danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

I will give it to you straight because you all deserve the truth. This morning, after more than sixteen years of not vomiting, my winning streak came to a sudden and surprising end.

It all began last Saturday when I first felt the sore throat that Mrs. Hill had been complaining about for the preceding week. Actually, my pain was less in my throat and more in my sinuses, where I felt a strong stinging sensation. By Monday the pain was gone, and all that was left was some congestion. By yesterday I actually felt fine, though I still had a minor cough. Miriam, concerned that I was not getting well enough fast enough, urged me to take some medicine this morning before I left for work. I swallowed the pill and got on my bicycle. About a third of the way through my ride I felt that unmistakable feeling of acute nausea. Noooo! I forgot to take the pill with food!

I was pedaling my bike at my normal pace when I had to suddenly jump off, and I began heaving. I had eaten nothing since the night before, so my stomach was empty. There was nothing to throw up, strictly speaking. I just heaved and heaved, and it felt awful. I got back on the bike, distraught, knowing I wasn’t close enough to any place where I could quickly eat something to calm my stomach. I pressed on, choosing a route I thought would shield me from the disgusted gaze of passing motorists. When I reached the corner of University Avenue and 15th Street, I had no place to hide from the unmerciful eyes of Florida football fans, eagerly awaiting the Homecoming game, but anxious over a potential loss to Vanderbilt. Fortunately, I didn’t have another attack. When I got up to my office, my coworker Melanie gave me some animal crackers from her secret stash. She has a massive stockpile of foodstuffs in a cabinet, perhaps in preparation for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. I worried that I had a live show to host in an hour-and-a-half, and puking on-air would not be good. I briefly considered calling my guest to cancel. But Melanie sent me off to lie down with a blanket (also from her Doomsday stockpile). In a short while I felt normal, and I proceeded with the show as planned.

So, let word go forth to all people in all nations: sixteen vomitless years have come to an end. Unless you want to say that what happened today was just dry heaving, in which case it still stands. Let’s say this. Dana John Hill – Sixteen Years Vomit-Free*.

*If you don’t count dry heaving.

Filed under: Health, Work on November 5th, 2011 | 3 Comments »

I just finished watching the most recent Frontline episode, entitled “The Suicide Tourist”.  It was, simply put, the most powerful and affecting thing I have ever seen on television.  I write this with tears in my eyes, and an entirely new perspective on physician assisted suicide.

The program documents a man named Craig Ewert, who, five months earlier had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease.  After his diagnosis he began to rapidly lose motor function, and when the film begins, he is paralyzed from the neck down.  His wife of several decades is with him constantly.   Mr. Ewert has decided that he would prefer suicide to total paralysis followed by prolonged death, so he travels to Zurich, where assisted suicide is legal, and with the help of a group called Dignitas, ends his life, with his wife holding his hand, and Beethoven playing on the radio.

What makes this program so powerful is that one gets to know Mr. Ewert.  He is a likable, chatty person, who, until his diagnosis was living an active, interesting life, which, were it not for the disease, he would love to continue.  But he fears that if he waits too long, he will lose the ability to move a muscle, at which point assisted suicide would be impossible, leaving him in a prolonged vegetative state, causing his family years of agony.  No one watching could feel anything but profound sympathy for him and his family.  And when he finally drinks the drug that will stop his heart, which he knows will separate him from everyone and everything he has ever known and loved, the tragedy is overwhelming.

I used to think that only ghoulish doctors exploited suffering people by helping them end their lives.  But “The Suicide Tourist” depicts something else entirely.  I am a man of strong faith.  I don’t take matters of death lightly.  But as someone who feels for those who suffer, I cannot ignore that, for some, death is the more dignified, humane, and, ultimately, loving alternative.

I don’t want to take the smile away from anybody’s face, but if you want to witness the most profound portrait of human courage and dignity, watch “The Suicide Tourist”.

Filed under: Health, Television on March 4th, 2010 | No Comments »

Debate is healthy–essential, even–to a thriving democracy.  But debate requires that all parties tell the truth.  Dishonesty poisons social discourse, and invariably prevents us from arriving at common ground and reaching important goals.

I am extremely troubled by the misinformation–lies, really–being spread about the proposed health care reform slowly winding its way through Congress.  The misinformation takes many forms, but at its heart lies a straw man.  That is, some of those who strongly oppose health care reform are deliberately distorting what reform would mean in an effort to make change appear undesirable.  So, for example, they make outrageous claims that, under the Obama plan, the elderly will face forced euthanasia (or any sort of euthanasia), when, in fact, all the proposal would do is give patients the option of discussing advanced directives regarding life-support should they ever suffer a perpetual coma.  There is nothing wrong or even scary about that.  In fact, in the wake of the Terry Schiavo calamity, you would think that everyone would be in favor of such a logical proposal.  But, by misinterpreting what the legislation would do, those making false claims are able to frame the debate in new terms.  If all you hear are people screaming at their congressmen at town hall meetings, you, too, might walk away with the wrong ideas of what health care reform would look like.  (There is a curious similarity between some of those screaming about health care and others screaming about President Obama’s citizenship.)

