My Battle with Merkel Cell Cancer

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is appealing my sentence to higher courts." It was an apt analogy then, and intervening
events have unfortunately brought another level of accuracy to the analogy. A year ago
(even a few months ago), dad could forget he was on death row for long stretches of
time. He could play with his grandchildren, dine and go on cruises with his wife, play
bridge, and work. By contrast, a death row inmate may forget from time to time that he is
on death row, but he remains imprisoned, unable to enjoy even a moment of normal life.
The physical impact of the cancer is now making it harder to enjoy normal life.
My dad isn't a lawyer, so I doubt the distinction was intended, but when he wrote about
death row, he said that he is "appealing my sentence to higher courts." Until now, we
were hoping his conviction would be overturned, eliminating any accompanying
sentence. I'd still love to see a full cure, but at this point we're through most or all of the
appeal and a lengthy stay of the sentence pending appeal would be a welcome outcome
on its own. The battle isn't over yet, but the most promising appeals of the conviction are
behind us. I'm sure every death row inmate listens until the last second for the phone to
ring with a pardon from the governor or a stay from the Supreme Court, and sometimes it
does.
Hope remains, but as it diminishes we cross into another problem and another legal
analogy: The chilling effect. At some point, the death row inmate in my dad's example
may stop studying for the GED, stop learning new skills, and toward the end may even
refuse to start a book so lengthy he might not finish it before his scheduled execution
date.
While we wait, hoping for a stay from the Supreme Court of medical progress and
treatment outcomes, dad battles daily with the question of how to spend the time he
knows he has, regardless of treatment outcomes. Unlike the death row inmate, dad is
home from the hospital, released from the confines of the death chamber's anteroom. He
is free for now, but some of the trappings of his sentence remain -- a PEG feeding tube,
weakness, and pain. All of the trappings can, for now, be managed (the pain with Vicodin,
the weakness with physical therapy). The knowledge of his situation, however, is not
quite so simple to manage.
Thurgood Marshall wrote in a dissenting Supreme Court opinion "That this Court will
ultimately vindicate [somebody] ... is of little consequence - for the value of a sword of
Damocles is that it hangs - not that it drops."
Our challenge is to find moments we can ignore the Sword of Damocles. The Sword of
Damocles is a sword, suspended by a single hair, hanging above a ruler's throne, casting
such a pall that the ruler soon begs to cede the throne (see footnote 1 below for a more
detailed description).
My Battle with Merkel Cell Cancer