rather collect a hefty fare for driving an old lady around the block, than picking up three black guys in the hood. A TV repairman would rather order a replacement from the factory than rip the case off an old-fashioned tube TV. Doctors would rather treat a single malfunction in an otherwise healthy patient, than trouble themselves with the difficult choices a disability presents. It's totally understandable, of course--we're all human and we all prefer to walk downhill than to climb a ladder.

So--go, Lance! Win one for the team! But hey, doc--don't forget about the hard cases, too!

Do you ever feel like...

... Your insides have been reassembled by the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Well, that's been my life for the past 7 months. Will it ever end? Where's my Oxycodone?

Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot

When Rush Limbaugh coined the term, “Porkulus,” I was certain he was talking about himself! He obviously has some self-loathing and body-image problems, LOL. That being said, he is first and foremost an entertainer, and he cries all the way to the bank. That’s cool; he, his cat, and his oxycontin are part of what makes America great, as long as he has an audience. However, since he is a comedian, I have a hard time taking anything he says seriously. For example, he used to rant that the Constitution contains no right to privacy, and all druggies should be tossed into the slammer, yet when he was busted, the first thing he did was get his lawyer to whine that his rights to privacy had been violated. Did he learn anything? Apparently not, as a few years later he was busted at the airport with a bottle of someone else’s Viagra. Oh, and why does a big, fat, divorced slob like him need Viagra anyway? If he’s so moral, he should remain celibate.

What I don’t like about him is his wishing Obama will fail. Like it or not, Obama will be our president for the next four years. I always liked Bush as a person, even though he was the worst president in the past 70 years. And I didn’t hope he would fail; rather, I feared he would, and he lived down to the fears. So yes, I “like” and admire Obama, and hope for the best. It’s either that or get the Canadian Visa ready! Hehehe....

There is definitely a lot of crap buried in the stimulus bill, and I think Republicans and Democrats in the Senate will make it much better. If they don’t, that’s why we have elections every 2, 4, and 6 years. ....

A Few Thoughts on Military Engagement

President Obama's recent decision regarding Iraq deployment of our troops, and the eventual withdrawal of combat forces, led me to thinking about some people's political responses to any criticism of the war. Any truly just war cannot be the sole domain of a single political party or philosophy. So, I wrote the reply below to a veteran on another site who seems, like so many of the older vets from the 60s, to still be fighting "hippies" who "diss" our troops.

There has never been a nation in the history of the world, which has not found it necessary to expend its blood and treasure in war. Every country has its Honored Dead whose graveyards lie strewn about distand landscapes. This applies even to nations we have defeated, such as Germany's Bittburg military cemetary (which Reagan took flak for visiting in the 1980s).

While we all should remain cognizant and grateful for the sacrifices of individual servicemen and women, we should not delude ourselves into the belief that there is some unique, solely American reason for engaging in war. "War is diplomacy by other means," it was once said -- and not said by an American.

The military should not be deployed overseas for ideological reasons; rather a "just war" should be fought when necessary for the defense of the nation, not to build an ephemeral democracy in countries whose civilizations arose when our European ancestors were still living in caves. Leave politics aside when discussing our military and its sacrifices, and don't demean their necessary work by belaboring some illusory hippies from the 1960s.

Christ once said, "Let the dead bury the dead." And so it shall always be....