Fake News is Real

I just read about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She has lung cancer, if that’s what you call pancreatic cancer that has spread to a lung. It’s illuminating to look at the way the press is treating the news.

Stories say she had “malignant growths” removed from her left lung. That’s not correct. She had a lobectomy, which means they removed at least one lobe of the lung. When you have lung cancer, they don’t go in and take tiny pieces out. They remove the affected lobes, including healthy tissue around the tumors or lesions or whatever you want to call them.

The procedure Ginsburg underwent is like a mastectomy, not a lumpectomy. That’s what I’m trying to say. They took out a lot of flesh, hoping they removed as much of the cancer as possible.

To read the stories, you would think she had a couple of miniscule spots which were easy to isolate and remove. That illustrates the bias of the people who are covering the story. By and large, journalists live in terror of Donald Trump’s third Supreme Court justice, so they want to believe Ruth Ginsburg is going to be fine.

The stories also say doctors could not find any signs of additional cancer in her body.

My mother had the same procedure in the summer of 1996, soon after she discovered she had lung cancer. Doctors removed part of her right lung, and they told her they couldn’t find any more cancer. Roughly half a year later, she was dead, after receiving the best possible treatment at Sloan-Kettering and M.D. Anderson.

It’s not unusual for terminal cancer patients to be told they are “cancer-free” or in “total remission.” Those terms are deceptive. Cancer commonly exists in forms that are too small to detect in tests, and if your doctor says you’re in remission or cancer-free, he just means he can’t find whatever remains in your body. It does not mean you’re healed.

If you are healed, a fortiori, you will be cancer-free and in total remission. If you are declared cancer-free and in total remission, you may not be healed, and you may be gone in a few months.

The news says no new treatment is planned at this time. That doesn’t mean she’s fine. It may mean they’ve decided new treatment would be pointless. It may mean she is not strong enough for new treatment. It may mean they simply haven’t decided what to do yet.

We all know what the likely choices are: chemotherapy and/or radiation. If they decide treatment is worthwhile, those are the things that will be done. Sometimes they work, but that’s unusual.

If what I’m saying is wrong, forgive me, but it’s what I learned from a lot of reading when someone I knew had cancer. I am not making it up.

I remember talking to my dad when my mother got out of surgery. He said they thought they had gotten it all. Neither of us understood what that meant. It’s what surgeons say to make cancer patients feel good. They routinely remove all detectable cancer from patients who go on to die in short order.

Ginsburg is not a miracle patient who beat cancer twice, or at least that’s not what the evidence suggests. She’s a normal cancer patient whose cancer has metastasized, as expected. She still has the pancreatic cancer she supposedly beat a few years back. Pancreatic cancer has three sites it most likes to move to: the liver, peritoneum, and lung, in that order. What has happened to Ginsburg is the normal progression of an incurable disease.

Leftists have turned Ginsburg into a heroine because of her health problems. They have made a big mistake. In 2009, under Obama, she was diagnosed with a type of cancer that has a 93% 7-year mortality rate, and she was about 76 at the time. She could have retired and allowed Obama to choose a 45-year-old socialist in good health, but she chose not to. By choosing to hold on, she made it a near-certainty that Obama’s successor would get to choose a justice to replace her, and she chose to bet that the next president would be a leftist. She rolled the dice, and the Democrats lost. It wasn’t a generous thing to do.

You can argue that she is above partisan politics, and that she didn’t think about the political complexion of her successor when she made her decision. That’s silly. Everyone knows judges are highly partisan. A while back we had a kerfuffle because Trump acknowledged this, and people said a lot of absurd, dishonest things, pretending judges were lofty creatures that hovered above the fray at all times. Of course, Trump was right.

It’s not a coincidence that justices appointed by conservatives routinely join in votes against justices appointed by leftists. It’s not random chance.

