A quick Timeline to follow

My dad found out he had cancer under his tongue in the spring of 1996. Nobody wants their tongue "removed" so in the summer he had radiation treatments to try to kill the cancer. Gamma radiation kills all cells, not just the cancerous ones, and the consequences of the radiation were bad enough, but it didn't get the cancer. So by the end of the summer, the skin on the outside of his cheeks looked like a burnt marshmallow stretched over a raw tomato. His salivary glands had been destroyed, so that "cotton mouth" feeling we all have when we wake up in a house with low humdity was his fate forevermore. And the radiation has an effect on how things heal - not as well as they would have otherwise.

So right after Christmas in 1996 they perform the surgery. You could not make this up:

The cancer was in the bone, so they removed his jaw bone from his chin to his right ear. The right side of his face looked like a Salvadore Dali painting.

Cut the tongue in half lengthwise from the tip back down into the throat - remove.

Take the pectoral (chest) muscle, and cut it lengthwise into four strips, leaving all of them anchored at the sternum.

Take 1/4 of the pectoral muscle, detach it at the shoulder, and and sew the free end to the remaining half of the tongue.

Leave the bottom 1/4 anchored at the shoulder as it was, and hope it can operate the arm at 25% capacity.

Take 1/4 of the muscle, detach it at the shoulder, and use it to fill in along the side of the mouth where the jaw bone was.

Use the last 1/4 of the muscle, detach it at the shoulder, and fill in the remaining hole at the back of the throat.

Raw muscle cannot be exposed to open air, so a skin graft must be taken from the inside of the thigh to cover the new "tongue" (old chest) muscle. The skin is taken from the thigh because there is not much hair there, nevertheless, hair will grow on this skin, which is now in the mouth. This can be removed by laser treatments, but some of it will still grow.

And there he is; if he picked up his arm, his mouth would open. But he learned to eat soft food, he loved his breakfast, and he got on with his life. He even got back to smoking. He told me that he woke up in the middle of the night and said his legs were kicking. So after four months of being a non-smoker, he lit one up and said it solved his problem.

Without because there was still a hole in the back of his mouth, they re-cast the upper plate of his dentures to be about an inch longer, with a "finger" that covered the hole. This was called an "opturator" (look it up, it means to "cover a hole")He had to hold his cigarette between his pinky and his ring finger of his left hand, and use his thumb and index finger to hold his nostrils closed.

Now targeting specifics: A man with his own dictionary

A lot of people at Street Prophets, now that I am reading the comments that discuss me since I've been excommunicated, regard me as a provocateur. I however, in this series have tried to point out that it was one person specifically who not just generated my ire, but defended why it was OK to be irritating.

My indignation about John Howard (JCHFleetguy) and his deliberate arrogance has two parts, because he's egregiously misguided on both scores.
A case in point: "Cookies" and "Trolls"

Here's the StreetProphets FAQ on the matter: (copied largely from DailyKos, as you will note referring to "Recommend/Hide" whereas at StreetProphets they are called "Cookies/Hide".

Rating comments


Any registered user can rate comments in a diary. Buttons to give these ratings are at the bottom of each comment. For regular users, comments can be recommended; trusted users can recommend or hide comments. The number of ratings that your comments gather, and their average value, determines your comment mojo. Mojo is used primarily for determining whether a user has trusted user status. So, when is each rating appropriate? Much virtual ink has been wasted in arguments, but the following is generally accepted:

Hide rating: Comments whose only purpose is to disrupt the discussion. Do not hide posts simply because you disagree with what the commenter is saying. Any given user can give out a maximum of five hide-ratings per day.

Recommend: Good comment. Also usually a shorthand for 'I agree', or also 'good job'. Most ratings given out tend to be recommends.

Note that there isn't a rating for 'I disagree'. If you disagree with something in a comment, post a reply saying so (and why).

If you wish to remove a rating that you gave to a comment, simply click the recommend or hide button a second time. Comments can be given ratings for 24 hours; after this point, ratings cannot be given or removed from the comment.

One piece of Daily Kos slang worth knowing refers to a recommend as a "4" and a hide as a "zero" or, by analogy, a "donut" (or "doughnut"). Hides used to be called 'troll-rate', and some people still use the old language.

Here is how I find my peace with what occurred in 2009/10.

I rec everything I read (0+ / 0-)



it has been my style for 3 years here.


I am not changing it for you.


To find out about me: http://braincrampsforgod.blogspot.com/2009/09/about-me.html
by JCHFleetguy on Sun Oct 11, 2009 at 09:48:01 AM PST

If you search for "snafubar" in "users" on StreetProphets, it will lead you to a page that allows you to view every comment I ever posted at that site since some time in 2007. You may search, one by one, and you will not find once in two and a half years where anyone "hide/troll" rated a single comment.

not one.

So if you leave a mark that say "Thumbs up" - it means "i approve this message." That is the universal standard, and the ostensible reason that the blog designers put it there.

Not John Howard - nope. Fleetguy says he rec's everything that he reads, just to show he read it. And he's not changing it for me .

____________________________


Two guys driving in a car, driver sails right through a red light. Passenger screams - "what are you doing?

Driver says, "relax, my brother drives like this"

come to another red light, driver sails right through - -

Passenger is panicking - "What the hell are you doing?"

Driver waves him off, "will you relax, my brother drives like this, always"

they drive and encounter a green light; driver slams on the brakes and stops.

Passenger has turned white, "What the hell are you doing?"

driver says, "Well, my brother might be comin the other way"

____________________________________________________



SO if there is a social convention that everyone uses and everyone accepts that certain gestures have certain meanings, JCH Fleetguy - John Howard or Howell or whatever his name is -

he's going to do it his way, and he's not stopping for any one - not me in the least.

Good to know.