Results are in. Every portion of the prostate, lymph nodes around it, and possibly more spreading.

Looks like the aggressive type. Woohoo! I don't do anything half way.

Instead of an 8-12 week wait, I head up possibly Monday for the CAT scan and bone scan, then meet with the doctor Wednesday.

[UPDATE: edited for clarity and to follow site rules. If your comments have disappeared, sole responsibility lies with the author, who expresses sincere apologies.]

Good news on one small front. No more Cipro until Tuesday, 2 hours before the biopsy. Nasty infection cured.

But one immediate obstacle down doesn't take away the uncertainty of my condition. That's why I am planning to live.

Bureaucracy exists in every field, from government to medicine to education. Yet medicine will be at least the point of the spear in this diary.

Sounds like an odd title, but without a doubt, plenty of folks have the same problems that I face. A diagnosis of cancer, dwindling benefits, and fear.

I thought I'd diary today on what I'm thinking, feeling, and going through today, maybe a follow-up tonight. Who knows? I'm in a state of not knowing, and I want to know!

As you know from my TL name, I'm Jeffinalabama. I'm a baby boomer, and like many boomers, been married and divorced, with a child. I decided to re-introduce myself in this, my inaugural diary here at TalkLeft.

First and foremost, let me state again much gratitude to Jeralyn for letting me become a diarist here. I will do my best to not let the history or principals of this site down.

Secondly, you get to read all about me, me, me, in the full text.

Crossposted from Antemedius

...............

In 2010, American voters foolishly aided and abetted the Republicans by giving them control of Congress.

We now enter a very dangerous period in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.

If Obama is not re-elected, and people don't work towards returning workable majorities in the House and the Senate to the Democrats, then the country only continues its decline, and all will be lost.

It may be the end of a two century great social experiment unequaled in human history.

Warning! I'm about to vent some frustration with Chris Matthews. No profanity, Jeralyn! I honor the protocol of the TalkLeft blog.

My annoyance with Matthews focuses on two of his behaviors. First, he sucks up and drops names. Maybe he sucks-up because he worships power regardless of character (Tom DeLay, Fred Thompson, etc.? Sheesh!); he drops names almost certainly because he's more or less subconsciously emulating the nursery rhyme character Little Jack Horner:

Little Jack Horner sat in the corner

Eating his Christmas pie,

He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum

And said "What a good boy am I!

"Look whom I know! Look whom I party with! Look whom I can call a `friend'! How cool is that?  See what a good boy I am?"

Time to pause and gather the threads of the argument.

Just above, I was talking about two manifestations of one aspect of my annoyance with Chris Matthews: namely, his strange hero worship and his pride in being a cocktail-circuit, prideful Washington insider. My second annoyance is that he rarely actually listens to what his "guests" are saying; instead he looks for (or forces) wedges to allow him to interrupt and pontificate.

Yes, I know. This is S.O.P. for the major media. But that doesn't mitigate its annoyance, let alone make it positive, constructive, or right. Indeed, it's exactly the opposite. Tonight's example? The guests came from opposing ideological perspectives, but they agreed that what matters most for Obama's re-election chances is whether the unemployment percentage is perceived to be falling, idling, or rising.

So how did Matthews respond? "Yeah, yeah. But the unemployment rate right now is...." (Memory, not transcript. But I'm confident that's fair.)

From a generous perspective, Matthews seems deaf, dismissive, and/or disrespectful here. From a less generous perspective, he seems rude, dismissive, close-minded, and ... well, my point's no doubt obvious.

And not just Micronesia -- all of us, everywhere in the world.

I'm interested in whether the Micronesian States' claims about Transboundary Environmental Impact might provide one more way to bring public awareness and (dare one hope?) pressure to bear on the global warming crisis.

Yeah, I know. Very few persons in U.S. government seem to pay much attention to law or justice these days - especially international law. Still, one can dream. The environmental effects of global warming are evident right now in the U.S., causing immense human and economic destruction. And the carbon emissions right here in the U.S. are causing even more destruction to other nations. Any of the lawyers reading this blog have a thought how accountability might be attached?

And do any of the artists reading this have a complementary thought: We need another version of Al Gore's film, this time with fewer charts and more dramatic juxtaposition and dot-connecting.

A Micronesian island nation is quite literally being eroded to nothingness by tides. Same with an island community in northern Alaska. Worst drought in who knows how long in China. Same with the U.S. Southwest - worse than the "Dust Bowl." Countless numbers of persons die in Pakistan because of flooding. The U.S. is struck by the worst tornadoes in memory.

And it's not just carbon emissions. Nuclear reactors in the Ukraine and in Japan destroy themselves, and the results affect food and radiation all around the planet.

Morally, you have the right to swing your fist as much as you want. But that right ends at the tip of my nose. You have a right to throw stones. But that right ends when one of those stones hits my wife, even if you threw it from across the border separating your yard from mine.

It's one planet. Whatever any of us does affects all of us. (No, I won't quote Donne's sermon, though I can't help thinking about it.)

