It’s been a tough few weeks, and I don’t mean to complain when I say that. It’s just that I happen to be one of the outliers. There are a precious few of us with Grave’s Disease, who when they eat the radioactive iodine, get much, much worse before we get better.
A few days after I took the dose that was supposed to kill my naughty thyroid once and for all, I felt so godawful that I turned to my lovely bride and said, “I think I made it angry.”
And, really, that’s my fault. The first time I went through this, I let it go so long that I was 116 pounds and eating 4,000 calories a day. I was vibrating and angry and pimply and awful. And I suspect that because I let things get so bad the first time around, this time around my body is much more sensitive to excess thyroid hormone.
Honestly, though — can you blame it? I don’t. Which is why I report all of this to you without complaint.
OK, maybe just one complaint: By noon, these days, I’m shot. Energy gone, brain addled, lungs stressed. Just — shot. It’s been getting better the last three days, but not very quickly and I’m not a patient man.
Do you want to know how not-patient? Even though I could have — should have! — gone to bed over an hour ago, I’ve instead been watching election returns from Lehigh County, PA.
No, really.
Scott Ott — whom you might know from some several wheres or other — was on the ballot there for County Commissioner. Not just by himself, mind you, but with three likeminded small-government Republicans.
As I write this, Scott and his cohort are in the top four positions on the ballot. The number five competitor — whoever he is –would have to get almost 1,500 votes just to knock one of the Ott Slate out of the winners circle. And with 99% of precincts reporting, that seems somewhat unlikely. So let me tell you without reservation that tonight’s results are a very good thing for Lehigh County, PA.
Maybe you think I’m gushing because Scott is my coworker, or because he’s a friend of mine. Well, sure, I’m as human as the next… human. Maybe my biases have the best of me.
But I don’t think so.
I look at Blue Pennsylvania, where an entire slate of principled small-government candidates have, to abuse the expression, taken power. I look at Louisiana, where Governor Bobby Jindal has cut spending by a quarter. I look at Wisconsin, where more teachers have jobs and more students have smaller classes, because smart people did the right things.
And I think: Despite everything, this country has a future. All these people in all these places doing all these things — they can’t all be flukes. Well, not without stretching the meaning of the word “fluke” beyond all recognition.
These county commissioners, these state senators, these governors — they, or their ideas, will bubble up. We are watching the next generation of leaders generate themselves out of the morass of American politics.
I don’t mean to say it will be easy. I don’t mean to imply that victory is assured. But I do mean to say that I do have hope, and more of it than I had the day before.
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