They Declined....

Well, it seems that of the Minnesota couple's recently born sextuplets, two of the babies have died. A CNN story early this morning read:

"A second sextuplet born prematurely to a Minnesota couple has died, hospital officials said Friday.

The boy, Tryg Brenton Morrison, died Thursday night. Tryg's brother Bennet Ryan died Wednesday night.

The four surviving babies remained in critical condition Friday in the neonatal intensive care unit at Children's Hospital in Minneapolis....

The four boys and two girls were born Sunday in the 22nd week of pregnancy -- about 4½ months early -- and weighed from 11 ounces to 1 pound, 3 ounces, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Experts say that at 22 weeks, many of a baby's major organs -- including the skin, brain, kidneys and lungs -- are underdeveloped...." The story then went on to say, "Parents Ryan and Brianna Morrison, both 24, spent more than a year trying to conceive before Brianna Morrison was able to conceive using fertility drugs.

Doctors had advised them to selectively reduce the number of viable fetuses to two, but they declined.""

Folks, I don't consider this a miracle. I don't consider two tiny deaths a fucking miracle at all. I think it's tragic and it's a travesty. There was a sensible reason the doctors advised the young couple they way they did and I think was selfish for them to spurn that advice.

Couples who go into infertility treatment ARE thoroughly educated from the start that selective reduction may be a medical necessity both for the health of the mother and/or for the health of the unborn infants.

Doctors already know that the more fetuses in a single womb, the more likely the chance of premature birth is. That has been proven again and again. They are also educated as to the medical dangers premature birth poses to the newborn. The earlier the birth, the more significant the dangers are. The examples CNN cited are only a small sample. So excuse me for not quite achieving a full understanding how anyone in their right mind could choose to expose any child to that kind of desparate risk and think it ia an act of love.

Chocolate Ecstacy

My friend W. from San Francisco who put me up in his living room when I went to SF for my brother's memorial brought me a box of Joseph Schmidt chocolate truffles. They look too pretty to eat.

Oh -- and if any of you are planning a trip to San Francisco, Schmidt's is easy to get to -- and try CocoaBella too -- swoon!

Wilde Quotes

Oscar Wilde is one of my favorite quotable authors, so I thought I'd put up some of my favorites for you today.

"We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities. "

"When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers." from An Ideal Husband, 1893

"I can resist anything but temptation." Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act I

"The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself."

"Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them." The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

I love that all of these notions apply to us even today. Wilde was an astute commentator of the human condition in addition to being tart and witty.

The last quote about children and their parents has been expecially important to me over the decades. I'm one of those kids who forgave their parents, which has given me huge peace of mind over the long run. It didn't happen overnight -- it took getting a little insight, but once I got the insight, forgiveness happened.

What about you? Have you forgiven your parents? Would you like to? Barring a life of such abuse from a parent that the only safety is in staying away and shutting off that connection; if you can't forgive, what happened? what did they singly or collectively do that was so unforgivable?

Sextuplets

Mood: spooked

Two women, one in Arizona and one in Minnesota became mothers to sextuplets after fertility treatments. All the babies were born prematurely and will require intensive care for weeks before going home. I sure hope someone has the sense to take out big life insurance policies on them and the kid's fathers.

Is there nne out there who looks at their infertility as a gift? Like maybe it's nature's way of freeing men and women up to do different things where they're not tied down to hearth and kindred? Do they ever consider infertility may be nature's or God's way of culling from the gene pool?

Sympathy,,.

I have some for that bedeviled young lawyer with TB. At 31, he's lived a life where highly contagious diseases are relatively rare and public health quarantines were non-existant. As best I remember, schools stopped educating kids about public health back in the late 60s. I haven't seen a state's public health quarantine sign on a household's door since 1976 when I was stationed in California.

That said, I think whoever the fool doctor was who told him "we 'prefer' that you don't travel" be flogged with a wet noodle for being stupid. Indicating a preference gives the person hearing it the idea that there IS a choice.

The doctor should have used the strongest words possible to "Do NOT travel at all. TB is very contagious and since yours is resistant to drugs, if you infect someone, they will also develop resistant TB." Then they should have educated the young lawyer about disease transmission and disease vectors until he had an absolute understanding of the disease and the amount of public risk.

If less polite or PC terms were used, the whole mess would be a sidenote instead of the circus it is now.

Addendum 6/2/07: By the way, I'm not excusing the young lawyer entirely. I find some irony to his field of practice being personal injury. He is going to have to live with the shame of his willfulness in returning back to the US in the manner he did after having been caught up to and told that things were more serious than he was initially told.

But I also think that in comparison to the Baby Boomer generation, today's young adults up to their early 30s have not been as deeply impacted by disease epidemics like polio, smallpox and TB in their lifetimes. Medical advances in the early 60s all but eradicated smallpox worldwide(save for small lab samples here in the US and in Russia), saw fewer than 100 TB cases in the US since 1964, and the last "wild" polio infection in the US was in 1979.

Seriously -- in the US, between 1949 and 1954, 35% of polio victims were adults. And even then the debate about a person's rights was often in conflict with public safety. The difference, I think is that back then, people were a little bit more willing to put the "common good" ahead of their own desires & wants when it came to accepting the necessity of quarantine.

As a child growing up, I knew dozens of older adults between their 40s to 80s who had been scarred by small pox in their childhoods, who had moved to Albuquerque to "take the clean western air" as part for their TB treatments and cure, and people like my 30 years older half sister who got polio in her mid 20s not to mention school mates born the same year as me, who'd gotten polio as infants.

Time and medical progress served to make old public health threats almost irrelevant as new diseases like HIV and AIDS took center stage.