Another common refrain amongst those who–for whatever reason–oppose reform is that citizens of other nations which have some form of national health care (“socialized medicine!”) or single-payer program (which isn’t even on the table here in the USA, though, mark my words, it will happen in my lifetime) receive much worse care than Americans.  Generally, these arguments point to the “long waits” that patients must endure before receiving essential treatment.  I don’t doubt that patients needing elective operations occasionally have to wait their turns.  But I strongly suspect that the more horrifying claims are greatly exaggerated.  Moreover, when you consider that many tens of millions of Americans are not able to receive those procedures at all, waiting a few weeks doesn’t seem that bad.

But, others who claim that “America has the greatest health care system in the world”, which is demonstrably false if you use almost any measurable criteria, like to make different, more terrifying false claims.  A hilarious one appears in the latest Investors Business Journal.  It suggests that the British public health system is terrible because of “rationing”, and that “the stories of people dying on a waiting list or being denied care altogether read like a horror movie script”.  If, the article states, the bureaucrats don’t believe your life is worth saving, they cut you off, and “you get to curl up in a corner and die”.  Now, you might expect such a shabbily written and poorly researched article to cite ridiculous and unreliable tabloids like the New York Post, and this one does.  And you might also expect it make the sinister insinuation that American patients will be “compelled” to pull their own plugs, so to speak, and this one does that, as well.  But you probably would not have believed that anyone who receives money to write words could make a mistake this stupid:

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Investors Business Journal probably ought to have asked British scientist Stephen Hawking, who lives in the United Kingdom, where they have the National Health Service, if he agreed with that premise.  He would probably have told them that he “wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS”.  That is, in fact, exactly what he told The Guardian.  The ignorance of facts displayed by the Investors Business Journal is not unlike that demonstrated by those fools who claim that, even if President Obama was born in Hawaii–which they’re not willing to concede–he cannot be an American citizen because his father was Kenyan, which is clearly wrong.

It is, of course, appropriate to discuss what this health care reform will cost and how we will pay for it.  And it is entirely understandable that many who oppose abortion would be troubled to think of their money going to cover abortions.  I resent that even a penny of my tax dollars goes to pay for chemicals that the state of Florida uses to kill human beings strapped to a table.  So, their concerns are fair, and we should discuss our options.  But intellectual dishonesty makes legitimate debate impossible, and the fanatics who insist nothing is wrong with what we have, or who seek to make the perfect the enemy of the good, are only making things worse.

Filed under: Current Events, Health, Politics, Rantings on August 12th, 2009 | No Comments »

As everyone in Florida knows, this has been a brutal season for allergies.  The oak trees have been dropping their flowers, and everything in town is covered in a yellow-green dust.  Perhaps because of this–or perhaps because of exposure to infected classmates–I am miserably congested and uncomfortable.  I have to keep my mouth open to breathe, but this creates a pathetic wheezing sound sure to disturb a sleeping spouse.  I did my best to disguise my tubercular timbre at work this afternoon, but my tens of listeners probably thought I had a clothespin on my nose.  My colleagues at the station offered me all manner of medications to combat my symptoms.  I am actually considering missing class tomorrow morning.  Not that it feels any better to stay home, but it’s embarrassing to have nasal faucet at school.

Don’t read the following if you’re easily disgusted:

Read more »

Filed under: Health, School, Work on March 23rd, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Things right now are going very badly for me.  Here is a short list, in no particular order:

• I have no working toilet in my house.
• I have several exams and papers due this week.
• My poor wife has been injured or sick for several weeks and I am powerless to make her feel any better.
• My email seems to work only around 50% of the time.
• Cox Cable switched from the national PBS high-definition feed to the local one, and now I don’t get the same programs; other programs I like show at different times; the signal looks much worse; and I will now have to endure the frequent pledge drives, which the national feed doesn’t carry.
• I still haven’t got my motorized bicycle running.
• I changed guitar strings a few weeks ago, and now my Telecaster won’t stay in tune with itself.
• My guitar makes an annoying buzzing sound because the outlet my amplifier is plugged into isn’t grounded.
• I cannot stop eating Girl Scout Cookies and I feel guilty.
• I have a million chores to do around the house and very little time to do them.
• I have to read hundreds of pages for school, and I am not up to the task.
• I am very tired, and it’s only nine o’clock in the morning.
• When I am at school, I cannot concentrate on what my professors are saying, because I am thinking about one or more of the above.

Filed under: Health, House, Rantings, School on February 25th, 2009 | 1 Comment »