I cannot come up with a better angle to come at this story.

The facts:

My dad has metastatic carcinoma (cancer), technically from an unknown origin.

He receives his healthcare through the Veterans Administration.

From the time he was told in the emergency department at his local VA Hospital till they actually started “treating” the cancer was five and a half months.

He is in a constant state of pain.

He is six feet and one inches tall, and weighs 134 pounds.

He is terminal.

Cancer is going to kill him.

I am angry. I am mostly angry that it took the VA so long to “treat” him. I don’t think that time frame is a normal protocol. I am also angry at America for not caring more about these types of situations. For the last several weeks all I have heard about is gun control, from people who don’t really know what they are talking about. During this time my dad was in the hospital enduring daily radiation treatments in an attempt to shrink the tumors causing his spine to fracture. His own primary care doctor that works in that facility didn’t come once to see him. Maybe if all the news outlets stood outside of the VA hospitals or outside of Secretary Shinseki’s office the rest of our country would care.

He was drafted in 1968. He didn’t volunteer. He served honorably. If we treat people like my dad as though they are subhuman why would we treat anyone else any better? To make things better we have to start somewhere, but we also can’t stop talking about it 2 weeks later.