Not feeling well

My yearly physical is tomorrow morning and though I'm in excellent general health, I do feel compelled to tell my doctor about my gut. 

Because it ain't right. I know it ain't right. Not because my peptin and amylase and lipase levels are off kilter. But because my intuitase -- a name I just made up -- is not.

It's been like this for the past week and a half, since President Fuckface started a war. On my birthday no less. And I can't shake this feeling of impending doom.

Mostly because I am familiar with it. 

It happened roughly 6 years ago, March 20, 2020, a weird date now that I see it written form. Not only was it the 49th anniversary of my Bar Mitzvah, it was the day we heard the conclusive diagnosis, over the phone, that the massive tumor on Debbie's liver was cancer.

And...

It was the same day this country was thrown into a panic with the announcement of Covid.

Darkness ensued, both internally and externally. And thus began a slow incremental descent to a place I had never been before. My memory of those days is quite hazy. One vivid memory stands out.

The doctors in Santa Monica needed to get the X-rays of Deb's liver over to a doctor on the other side of Los Angeles, near Wilshire and La Brea. In the late afternoon, this 7 mile drive can take more than an hour. As I was stopped at a red light, I remember screaming at the top of my lungs and pounding on the steering wheel with both fists.

It wasn't the traffic that had me enraged. It was the feeling of powerlessness. For a Control Freak like myself (mostly in a benign and humorous way), it was deeply unsettling. 

The other thing I recall was Deb's fortitude and something she said to me. The tumor itself was not painful. She was asymptomatic about that. The treatments were difficult. The weekly infusions. The endless fatigue. And the weakness, though she continued the long beach walks with her friends.

"What bothers me most," she said, "is this thing inside of me. It feels like an alien. I just want to get it out. And I don't know how."

That's where we are today.

There is a cancer in the White House. And it's malignant. And painful. Slowly killing off the goodness of America and amplifying the worst of America, hate, greed, militarism and, well you know the rest.

We just want to get it out. But we don't know how.