Surprisingly,
ThomWV, also known as the mountain man primitive, has never attained a Top DUmmieship, not even in the bottom half of the top twenty, even though the crusty grouchy old curmudgeon is surely one of the most-senior primitives on Skins’s island; he’s been around for a very long time.
The mountain man primitives is 66 years old, give or take a year, now retired, married with adult children and grandchildren, from northern West Virginia, and was the first member of his family, ever, to attain a four-year college degree, in economics. He’s never been precise about his career; given fragments of clues he’s dropped here-and-there, it’s likely he was either in some capacity a teacher of economics, or on the governmental payroll.
Ol’ Tom likes to zip around the recreation areas of West Virginia in a big mean diesel-powered pick-up truck; not recently, but in the past, he’s whined greatly about diesel fuel prices. One’s not quite sure, but does sort of recollect that the mountain man primitive is a supporter of the Second Amendment, although on Skins’s island one can’t possibly be anything but lukewarm about the right to bear arms.
The mountain man primitive was heavily influenced by the Kennedy charisma and public-relations machine of the early 1960s, as were many of the old primitives; he alleges himself a devout atheist, but really, he believes in Jack the Father, Bobby the Christ, and Vast Teddy the Holy Ghost, and perhaps even has icons of them hanging in his home, with candles in front of them eternally lit.
The portrait ThomWV paints of himself, in his own words (rather than in paint) is that of a man a little shorter than average, shaped like a box, with a smaller box above serving as his head. Eyeglasses. Not an especially friendly countenance on the face; in fact, a rather grumpy one. Haemerrhoids, giving a certain mincing step to his walk.
The mountain man primitive’s lit some remarkable campfires on Skins’s island in the past, and the file bulges with untucked-in obesity, but a sampling (there’s pages and pages of his truculent negativity if one “searches†“ThomWV†here) from just this past year should suffice in showing why he richly deserved to be voted
#10 Top DUmmie of 2011:
-the mountain man primitive solves the budget impasse:
http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php/topic,57830.0/-the mountain man primitive restrains himself:
http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php/topic,62590.0/-the mountain man primitive not shaken up by earthquake:
http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php/topic,63470.0/-the mountain man primitive asks two questions:
http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php/topic,64370.0/-the mountain man primitive was an idiot in the old army:
http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php/topic,66153.0/-the mountain man primitive bows out for a while, with love:
ThomWV (1000+ posts) Thu Nov-10-11 08:52 AM
Original message
Its time to bow out for a while.
I had to go see my mechanic this morning to finish up a repair begun yesterday. He's also a friend so as I left I said "well, if I don't see you in about a week and a half I guess I won't be seeing you". I guess I should say the same thing here.
I have cancer. There is a tumor that has spread out in my gut and its going to be cut out of me monday. We are leaving later today for Cleveland where a full day of tests and such is scheduled for tomorrow followed by a weekend in that fine city. I am told that my chances of surviving the operation are about 50/50. Presuming I do survive the cut - and I am making that presumption - I am told I will be in recovery at the hospital for about a week.
So I guess I'll tell you all the same thing I told Darrell this morning, if I don't see you all in about a week and a half I guess I won't be seeing you.
Before I go let me thank a whole bunch of you all for great conversation and for stimulating both thought and action. You are truly a community, and community is everything.
Love,
Thom
http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php/topic,66493.0/-the mountain man primitive returns from brain surgery:
ThomWV Donating Member (1000+ posts) Sat Nov-19-11 10:44 AM
Original message
I'm back now - and thank you all very much again. (warning - horrible photo attached)
This is sort of a personal post; a thanks to all those who wished me well and offered up their thoughts and prayers to me about a week ago when I announced I would be gone for a while because of a medical issue I am having. So really don't expect it to be of much interest to a lot of people and to those who continue to read I want you to understand that as a general statement I'm not the most likable guy you're ever going to run across. Don't get me wrong, I think I'm the nicest guy in the world but there are lots of other folks who think, and maybe deservatively so, pretty much an asshole. I thank them for their thoughts and prayers too.
Now the long version.
I don't believe in prayer at all, but something dam sure worked. I'm not kidding one single bit about this. We walked into a very bad medical situation last week. It was life threatening, immediate, unavoidable. Learned and experienced experts agreed that the set of procedures I was about to undergo might be the end of me. No one was giving me much better than a 50/50 chance of being alive last monday night. The very short version of what I was facing is this. I had developed a tumor growing from the inside of the large vein that returns blood from bottom of the body to the heart. A long section of the vein - which is a little larger in diameter than a typical garden hose - would have to be removed and replaced. A great deal of blood loss was expected and preparations for transfusion had been made. The tumor had grown through of the wall of the vein, extended out to engulf my right Kidney and all of its plumbing. From there it brew down below and around my stomach but more importantly involving my Pancreas and the ductwork from it and my gallbladder to my intestines, which was going to have to be removed and rebuilt.
To do this work I was fortunate to enlist the talents of two of the most capable Surgeons in the country and their staffs. Their skills were going to be tested, and both of them were completely honest about it to me before we began.
As I said earlier this last act in the program began last friday when we (my wife and I) went to the Cleveland Clinic for the last round of testing before the surgery. As bad luck would have it all of the results of the day's testing were not available by the end of the day. The Surgeons could see that the mass had grown, but the quality of the imagery was not such that they could tell with clarity how much or where. Never the less by this time it was clear to all that the right Kidney would be lost and an extremely difficult second procedure was going to be required. We were braced for that news, we had been expecting it all along; it was on our plate as they wheeled me into the room and the universe went dark. The dual-surgery was scheduled for 265 minutes.
Eight hours after the surgery was begun, with all those thoughts and prayers ricocheting around the universe, I was wheeled out of the operating room and into the ICU. A few hours later they moved me to the recovery facilities.
Here is what I can only ascribe to your work on my behalf. When they rolled me into the recovery area I still had both of my kidneys, my entire pancreas, the super-scary procedure to reattach ductwork long ago destroyed proved unnecessary (the second surgical team was dismissed and went on home at the half-way point). The entire tumor was removed, not a speck of it to be found anywhere but in the dump on this fine day, and not a single drop of anyone elses blood was required to accomplish all this.
In short not only had everything gone well, in fact virtually every aspect of this operation went far far better than could have possibly been expected, but that entire portions of it became unnecessary and at its conclusion I am (aside from hellacious pain and discomfort) like the flick of a light from on to off, I am "cancer-free". They got it all, it was all cut away. No chemo is planned, no radiation, no nothing. All I have to do is heal up and get on with my life. We'll be watching my gut like a hawk for the next couple of years, but for now regular checkups are all that is in the plan.
My god, I can not thank you all enough.
And now the very very morbid part. I was not much for wanting to the the gory details of the operation but I had never seen a cancer tumor. I had sort of a picture in my mind of what it might look like but I really didn't know. I sort of mentioned this in passing during a conversation with my main doctor and he asked me if I wanted to see pictures after the operation. What? They could do that? "Sure" he said. So he took a dozen or so photos during the operating including a couple of the tumor all by itself just sitting on the table. I am going to post that picture below. If you want to see what a potentially man-killing tumor looks like you've found your page. Its right below. I'm going to put in enough blank spaces that no one should stumble across this by accident - it it a very ugly thing, just looking at it may make you ill, but if you ever wanted to see one here it.
http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php/topic,66813.0/-the mountain man primitive says post office a constitutional right:
http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php/topic,67350.0/
