Another Day, Another Trip to the Doctor

Well, I now know the same thing I knew last week, but with better tests.

I had a moment where I needed to cry, but it passed.

They’re going to cut a hole in me and make their way down to my lymph nodes and take one out and pull it apart and see what it is that’s going on.

I don’t know when, yet.  I guess the next step is to wait around to hear from the surgeon.

The new doctor thinks it might be sarcoidosis.  I think Dr. J had that in the pool.

Also, apparently I have the hugest tonsils he’s ever seen.  He thinks they might be causing my apnea.

If I think about all the “what if”s, I start to feel dizzy and I have this raw spot in my throat and it’s hard for me to concentrate on what the doctor is saying.  Instead, this is what I think about–a tobacco-tanned hand, roped with veins.  That’s something that exists out there in the world, in the waiting room, in fact.  And that’s something that will be there no matter what the news is.

I don’t know why other people need people, but that’s why I can’t do this shit alone.  I have to have someone for whom life is going on in an ordinary way, so that I can let go of him, walk into the room where they poke and prod you when they’re not making you sit by yourself so long you start to forget why it is you’re there in the first place, and, when I’m done, come back out and steady myself again by him.

Witness Intimidation

Courtesy of Migra Matters, we learn that, if you testify in front of Congress about the DREAM act (which, as you recall, provides a way for kids who are here illegally–through no fault of their own–a way to change their status and start down a path towards citizenship) you and your family will be arrested.

Better yet, Tom Tancredo will insist that there should be more arrests.

I’ve been thinking a lot about just how anti-American this is, on two fronts.  One is that, even though these folks have broken the law to get here, I’ve never heard a single one of them claiming that our laws shouldn’t apply to them.  You know, when a Mexian national has been living in this country illegally for three years and he gets drunk and kills someone, his defense is never “I’m not a U.S. citizen, therefore I don’t have to follow your laws.”

In other words, there seems to be implicit consent to be governed by our government.  You may recall that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  So, regardless of an immigrant’s status, if he or she consents to be governed, if he or she has granted the government that power over him or her, he or she has entered a relationship with that government and that government now has a responsibility towards that person.

And once the government has a responsibility towards the governed, the governed have rights, whether or not they are citizens.  And one of those basic rights is the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Congress cannot make a law that prohibits that.  So, it seems to me clear that, if a law has the effect of interfering with the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, it cannot, at that moment, be enforced.

So, no, you shouldn’t be able to arrest kids before they can testify before Congress (which seems to be what Tancredo was hoping for).  But it seems to me that, if there’s any danger of sending a message that people who testify before Congress–seeking a redress of grievances–will be arrested by arresting folks who have testified before Congress, then we need to put our collective foot down to stop that nonsense as well.