I'm watching the Rachel Maddow Show right now, 9:41, May 23, EST. She just issued a call for help for the tornado victims in Missouri. Of course I'll chip in to help! Sheesh! Who wouldn't, if she or he were able? Book that ... but read on.

Start by considering any of the real-time online maps showing severe weather conditions. Example? Accuweather. (No particular endorsement, just an exemplar.) http://www.accuweather.com/severe-weather.asp This particular map is restricted to the U.S., but similar maps show conditions for the entire world. Think about it.

Severe weather "events" (as they're officially designated) occur every minute of every day, somewhere on the planet. Many simultaneously. Same with earthquakes, floods, etc. Who decides which is severe enough to justify appeals for help on network TV? On what basis is the decision made? Has anyone ever articulated the principles determining which people, where, victimized by which "event," with what human and economic cost, etc. should be made the focus of media coverage in the U.S., and of media fundraising?

It seems likely that hundreds of persons will have been killed in Missouri. That's terrible. Still, not long ago tens of thousands - probably hundreds of thousands - of persons were killed by the floods in Pakistan. That's so far beyond terrible as to be beyond my ability to express it. (Suggestions more than welcome.)

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

Think about this, though. I've been talking about how we decide which effects deserve focus and private financial support. But who says we have to blinder ourselves in such a way as to think only about effects and never about causes?

Let's dip our noggins in ice water, and emerge with a new perspective. Let's think about causes rather than effects. What's causing the record levels of severe weather? Doesn't it make more sense to deal with the hydra's head than to keep jumping hither and yon in trying to deal with its geometrically multiplying tentacles?

My suggestion? We have to deal with global warming. Period. Local, national, regional advantage might be subject to conflict and negotiation. But the survival of homo sapiens depends on our dealing with global warming.

One of several mantras Republicans are chanting these days is the following: "Corporate tax rates are too high. Businesses will leave the U.S. We will lose jobs."

That ditching the nation and the taxpayers who nurtured them (not least through taking on "externalized" business expenses) would be unpatriotic and morally contemptible; that big corporations are already moving their headquarters to foreign "mail drops" in order to evade U.S. taxes; that regardless of where the putative corporate headquarters might be, they are already shipping U.S. jobs overseas ... all of this is omitted. Also omitted is that the only loyalty that matters to the corporate masters and their political lackeys is loyalty to profit.

Cross-posted from Scarabus.

[Technical aside. I tried to include images here, but was unsuccessful. Admittedly, I'm more than a bit wine-befuddled. But (a) if you want to see the images, go to the source: Scarabus; (b) if you're experienced with "hreffing" off-site images with Scoop software, I hope you'll let me know. Sharing knowledge is good.

I've often wondered why most Americans aren't outraged and besieging Congress to change the laws that have created the extreme disparity between the very, very rich and the remaining 98% of us -- a disparity that's already obscene and growing more so every year.

Yes, I know that in part the public's bland acceptance is based on factors like Republican politicians' lying to them, right wing media's brainwashing them, and their having accepted the beliefs of Job's neighbors in the Old Testament story: that if you're prospering, it's because you're a good and virtuous person; if you're not prospering, perhaps unemployed or a victim of natural disaster, it's because you're neither a good nor a virtuous person.

[The best is yet to come! :-)]

Haven't checked the status in the last little while, but Texas either has approved or is about to approve a law allowing students, faculty, and administrators to carry concealed weapons on campus.

I think that's a dangerously wrong idea. For example, Texans already are allowed to carry weapons in their vehicles. So how has that worked out?

ABILENE, Texas -- Chris North has been identified, officially for the first time, as the man who shot and killed Austin David on Feb. 9 during what the Abilene Police Department called a road rage incident.

A lifelong resident of Abilene, North, 44, was identified by attorney Sam Moore, who was hired by the family to represent North.

Moore told the media during a news conference in his office Wednesday that North fired his gun in self-defense. He said that David "had already pulled a gun and had threatened to kill him.

Forget insanity. Focus on hormones. I taught college for nearly 4 decades, and I can guarantee that college students will fight among themselves ... especially when they're drunk. Guns weren't permitted on our campus, so the fights I learned of almost always involved fisticuffs and nothing more. I wonder how many on-campus murders I'd have seen if students had been carrying guns? If both sides in a conflict had started shooting, multiple victims would have died.

Insanity? That's what's reflected in the laws encouraging citizens to carry guns. The men who support this kind of legislation (including men now serving in Congress) must see themselves as civilian incarnations of the fictional character Dirty Harry.

Instead they should imagine what it might be like to confront a real-life, non-fictional bad guy like, say, John Wesley Hardin. Hardin claimed to have killed 42 men. Might not have been that many, but it was a lot. And all of those men were carrying their own guns. Or, say, Clyde Barrow. He killed plenty of fully armed police officers before he himself was killed in an ambush by a numerous group of lawmen.

[Cross-posted from Scarabus. Illustrations included there.]