No Good Deed Goes Unpunished...

An Update On My Mom...

I was reminded by several people emailing me the other day that I'd not published an update post on my mom's fight with cancer, so here goes:

My mom's cancer turned out to be in her lungs, rib and brain. The doctors went after the lung and brain first, with radiotherapy (a mix of "lite" chemo and radiation) and with the "gamma knife" for the tumor in her brain. (kinda like what Ted Kennedy had done at Duke for his cancer.) She's currently undergoing the "hard" chemo sessions at Sibley Hospital in DC and seems to be doing well. In fact, she's doing so well that her doctors can't hardly believe it. Aside from some thinning hair from the chemotherapy, she seems to be living up to her reputation for being a certifiable force of nature. She walks a few miles every day to keep from getting bored and to walk off extra energy (she's gotta be the only chemo patient I've ever heard of that has "extra energy"). I am constantly amazed at her strength through all this. My dad also ran into some medical issues once he and my mom got over here to this side of the country. He ended up having some congestive issues with his heart and now has a nifty pacemaker/difibrillator combo to keep his heart beating on track. The downside is that it looks like he's got an alien coming out of his chest right above his left pectoral.

So... I'll give more information out as it happens. So far, everything is going well, and I hope it continues to keep going that way.

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No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Of late, I've come to realize that there is some truth to the saying that "No good deed goes unpunished." Just this week, I've had multiple reminders of this very phenomenon.

One of my friends, who was molested as a child, was heading home from his work and saw an elderly gentleman struggling to walk through a local strip mall in town. He stopped and asked the guy if he was OK and if he needed any assistance. The guy then proceeded to try to touch and grope my friend and made lewd suggestions as he did so. Because of his past history with this sort of thing, my friend went home, so stressed and freaked out that he was physically sick for the night and has been mentally out of whack since.

Another reminder comes from my partner, who is having a hard time recovering from cancer. Although he's been on "chemo maintenance" for a year now, he's been plagued with a variety of odd infections and sicknesses that have kept him in and out of the hospital now for the last 9 months. His boss dropped a bomb on his desk on Friday in the form of a very negative performance review letter. Usually in the review process, the boss and the employee sit down, chat and go over issues and then they go over a plan for goals for the next year and then, after all that, the boss writes up a performance review letter that details all that they discussed and gives it to the employee. The exact opposite happened this time. There was no meeting, no discussion or goals planning, just a nasty letter filled with snarky, unproven criticisms that (when one reads through the lines) is his way of saying, "You're sick too much, but I can't legally say that or you could sue the company, so I'll just throw in a lot of "out of left field" criticisms that start with the words, "Some people feel..." or "There are those that work here that feel...""

Grow some fuckin' balls! I mean... really! How chickenshit is that?!?!? Some people.... Jesus H. Christ!

Since he can't legally fire him for being sick, he's determined to write him up nebulous bad reviews and try to get him out that way. It's a sad, pathetic way to get rid of someone who's been a wonderful employee for over a decade, just to save on payroll and healthcare costs. But, you know, I'm not all that surprised. Remember... No good deed goes unpunished!


When I think of people like my partner's boss or the creepy guy that my friend tried to be a good samaritan for, I am put to mind of another saying, "Some people are like slinkies, not really good for anything, but you just can't help but smile when someone pushes one down the stairs."


Where my partner, who is an ordained minister, nightly prays to God and holds hope that all will work out for the best, I (being a catastrophically lapsed Catholic) will begin to nightly pray to the God that killed Caine and squashed Sampson that he come out of retirement and get back to work on this pair of bozos."