Peggy Noonan, at Zenith of Profession

I love Peggy Noonan. Not because she’s still beautiful at 58 (though she is), but because she’s the best I’ve ever read at tiptoeing along the line of sentimentality without tipping over into the slop. I’ve never read a columnist who can sympathize with the strategies and opinions of her intellectual opponents without in any way giving into them. I’ve not been a big fan of some of the big government triangulations of Bush’s “Compassionate Conservatism.” What I like best about it is what comes out in virtually every column Noonan has ever written: an honest attachment to her own values and an appreciation for tough politics that does not preclude her from seeing the best in the ideas and strategies of her opponents. A longish excerpt from her latest on Obama will show what I am getting at:

What Mr. Obama has been doing, and this started before
the European trip and continued throughout, is making
people see him as president. He's doing this when he
ambles back to the back of the plane and leans over the
reporters, in his shirtsleeves, speaking affably into their
held-up mics and recorders, at the end of the victorious
tour. That's what presidents do. He speaks to rapturous
crowds in foreign capitals. That's what presidents do.

He isn't doing this to show he's inevitable and invincible.
He's doing it to give voters the impression that they've
already seen President Obama. That he's kind of already
been president, he's done and can do all the things
presidents do, to the point that by the middle of October
a certain portion of the country is going to think he
already is president.

And he needs to give them this impression because he's
a young black man from nowhere who's been well-known
for less than a year. And he knows one of his biggest
problems with older white voters is they just can't
imagine a young black man from nowhere as president.
He's helping them imagine.

It's not vanity, it's strategy.

I read that and thought, she’s probably right. I don’t know how she does it: is a section such as this the result of good reporting – i.e., she’s talked to those who know, and those who know have told her, “this is our strategy”? Or does she have the moral imagination of the great novelist, that enables her to get inside others, to divine the motives, to sympathize, to empathize, to understand that most people do what they do because they believe – they’ve somehow convinced themselves – that what they’re doing is right? Perhaps this is what allowed her to be such a good speech writer for Reagan (I say this taking their reputation on faith, because I am sadly unfamiliar with the speeches beyond the famous soundbites, not being into politics then). Either way, we’re lucky to have her watching us and writing about us, and though I have no use for those who whinge about negative politics, we’d probably be better off if more had her ability to understand the good motives of others. (And here’s my partisan sign-off: I think Krauthammer’s Law, enunciated in 2002, still is dead on the mark: “Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.”)

Anniversaries, Juxtaposed and Commemorated

I’m disinclined right now to do much with this information, but there have been a number of articles posted in the last month on contraception, IVF, and abortion. I’m going to link them for now, and perhaps someday I’ll have the time, inclination, and courage to go back to them and comment.

Kathryn Jean Lopez posted an article on the 30th anniversary of IVF’s first use, here, and it is one of the few out there that, however briefly, gives attention to the notion of “giving yourself totally to your spouse — not putting up barriers and introducing artificial methods and procedures into your reproductive lives.” As to what the barriers introduced by IVF are, she does not say, and I’m not sure I see IVF as creating barriers, exactly. (Already I’m getting nervous about even posting these, since I feel like I ought to have a treatise-level opinion on each one.) A mostly coherent response came through and is posted here, testifying to, though not proving scientifically or theologically, the wisdom of waiting for God’s hand to work. (It also makes a distinction between giving physically and giving more deeply that I’m not sure I can countenance, since it seems to set adoption up as a higher good than giving life.)

Earlier, observing the fortieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, Lopez published “Holy Sex@40,” an affirmation of the encyclical’s teachings, turning the words of feminist Jessica Valenti against her, somewhat effectively, I think, to remind her readers of the racist usages to which the pill has sometimes been put, and to remind her of the hardly-lessened burden for the responsibilities of pregnancy that women still face. K-Lo is apparently hitting this issue hard this year, as she has another article out that I’ve not even read, here. If the title and abstract are any indication, it’s a jujitsuistic attack on the pill for what it’s doing to the environment, not so much a first principle attack as a piling-on of all available forces (not that I mind – this is a time-honored political and military tactic, and is consistent with honesty so far as the things said are true).

Also, from July 5, at 1:18AM, see this article for link between contraception and abortion. It’s a bit surprising for me to see it in there, given America’s reputation for opposition to the more conservative sorts of Catholicism, but I’m not an expert on the subject of America and its leanings, so perhaps my expectations are malformed. And there is a First Things article in the current edition, called, rather resoundingly, “The Vindication of Humanae Vitae,” now posted here. I’ve not read it yet, having too many magazines laying about, delivered, bought, and largely unread.

