Health and dis-ease

I am just drop-jawed in awe of Dustin Hoffman’s acting talent.  He can be anyone.    One of the roles he played was a new college graduate who receives advice to look for employment in “plastics.”

Plastics certainly have reduced the number of broken containers on the kitchen or dining room floor.  However, the concerns of the far left, all-natural tree-huggers seem to now be seconded by research institutions.

What are the health field’s uses and concerns about plastic?  I think that plastics have greatly increased sanitation levels.  Disposables may be wasteful, but in an infection-conscious environment, the waste is far outshadowed by the benefits in sterile equipment.

On the other hand, a doctor at Johns Hopkins University raises the concern that dioxins are bleeding from plastic wrap and plastic containers into food.  Dioxins are not good for people.  In fact, they are VERY bad – carcinogenic, to be precise.  This is not good news for all the microwave oven plastic accessories businesses.  Can the population make the switch back to (breakable) glass and ceramic dishes for cooking?

It is horrifically sad that a father reportedly killed his two-and-a-half-year-old son because he owed $4,000 of child support.

The atrociousness of this murder is exponentially compounded by the fact that this is not a novel event.  Each year parents, step-parents, babysitters, foster parents, and grandparents are found guilty of willful or negligent murder of children in their care.

Where is the country’s value system?  Why do we test people to see if they can correctly cut hair or draft a deed, but we totally “trust” something – I don’t know what – to insure that a wee human being will be nourished, nurtured, and protected by his parents.  What insanity!

The biological capacity to make a baby does NOT automatically endow the parents with the skills to raise it.   One may counter that there are mandated reporters to watch for abuse and then agencies in place to intervene, should it be deemed necessary.  If one further attempts to assert that these adequately manage the problem, this is not so.

Pre-parental training and testing is overdue.

“God is on OUR side” is a sentiment probably felt by any and every country involved in armed conflict.  God intended us to have enough land for OUR people (Hitler and Austria, United States and western expansion).  God intended that OUR religion dominate and that others disappear (just about everywhere.)  God intended that OUR ethnic group or race dominate and all others get the bleep out or be extinguished from the face of the earth (just about everywhere).  When you read the plain words, don’t they sound about as immature as a two-year-old with the gimmes?  So, why did and do countries adopt the manifest destiny philosophy?

Jingoism is belligerent, aggressive, and selfish nationalism (please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingoism for a fine definition and discussion.)  What a bizarre name it is for the concept!  How about patrarrogance? (Patriotic arrogance) Or egoarroblindagance?  Or xenobigotrism?  The United States certainly was filled with it after 9/11, although it had always been lurking under the surface of the consciousness.  Soon after the attack, copious cars were displaying American flags, especially ones which could be inexpensively purchased and hooked over the window.  Although it truly only proved that people could afford the flag and could figure out how to attach it, it seemed to represent an ugly “me first” attitude about America, its sources for oil, and its willingness to use military force to get what it wants.

However, many years have passed.  I have learned from the experience.  I am not particularly proud of this, but I will be honest:  before the attack on the twin towers, I felt that we were magically protected on our own continental boundaries (sorry, Hawa’ai and Alaska.)   It was as if I believed that a Star Trek force field was up, protecting the mainland.  Therefore, the invasion of 9/11 destroyed a faith I had.  Citizens of other countries probably would laugh at my naiveté, but the events truly led to a loss of innocence for me.  Now I am sadder and hopefully wiser.  (For example, when the four –day ban on air traffic ended, the first time I heard jet engines above, I had these thoughts:  “What is that sound?  Oh, I know that sound: it is the noise of an airplane.  I wonder what it is doing.  I think it will probably crash into the side of my house and into the bathroom where I am standing.”  That sequence NEVER would have occurred to me before Sept 11^th.)

Many of us are wiser.  (Just a few still think that pouring money into the military complex solves all problems.  From them, I get the Internet anti-Democrat jibes and “Pray for the soldiers” emails.)  Most of us are now recognizing that the song “God Bless America” is passé and the new song needs to be “God Bless the World.”

