First thing I remember . . .

I was born in 1946 in Hailey, Idaho. My memories of the event are fuzzy at best, but my parents told me it was in a clinic/hospital on the second floor of the Fox Building which also had the town's dry goods/general store. I believe Bruce Willis owns it now, but that has absolutely nothing to do with my story. The house my parents lived in at the time was a natural foods boutique when we were there in 1981, but that also has no bearing on anything unless, of course, you are in the market for some organic legumes.



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And then it begins . . .

I am old enough to remember the old non-disposable hypodermic needles. From my early childhood until right around eighth or ninth grade every time I had a serious hemorrhage one of my arms (usually the right because it had a huge vein the med students loved) would be strapped down to a board for the IV. The needles were quite large compared to those used today because they had to be strong enough to go through repeated cleanings, and they had absolutely no give to them so your arm, or whatever, had to be kept rigidly straight if the needle was anywhere near the wrist or elbow. When you coupled the thick metal with a large bore for blood you got a very thick needle with a fairly large bevel on the end.

And that was where the fun began.


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Signs, signs, everywhere a sign . . .

Sometimes Arizona is a very strange place.






Sink placement is always an adventure.


When I think of buying a new Lexus, I think giant sumo.

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Until they take it away . . .

A few years ago, which is old fart talk for ten or twelve, my wife got an assignment in New York for ten weeks. Unfortunately they didn't see the need to send me too, so I was left here to feed the cats. One Saturday after about four weeks I decided the apartment needed a really good cleaning. The plan was to clean everything, take a shower and reward myself with a really good lunch/dinner.



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To me he was . . .

I was talking to my mother on the phone tonight. After the usual questions about her current health and happiness she said:

I was thinking just the other day about all the things your father and I did in the 57 years we were together.

"You guys did have a busy life together." My father passed away in 2002 just three weeks before their 58th anniversary.

I was always so proud of him. No matter what, he made sure we paid our bills. Even the hospital bills for you and your brother.

The health insurance my dad got through his job was almost totally useless, and my parents paid almost all of our hospital bills themselves. "I know he worked hard, but what I remember most is that we always seemed to have fun."

He worked like a dog. But he never complained.

"No, he never did. And like I said, we always had fun."

Don't take money to have fun.

She was quiet for a couple seconds while we both remembered.

God, I miss him.

"Me too, Mom."

In a world that often treated my brother and me as something less than real men because we had hemophilia (and often didn't mind telling us quite bluntly), he never had anything but love and pride for us. When other fathers were abandoning their family or ignoring a son's existence because he was 'defective', my father was taking on another job so he could be sure we had the care we needed. When the world was telling my brother and me that we would never be anything but cripples and a drain on society, our father was teaching us how to work a short order grill, do rough carpentry, and run a bakery so we would always be able to make our own way.

In my last post I talked about how the gene for hemophilia can stay hidden for several generations. In our family it is just the opposite. My grandfather was a hemophiliac, two cousins, my brother and I, and now my grandson. I know my life has been infinitely easier than my grandfather's, and I am confident that my grandson's will be infinitely easier than mine. I just hope that he never has to hear some girl's father tell him not to come around anymore because Janice/Rosa/Sharon can't be wasting her time on a cripple; but if he does I hope he has someone like I did who will remind him that "your bleeds can be stopped, and you'll get better, but there isn't any cure for being a stupid jackass."

父ありてあけぼの見たし青田原

With my father/I would watch the dawn/Over the green fields.

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The old, familiar sting . . .

Hemophilia can be a truly nefarious condition.

One of its more nefarious aspects is that it can lie low for generations, quietly getting passed from mother to daughter but not calling attention to itself by taking any side trips into the male branches of the family. (Yes, I know it's all governed by genetics and chance, and the condition does not, indeed cannot, take any active interest in how and when it manifests itself. It's just sometimes easier, for me at least, to talk about it this way.) The family goes along minding its own business, and with each generation one or two of the daughters are carriers, who grow up and have children and again the luck of the draw gives them a son who is not hemophiliac and a daughter who will quietly, secretly, unknowingly pass on the genes. Eventually so many generations pass that the family forgets about great-great-great-great grandfather Sheldon who was said to be a cripple and died young bleeding into his stomach.

Then it happens.

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It seems like a mighty long time . . .

It was in 1965. I'm pretty sure it was on a Sunday morning, but I can't remember if it was in late April or early May. Early in the morning my mother dropped me off in the circle drive in front of the main entrance of the high school. She took my suitcase out of the trunk for me, and put it on the side walk next to those of my classmates. She asked me one last time if I was sure I would be all right, and then got back in the car and drove home.

I stood there in the early chill with a couple of my buddies, and we tried to appear cool and nonchalant while I secretly wondered if the doors to the school were unlocked because I was so excited I was about to pee my pants. Most of the senior class of 1965 was there gathered into little clumps. We had spent the last couple years selling magazine subscriptions, washing cars and running the refreshment stand at football games to earn the money for this trip, and now it was actually happening.

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Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian

At the end of the post I made late last night (or early this morning if you want to be pedantic about it) I made a comment to the effect that it didn't really matter that a few thousand hemophiliacs died because of dirty blood products because, after all, it wasn't like they were real men. Then today I stumbled onto to this piece written by Linda Chavez. What can I say? Peter Singer is at the forefront of the animal rights movement. My wife has his books. But, again, because we are "defective" and not really human not even Blacks or Jews or leaders of PETA see anything wrong with discriminating against or eliminating us. You can kill a hemophiliac baby, but don't you dare kill a chicken.

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Okay, I've had a couple hours to cool down after writing the paragraph above. My wife pointed out that his comments might have been taken out of context, so I did a little research. Admittedly not a lot, but I tried to give Mr Singer a chance.

According to the FAQ on his web site he does indeed believe killing a hemophiliac infant because he has hemophilia (he says "a serious disability" on his web site) is ethically defensible. His reasoning is that an infant has no sense of its own future and is therefore, in his opinion, not a person; and therefore would less of a loss than an adult. What this sense of future has to do with it is beyond me. Once dead neither an infant nor an adult has any sense of past or present let alone future. (To be fair he does say that killing a "normal" infant would also be ethically defensible—just not as much as a "defective" one. ("Normal" and "defective" are my terms for his classifications, but I think they are accurate.)) Since this defective infant will cause his family to lead a less pleasant life than a normal one would they are justified in getting rid of the one to make room for the other.

In a few days, when I am a bit more rational, I'll try to present my feelings on the sanctity of life and the morality of killing, but for now I'll just say that one of the things he is forgetting is the possibilities. It is possible that the normal baby will grow up to be Charles Manson, and the defective one will grow up to be Richard Burton. (Back in the late 60s or early 70s Richard Burton, of married to Elizabeth Taylor fame, was the spokesman of the National Hemophilia Foundation, partly because he had a mild form of hemophilia b.)
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