Results

Kay’s follow-up surgery is over, and went reasonably well, though not as well as it might have, in a best case scenario. Kay knew that, if she woke up in the recovery room after the surgery without me already attendant upon her, she would be staying in the hospital. Although it was not the predicted outcome, it did happen. She immediately searched for confirmation of her worst non-death fear – a colostomy – and found that she had not received one. Indeed, no indication had been given that such a measure was even a possibility, much less a likelihood, but it is one of her least dispellable fears. She did find, however, that she had been fitted with another JP drain, and if she looked at the clock, if there was even one available, she found that she had been in the operating room for two hours total, one more than had been planned.

The reason for the extended surgery time was simply the difficulty of the surgery. The abscess wreaked considerable havoc in Kay’s gut, essentially undoing all that had previously been done to un-stick the organs from each other. All was tender, inflamed adhesion, as far as the scope could see, which was not far, as of the reproductive organs only the end of one fallopian tube – whether left or right could not be discerned – was visible. (This tube, for what it’s worth, did have intact fimbria.) Drs. Hilgers and Fitzgibbons also found some remnant of the abscess, though only a teaspoon-sized portion, which they removed, and they “irrigated” – medical-speak for “rinsed” – the area with an antibiotic wash. The JP drain was fitted to allow anything remaining of the abscess to be pulled out, along with blood, irrigating fluids, and whatever other incidental liquids had collected as a result of the surgery.

The primary object of the operation was, I may remind you, the extraction of three pieces of GoreTex bandage. Those bandages had been placed over Kay’s ovaries and uterus to reduce the normal adhesions due to any surgery as much as possible, but had been overwhelmed by the toxicity and ubiquity of the abscess, which left scarring everywhere else. In their efforts to remove these pieces, they had to remove some of the new abscesses, but were hindered in their efforts by the effective blockade created by the jumbled and cohered organs. They hesitated to do much in the way of what they had done last time – separating the organs by removing the scarring – because the inflammation has not yet settled down, and the organs are thus weaker than they would be normally. Of particular concern was the possibility of penetrating the wall of the bowel. Both because this surgery was planned to be less severe, and thus a full bowel prep was not ordered, and because of the weakened nature of the bowel due to the inflammation, which could result in a torn bowel, the surgeons in the end chose to curtail their chase for the third and final piece of GoreTex membrane, leaving it behind.

Kay stayed in the maternity ward, where all of Dr. Hilgers’s patients stay when hospital time is required afterwards (this is either ironic or appropriate, depending on the eventual outcomes of their cases – though the Pope Paul VI Institute and the nurses there were good enough to inquire of us whether we thought the maternity ward was a bad choice for their patients; we told them we were happy to see the babies, if for no other reason than that they were a welcome diversion from the task of healing). The maternity nurses, though a bit shocked to see us – they had hoped Kay would have to endure no more hospital time – were as kind and attentive as ever, apparently giving Dr. Hilgers the news that they felt Kay deserved a gold medal for her behavior, news he promptly passed on to us. Kay was a bit befuddled by this compliment, asking me, “What have I done to deserve a medal? How terrible must the other women be who come through here that I deserve a medal?” I told her it was due to her almost utter lack of complaining, to her patience and mildness when she called the nurses in for help, to her continual sense of humor, to her persistent efforts to comply with their healing instructions (particularly the need to take multiple walks a day). I doubt the other women, mostly delivered mothers recuperating for a day or two, were great termagants, but the nurses’ sense of pity for her rarely precedented stay in their ward, and her perfect behavior throughout, likely elicited the compliment.

On Monday, at one o’clock in the afternoon, Kay and I had our regularly scheduled post-op with Dr. Hilgers, though he had been quite attentive that week already – as is customary he came in to see us every day, skipping only Sunday this time as Kay was clearly in no danger (though he did send his resident in to see her). He had little to say that he had not already said, and his usual joviality was rather suppressed by his discouragement over the results of the June procedure. We had plenty of questions for him, of course, mostly about the future. As the blog format and its readers, however, are polonian in their prejudices, I will attain brevity by saving those – including the questions addressing the mystery of the missing third bit of GoreTex and what happens next – for the next posting.