Fuck, I Jogged!

I really jogged today. Hot diggity dog! It wasn't far. Just a quarter mile on the treadmill, followed by a cool down fast walk for another quarter mile. But I jogged and it wasn't a total struggle.

Now some folks may think I'm crazy for being pleased about this, but I am. You see, in addition to fighting my weight down, I'm also an ex-smoker (8+ Years) and because of my past habit, I have a touch of early stage COPD which stands for "pretty crummy lungs." So jogging is a good thing. Today. I hope to go further. Tomorrow.

Unlike one of my sisters who was born running, I was born lounging with a come-hither look in my eye and a book in my hand...

Net Neutrality

Please see Act for Change -- in the US, major telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon are lobbying to get control of the bandwidth for internet access and to control access to content. This is unfair and I believe internet access should remain as open as it is today.

Please join and counter the telecommunications lobby and encourage any of your friends who use the internet to do so also.

Click on the title or picture for the link to Working Assets' Act for Change. Thanks!

In The Market For A Cell Phone?

Things You Should Ask Yourself

Cell phones are a luxury that has become almost a necessity. Ever since 9/11, the mobile phone industry has boomed in the US. While they've irritated the crap out of us, they've also proven to be inordinately useful as well.

So here are some things to consider before committing or jumping from company to company.

1. Why are you getting a mobile phone? Is it for personal or business use? How much time do you spend on the phone every day at home and at work? What is your best guesstimate?

2. Have you ever used a mobile phone? Do you know how mobile phone technology works or are you one of those people who operate on the "it's magic and I don't gotta understand it!" principle?

3. What do you need your mobile phone to do? Do you need "just the basics" or are you a gadget nut who likes the latest and greatest? If you like the latest and greatest" then # 4 is for you!

4. Do you have what it takes to support your phone? These days, a lot of cell phones (especially smart phones like Palm, RIM's Blackberry and HTC's line ups) require Windows-based computers and installation of supporting software applications on those Windows-based PCs. This is not a trick question because smart phones are not substitutes for computers and don't have the same capabilities computers do. Also these kinds of smart phones usually require that you pay extra for "add-on" features so that you can use the internet/chat/picture messaging/downloading functions of the phone. Some add-ons are specific to the family of handset models you choose.

If you got a Mac, then third party software may or may not be available, so you will probably have to hit up a generous friend who owns a PC on those occassions when you need to fix device issues and re-install or upgrade handset operating systems.

If you don't have a computer, for your own sake, don't buy a smart phone and then expect your carrier's tech departments to be able to fully support what you're trying to do with it -- they can't take full remote control and the things they can do remotely are limited. Besides, would you really want your carrier to get remote access to everything on your cell anyway?

5. Have you really read the manufacturer's limited product warranties and do you really understand them? Do you know that your mobile carrier is NOT the manufacturer of the cell phone you get (whether it is offered promotionally as a "free phone" or is one you pay part or full rate for)? That the product warranty is not with them, no matter how much or how little they may help you with your warranty related issues?

6. Do you understand that the sales people at the store cannot guess at every little question you might have and cannot anticipate all of your needs unless you spell them out carefully? Do you also know that the carrier is NOT entirely to blame when your unspoken questions lead to misunderstandings?

"Could I travel overseas with my phone? I"m thinkin about taking a trip" really isn't the same question or statement as: "I want to sign up for a service plan which includes, or has, with an add-on, international roaming. I also want a phone that can be used both in North America AND overseas in Europe AND Asia. What services do I need? "

"Sure, you can travel overseas and go everywhere you want with it! " is an answer you could hear and it's true. So far as it goes. Think about it. Yes/No questions posed as a hypotheticals to the average person seldom leads them to assume or to anticipate a more immediate need, want, or desire.

Lastly:

7. Are you willing to accept the limitations of mobile phone use?

Run To The Rock

This is a great short film by James Cavanaugh and came out of the Impeach Beach out in San Francisco.

My very dear friend of 38 years, Windy and his friend Z are in the top of the H on the second horizontal bar of the letter.

Click on the blog title to see the film.

Trivialities

Good Morning! How're you all doing today? Hope you're all getting ready for a wonderful weekend!

Shreck 3 is coming out! Fractured fairy tales are great, but I gotta tell ya -- Antonio Banderas is hot. Even playing PussInBoots! Wowie!

Wednesday night, over at our friends Su & Kenn's, we watched the movie Stealth. S had decided she needed to see a movie with a lot of things getting blown up. K disappeared back to his office & computer. Su, Jim (aka DH) & I watched the movie. It was fun! Things got blown up really good! No spoilers here. Speaking of things getting blown up, there is a new chapter to be released in the Die Hard franchise! Yippie, ki-yay!

Last night's cliff-hanger season ending for the original CSI was cool. Will Sarah be saved? We'll find out next season. Ah well, re-run season means I get to catch up on other shows I also enjoy. OTOH, I do spend more time on the computer than watching the telly.

My friend Su is going to teach me to knit with double pointed needles next week. My project will be a "sock" for my Nano.

Didn't really exercise much yesterday - on my break at work, hit the work out room for a quick 20 of lateral pull downs. Good way to stretch out a back. After that, nada.

I'm working on clearing my backlog of books to be read, so I'm in the first 3rd of The Ethical Slut. So far, so good. I'd recommend it. I'm sitting on two book store gift cards, but am not gonna spend them until I've taken my to be read stack down 2 feet. (It's only 3.5' stack.) I've also gotten the first chapters of David Sirota's "Hostile Takeover -- How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government - and How We Take It Back."

Have a great day out there, be careful and watch out for the crazies on the road!