09.17.2014 05:04 PM

Dear Rob Ford

All of us here say: get well soon.

Sincerely,

Us

11 Comments

  1. Mike Adamson says:

    hear hear

  2. amber says:

    Hi Warren,

    Yes, of course everyone wishes him well. I would like to mention however what this sort of thing is like for ordinary humans who do not have the type of access to aid and power that Rob Ford commands.

    For me, when I first began to experience pain, it was a 3 week wait to get in to see a GP. Then a 2 month wait for an ultrasound. Followed by a NINE MONTH! wait for an MRI. This in turn was followed by a two month wait to see a surgeon, who as it turned out was on holiday so I got in to see a newly graduated (had been working 2 weeks) surgeon who admitted to having no experience with the type of problem with MRI had shown. So more waiting – two months this time to finally get to see a real surgeon who wanted to operated immediately.

    All this time I had been too ill and in pain to travel to the states, to a large city, or to another province to get help.

    Canada’s medical system ranks at the very last of all the OECD countries on a list of 23 objective measures, amongst which wait times and lack of transparency are the very worst.

    Rob Ford got to see his MD an hour after he had pain. And the top specialists in the country a day later. He has a medical team looking after him and unlimited funds to hire anyone he wishes to help. Perhaps if I too had been a drug pusher (Rob sold drugs in high school), a serial misogynist, a homophobe, a racist, an cocaine addict, a lier and a cheat, and very wealthy the medical system would have bent over backwards to help me too?

    Amber

  3. patrick says:

    I do, no matter how much I loathe everything the Fords are about, I wish him well. Honestly. But, because I really, really can’t help myself:

    I hear that Rob Ford is in for a bout of chemo and radiation for his cancer of the fat. I’d have figured it would have been a round of lipo and Jenny craig.

    Too soon?

    Really, get well and get lost to all the Fords.

  4. rob c says:

    Regardless of our political leanings, I think we can all agree that a diagnosis of cancer with the prescription of aggressive treatment is scary. Here’s hoping that the Fords face this challenge with courage and the knowledge that there is a large community of people wishing him the best in this difficult journey. There are too many of us that have faced this situation in our own families (way too many). I don’t consider myself part of Ford nation, but I do hope he prevails to become a cancer survivor.

  5. Ridiculosity says:

    I have never been a supporter. But, like people everywhere, I was deeply saddened to hear of Mr. Ford’s diagnosis. No-one would wish this on anyone.

    Everyone I have spoken to wishes Rob a total and speedy recovery.

  6. Reim says:

    I was actually discussing the fact, at home, that Ford was hospitalized while he awaited his biopsy and other tests, all done within a week.

    I know of someone (a very physically fit person) who last month pulled over on a highway and began to heave blood. Called 911 and was taken to a local hospital.

    He was kept there for a few days and the early prognosis is a stomach cancer.

    I’m not sure what ‘tests’ were performed on him but he was sent home to await further testing at Princess Margaret, in 3 weeks.

    Just saying……….

    And good luck Rob. If you pull through this sit back and reflect how precious and precarious life can be. Consider how fortunate you are to have the financial security you have and spend the rest of your days looking after your kids and loafing around the family cottage.

  7. smelter rat says:

    RoFo is not running for Mayor. I don’t understand all the tiptoeing around him that the other Mayoral candidates are doing. The Fords will continue to exploit Rob’s cancer for their own political gain. The circus is still in town.

  8. Scotian says:

    When we fail to recognize the humanity (both positive and negative) in other, especially in those we oppose we diminish/destroy it within ourselves. This is a fate to be wished upon no-one, even with one someone (not alluding to Ford here, broader point being made) might think the world would be better off dead with should be removed cleanly and as painlessly as possible, not made to suffer like Rob Ford clearly is about to do. BTW, the preceding about better off dead was not an endorsement of such thinking, just that if you are going to believe such you should still keep it as clean a death/killing as possible, because the infliction of deliberate pan and suffering is so inherently degrading to humanity on all sides but especially on the one inflicting such that to ever wish for it in my view something to be avoided, denounced, and decried (yes, I’m human too, I have my moments where I weaken/fail on this, but then I make it a point to remind myself of this and the reasons why it is something to avoid no matter how much emotionally I might feel it deserved).

    Cancer can be one of the uglier slow deaths out there to have to watch a loved one go through, as I am sure so many here already know from first hand experience, and even surviving it takes a major toll at the minimum from almost everyone (there are always the statistical anomalies, but with cancer treatment that tends to be few and far between) involved. One of the by-products of my own health issues is that I’ve spent a lot of time in hospital in the same units with those being treated for various cancers, both recoverable and terminal, and the suffering it showed me was burnt into my brain. As far as I am concerned anyone that makes light of this issue, or says it is is a la Gilbert and Sullivan a punishment to fit the crime, well that person has lost my respect and demonstrated a quality less than civilized and will be noted accordingly. So I clearly wish Rob Ford all the luck possible to survive this, and my well wishes and prayers for the family for the strength to cope with the stresses and pain to come with this horrific reality.

    I had to watch a close relative with the sharpest mind anyone had ever seen, one of the most capable political operators of my region, go from that to a flesh body functioning solely at the instinctive level, she had bone marrow cancer, and the ever decreasing red blood cells caused the brain to slowly over several years lose function. I’ve watched Altzheimers (sp), I’ve watched senility/dementia take over my aged relatives over the decades, this though was something even worse to watch, and not by a slight margin either. So I tend to have rather strong feelings about making light of those facing cancer, any cancer, but my prior arguments would still be the same even without this experience.

    While there are a few other ways to die from health issues out there, this one is one of the most terrifying because of how versatile the ways it can get at you it has to operate with, and one of the worst fears we all have is about the unknown, and even with all we know about cancers these days there is still some of that in the mix. At the end I was prepared to literally pull the plug on her life support if we had problems about getting it terminated, but thankfully by that point all the doctors recognized there was nothing left to save. Not one of my more pleasant periods of life.

    Yes, I know, my usual long winded answer when something simpler would do for most. Sorry, I am who and what I am.

  9. gerry davis says:

    Hey Rob!
    Hope you keep up the fight, don,t give up! Hope you get better soon we miss you!

    Gerry.

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