(Untitled)

[ashwyn]

so my dad has had his radioactive seeds implanted at his cancer site for a month or so now. he told me he can set off the alarms at barnes and noble just by walking through them, which was rather embarrassing, considering he was neither buying nor stealing a book. this week he started chemo treatment and must travel to the hospital to be there,

Comments

[hilzarie]

a pack a day for a year?! I talked to someone today (who has insurance) who's type 2 diabetic (diet related) *and* smoked a pack a day for 20 years. one year is not...careless. now that I'm *in* the healthcare system, some of it makes less and less sense. but with the chemo people, they're probably told they're not supposed to be happy. I kind of got told the same thing, for dealing with people who...are not have a good time, in whatever way.

oh...and you reminded me: I'm reading a book about a librarian right now. I'm only ~50 pages in but it's interesting. I think it's gonna be a mystery,once I get to the plot part. :)

In one of my classes, we talked about nuclear medicine (which uses radioactive isotopes) and how, if you've had that test, or the little pellets your dad got, you have to bring a note with you to the airport about why you set off metal detectors.

I hope your dad does...as well as possible.

[ashwyn]

thanks for your thoughts =)
yeah, i thought the cigarette thing was bull shit. considering the air quality in southern california, i bet there will be a lot of people in the years to come with copd.

what is the book you are reading? i finished The Historian a while back which was about dracula and had a few evil librarians in it and was really really quite a good book!

[hilzarie]

I'm reading "The Case of the Missing Books" by Ian Sansom. He's more of a put-upon librarian. Evil librarians are pretty cool.

I don't know much about COPD, but I know we see a lot of people with it. And the lady who smoked for 20 years? didn't have it.

[moonlitcirce]

A pack a day a year does not cause COPD. Those fuckers, what the fuck, man?
GAHHHH.
I'm so sorry.
Your dad is my thoughts.

[ashwyn]

miss you! =)

[teahleilah]

ugh, i hate insurance backasswardness. i know he may not have the money to pay for this, but i'd be really interested in finding out what happened to the car to make it combust. will he need to get a new car now, on top of every thing else? like cancer, radiation, chemo and having to worry about the COPD and the fact that his treatment may not be covered wasn't enough. i'll be thinking of him -- and you -- and hoping his life stops exploding. *mrow hugs*

[ashwyn]

they say "faulty wiring" and that is it - very strange. i think it has something to do with my dad's treatment - it's awakening some latent superhuman powers that he does not yet know how to control. yeah - he went car shopping today but hasn't found anything yet I guess. merow!

[teahleilah]

faulty wiring, what a cop-out.

but superhuman powers... woo! he can melt a car engine in a single drive home! he can activate sensors at major bookstores! we don't know yet if his powers are being used for good or evil... we shall see. (sorry for my silly rant.)

but i really hope that your dad responds well to the treatment, and gets better. i know that everyone is different, but when my dad had cancer, it was a type where the doctors said that he had a 50/50 chance of surviving. flip-a-coin odds. but he made it! and he's alive and in remission for over ten years, and still breaking my heart and being an asshole. :)

[arlieth]

Yikes! I hope your dad gets better.

[jdtnirvana]

Yeah, so if smoking itself caused COPD, then cigarrette companies would not be able to persist. It's total bull shit, and I bet you just need to fight it (maybe more than once).

But otherwise, I'm really sorry to hear about that. It's A LOT to deal with. Like, too much. What kind of cancer does he have? Do you know what stage it's in? Did he have any signs of COPD before?

And your dad being an ill old man is not because he was careless in his youth. Some people smoke their whole lives and never get cancer, never get COPD. Others never smoke and get it. Genetics play a big role as do other environmental factors (such as the lovely suffocating dense smog that's been hanging over the armpit of so cal for decades).

[ashwyn]

We do live in quite a stinky pit!