Choice or mirage?

Daniel Hauser and his mother have returned home, and the child is recieving appropriate medical treatment. The court allowed the parents to retain custody of the boy and it seems like a happy ending. With some luck, he will recover. But you are wrong. I hope Daniel gets physically better. I hope he never develops any other cancer as a result of the chemo itself. I hope that his family can support him as he deals with the incessant and horrible side effects of this treatment, and I hope the child doesn’t fight to hard and need not be restrained or have his rights violated to receive the treatment in the first place. I hope he and his parents have the strenght to deal with pure hell. However, I maintain that nobody should have the authority to dictate that this child be repeatedly injected with poisin that will almost kill him as it saves him from almost certain death.

Medicine is not God. People who practice it are not God. The opinions of one American educated doctor are not automatically better or more justified than the opinions of a doctor who was trained in a different country. We are not the only country where people get cancer, and we are not the only country that has found treatment for the disease. We are far, very far, from being the best, most perfect, most knowledgable, most moral, most Godlike people of the earth. And the sooner we learn that the better off we will be. While people are all set to force the Hauser’s to pursue a particular cure for their one child, Daniel, thousands upon thousands of other children are in the care of the government. Many hundreds, likely thousands of those children are in hospitals tonight. They are locked up, strapped in beds, and drugged. They are abused by other children, abused by adults, and ignored by 99.99% of the people who are all gung-ho about questioning the Hauser’s decisions. These kids are ignored. They are at risk. They do not get proper care. They do not get proper treatment. Half the states don’t even know where all of their children are. Children are left alone in hospital beds. They can be dead for months or years before anyone even reports them missing. So everyone who wants to get all philosophical about this one child might do a parentless child a favor by leaving the Hauser’s alone and finding a child who needs a parent. There are, after all, thousands of them available. And if you want one with serious health conditions to decide about, there are kids with all variety of those who don’t have a parent who cares to do anything at all.

Blind faith in medicine

People should think long and hard about the mom who is on the run with her thirteen year old. One of my main contentions is that children are abused and tortured by the medical profession. I have witnessed it. Neither you nor I are in a position to judge the actions of this mother. People are allowed to refuse blood transfusions, for themselves and for their children.  Chemotherapy is poisin. It is a poisin that a majority of cancer specialists would refuse to use on their own bodies. And there is a reason for those statistics. For those people who choose to believe that medicine and doctors have the one and only cure for all that might ail a person, you are naive. Pharmaceutical companies drive health care in the USA. Money makes the choices. There is no “scientific” research on alternative medicine because the drug companies would not make any money if people took the natural or homeopathic route. Make no mistake that historically, doctors have killed and seriously injured many people by prescribing treatments that are later deemed to be dangerous. Any belief that medicine is good goes out the window when you get a glance at children tied to boards while they scream at the top of their lungs and “child life specialists” wave toys and bribe them with candy and toys and assure the parents that “they won’t remember”  the torture that the “all knowing” professionals deem necessary in the name of treatment. Whatever happened to “first do no harm”? Any doctor who would treat this child against his will and against the will of the parents would be committing a crime in my opinion. The very idea that the child is better off away from his parents is insane. All that allows is for a person who doesn’t know about the child and who has no vested interest in his life and well being (the whole life, not just the idea of it) to sign consents for torture. Once those consents are signed, all control is lost. The parents of this child love him. They have raised him for his entire life. There is no evidence they have ever harmed him in any way. They simply chose, after watching the results of one poisining, to not subject him to another. There are other treatments available. Maybe they will work, maybe they won’t. The fact that one alternative approach has failed means nothing. If the state would butt their nose out of it, the parents would most likely pursue alternate approaches. Maybe in the end they would even decide to try the chemo again. But those choices should not be made by doctors who are tied up in the hands of profit machines, and our judges should be competent enough to realize that the drug companies do not have the only viable and reasonable options for the treatment of illness and disease. Indeed, when done against the will of the patient, such treatment is criminal. I hope the mother and her son are able to remain safely outside the hands of those who seek to interfere. I pray to God that people in this country wake up soon and realize the dangers of  blind reliance.

I will pray for the forgiveness of any person who unwittingly participates in this disaster: the doctors,  police, the judge, and any foster parents or state workers who honestly believe they are doing what’s best for this child. But in the end, it is the biological parents and the child himself who are justified in their actions.