Ginsburg is a political creature, and she wants a hard-left America. She doesn’t want to see a conservative replace her. The fact that she refused to do anything to prevent it shows that she was selfish or her judgment was clouded. It’s easy to let emotion do your thinking when you’re faced with a choice like hers.

I will be surprised if she finishes this year, but I’ll bet she tries.

The election is almost two years off. President Trump should have plenty of time to nominate a third justice. What a food fight that will be. Leftists will be beside themselves. We think they’re unhinged now; wait till Ginsburg officially retires. I don’t look forward to the spectacle.

Leftists no longer believe in democracy, if they ever did. Trump was elected fairly and legally, and they are not only opposing him; they are still trying to undo the election. They even talk about revolution, which is an act which is inherently treasonous. You have to wonder what kind of antics we will witness when they see Ginsburg slipping away.

They can’t fix this by getting rid of Trump. Even if they pulled it off, Pence would have appointment power. We will also have the Senate, which is the body that approves justices. The only hope for the left is a prolonged illness which keeps Ginsburg on the bench until a leftist succeeds Trump. It could happen, but it’s not looking good.

It will be nice if we get another conservative justice. We need that. Persecution is getting worse here in America, and while justices are neither God nor men and women of God, it’s nicer to have them working for us than against us. If Trump is a big Cyrus figure, we can certainly use some little Cyruses.

In other news, I have been cleaning up all day. I’m writing during a break. My dad is still in respite care. I’m sorry to say that four days have not been sufficient to get things back on an even keel. His bedroom and bathroom were so gross, I’ve had to put in around three hours already. I haven’t even put on clean clothes today, because I didn’t want to put them on and then expose myself to filth. I’m going to shower and change shortly.

This respite was supposed to give me rest, but it hasn’t worked out that way yet. It has been a big help, but I’m going to send him again ASAP. Medicare will pay for 5 respite days per month. I plan to send him again in a couple of weeks. He may not like it, but something has to be done.

This day has not been what I had hoped for, but at least I’m not caring for him AND cleaning up his mess. If he were here, he would be making the process much harder. I go into his bedroom and do whatever I want. I throw out things he shouldn’t have, for example. If he were here, I would have to listen to him yell about it, or I would have to sneak around and strive to keep what I was doing from him. Because he isn’t here, I can get it over with, without opposition.

His furniture will have to be thrown out or given away when he passes. I gave him my bedroom furniture, which belonged to my mother. He is doing things to it that defy description. Oh, well. I never liked it anyway.

Having him out of the house has helped me solidify my conclusion that he has no business here. No one should live the way he lives now. Filth doesn’t bother him at all, and he would happily live in it from now on, but it’s not acceptable. The stress of having two big rooms I can’t possibly keep clean is a weight on me. No one can live in a house with two rooms that stink and not feel oppressed.

Having filth and assorted stenches in your face every day is very taxing. It’s surprising. It’s not like caring for livestock every day. Human waste is very nasty, and human beings live indoors, on your furniture and floors. Pig manure stinks like crazy, but you can raise pigs half a mile from your house, and you never have to let them in the front door. Pig manure is also predictable. You know when and where you will find it. A dementia patient’s various types of dirt and foulness will constantly surprise you. And you don’t have to do laundry for a pig.

I’ve been thinking about the changes I’ve seen in him, so I can have a proper understanding of what’s happening. When we came to Ocala last summer, I took him to a mattress store and had him lie down on some mattresses. He could walk into the store just fine. He could lie down and get up without help. He could talk about what we were doing in a productive way. He could get out his cards and pay. If I took him to a mattress store today, he would have to use a walker. He would have a very hard time trying out mattresses. Talking to him about them would be difficult. I pay for everything now because he doesn’t carry a wallet. That’s the change, over about 17 months.

I think he will pass away in 2019. I feel that God is telling me that. It would be nice to have my dad set up well, and to have everything in this house in order, when it happens. If that comes to pass, and my dad accepts salvation for real, I will be more than content.