Through a good friend, I just watched a YouTube video which led me to Wiki for more information, which led to a link, which led to another link.  At the end of it all, I came upon a marvelous site:  www.circusofcancer.org.  For those of us who learn by seeing, I highly recommend visiting Circus of Cancer and going through all the chapters in the photo album.  It may enlighten you better than my words have.

I will react to just a few isolated photos and commentary which struck a chord with me.

The accommodations for chemotherapy.  My partner is in the middle of his third round and we have seen good changes at the local hospital where he has received his chemo (treatment is planned by a CLL consortium hospital, but administered close to home.)  For the very first round, he was crammed into a 20 by 50 foot infusion room with no privacy, one visitor chair per patient – all of us sitting hip-to-hip with the patients – and two ceiling-mounted televisions blaring the most obnoxious daytime programs imaginable.  Further insult was that his infusion arm rested on a pillow with a blood stain.  That just heightened the angst of it all.

Happily, for rounds two and three a new wing is finished.  There are spacious areas similar to emergency room areas, with privacy curtains, enough room to wiggle, and individual television sets.  Furthermore, there are many windows and peaceful works of art.  However, the treatment chairs are still pretty much as shown at the Circus of Cancer site.  Nevertheless, as also stated on that site, if one does a little fibbing and finagling, he can score a real hospital bed for the infusion.  As my partner is the CHAMPION of fibbing and finagling, he is very comfortable.

Nurses and personnel for chemotherapy.  Wonderful.  Every single one of them.

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Going to the bathroom during chemo.   This is an activity which we didn’t consider beforehand.  How does a patient go to the bathroom during a possibly six-hour long infusion?  Catheterization?  No.  One must figure out how to sit up, stand up, disconnect the electric monitor, and pull the entire apparatus to the potty.  Then the challenge is how to pull one’s pants down and take care of business without messing up the tubes, needles, and etcetera.  This is why it is a blessing that all the chemotherapy staff are likely to be wonderful, as discussed above.

I am so glad that Kelly Corrigan created the site, Circus of Cancer, which plainly and honestly shares her experiences.  Even more so, I am thankful for her happy state of health.  God bless ya, dear!

I have an ax to grind into the backs of cinema make-up professionals and directors.  I don’t require gratuitous ugliness, but some of these films are as unrealistic as the way my siblings and I were at pretending games at age five.  If we played cowboys and Indians, or World War II combat, or cops and robbers,  the person getting killed clutched the chest dramatically and fell over stone dead.  Healthy one moment, suffering two seconds, then dead.   

Therefore, this is an incomplete commentary on the portrayal of cancer in three movies.

The Calendar Girls        

Excellent.  Not only is it a great story; the cancer patient actually LOOKS and ACTS like a cancer patient.  In this case it is a husband who progresses from “normal looking” to puffy-faced to only able to sip a few drops from a child’s juice box straw.    That is the cancer with which I am acquainted.

Y Tu Mama Tambien       

(Do not read this if you are planning to see the film and don’t want it ruined for you.) 

This film is meritorious on many levels and I do recommend it.  A Latino buddy of mine went to a lecture at Harvard in which the film was touted as a disguised means of showing the extreme poverty in Mexico.  Also, it is an engaging coming of age story, conflict between the socio-economic classes story, and more.  However, there is an extremely attractive woman in her twenties who trots around in her bikini and serves as a sexual mentor for two teen boys.  One learns at the end that she has bleepin’ terminal cancer.  Oh, come on!  All bouncy, all perky and energetic, yet has reason to know she has cancer?  Bah, humbug.

 The Bucket List       plus

Alright, I am schizophrenic on this review.  The scenes in the first part of the film occurring in the hospital are pretty respectable.  The only possible improvement I could suggest would be to change the skin color of the patients to a pale-purple-brown chemo-induced yuckiness.   That is minor.  The movie did a fine job, until…the two patients learn they have no hope in hell and only three months to live.  Then, they are blessed by the fountain of healthy youth.  No problems, tons of energy, no need for naps or moving slowly, eating and drinking like 30-year-old playboys.  It is a fantasy.  In fact, the whole movie is a pleasant, light fairy tale which is a metaphor for the poem “Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May” or “carpe diem.”  So, thumbs up AND down for this flick.

Comments welcome.  I can’t remember details of Love Story and other movies which you may want to add to this list. Thanks.