Scared

Yes. I am scared to death. If I do not stay in the top half of this class, my scholarship is gone. That is a distinct possibility even if I stay above the median in every class but contracts. Contracts scares me half to death. I know I missed an entire issue. A big issue. The main point of the question type of issue. And despite being totally pissed at myself, there is not a darn thing I can do about it. So I wait. If I lose the scholarship, it is very doubtful I will be able to return. Will it be my own fault? Yes. Was my confidence misplaced? Yes. Well, no, but I underestimated my competition.  So…..I shall wait. Right along with everyone else. In the meantime I am taking off for a few days. I start work at the courthouse the day after Memorial Day. I won’t check my grades until at least the middle of next week, although my goal is to wait until June 1 to check. Anyway – it is going to be a long wait. I can only hope and pray. This experience is humbling, to say the least. Have a great weekend everyone. I am going to try to forget about everything for a few days.

Last 1L exam

I made it!  My studying is over. Done. History. (no – not that – I can’t take any more learning this year). I haven’t allowed it to sink in yet. I have my last exam in the morning, then I’m taking off for the evening by myself to celebrate my accomplishments. I think it is probably going to take some time to get used to the idea that it’s actually over. My main goal is to avoid checking for grades until after memorial day. From tomorrow until Memorial Day I am taking a vacation. I can’t promise what type of updates this blog will get over the summer, but I suspect I will still post at least once or twice a week. It has become one part of my life that I actually enjoy. However, you will need to forgive me if I slack off. OK? I hope everyone has an awesome summer. The first year of law school is OVER! Imagine that.

mid-exam day off

I took one of those even though I didn’t mean to. I did look at contracts. I have everything spread out on my table. I just didn’t do too much with it. So I will take the rest of the night off just to make it worth it. Seriously, tomorrow morning I need to be on top of this. But I am so tired of studying there aren’t even words to describe it. It’s an open book test and I studied all semester. How hard can it be? Something tells me that by tomorrow night I will feel differently about that. I hope everyone has a great day. (Tomorrow is sonny boy’s birthday! 13 years old and already talking about buying his own car. Lord help me.)

bad, bad, bad

Con Law disaster. The exam from hell. LIKE – why not give me an impossible question why don’t you? Make it impossible to answer. Question: Something to the effect of what do you do when the entire government of the United States is incapacitated and the president takes it upon himself to institute emergency measures that last for years before anyone is well enough to do anything about it? How the F should I know? I’m just a first year law student or did you forget that part? I am perfectly familiar with the separation of powers. I read every case, studied Chemerinsky, outlined to high heaven. None of that is helpful when you give me a question that none of the cases we have studied comes even close to addressing. So…..what do I do? Go on facebook of course. Just to see what everyone else is saying about it. And you know what? Nobody is saying a damn word. Which means either: a) they didn’t think it was so horrible and have now moved on with their day like no big problem or b) they all had just as much trouble as I did and think everyone else got it right so they are keeping their troubles to themselves. Me? I’m calling it a day.

May 2009

I can’t believe it’s May already. It seems like just yesterday I was sitting in my first law school class and now I am less than one week away from being done. There are two exams left. Civ Pro went awesome today. I am extremely pleased with my performance. Of course, that may be meaningless if everyone else feels the same way. For today, I am happy. Con Law and Contracts remain. Con Law will be the bigger problem of the two, and Contracts is by far the more important. Unfortunately they fall relatively close together and I will not have adequate time to prepare for either. Study time this weekend starts at 1PM tomorrow and goes until midnight Sunday. Next exam is Monday. Lord help me. But that is only a week of May. The rest of the month is going to be awesome.

I will be going out this coming Friday to do a particular favorite activity all my by lonesome. That is my treat to myself for consistently doing my best this year. I will be picking my daughter up from her freshman year on Friday May 15. I can’t wait to have her here with me, and have great plans for days spent at the beach, shopping, a show or two, and plenty of Friday night movies. Either the week before she gets back or the week after I will be going away for two or three days with my honey, destination still to be determined. It doesn’t matter. It will be great to spend some time with him and I am really looking forward to it. Then, on Friday May 22, I start my summer job. So this month will bring big changes my way, and rather than being anxiety inducing, they are actually pleasant to think about. In other words, I must be doing something right. This is good to know. It will get me through the next few days and two more exams. I hope all my readers are as satisfied with their lives as I am with mine right now. Have a great weekend. I’ll be back either Sunday night or Monday with an update.