I asked my father to please remind me of the exact meaning of “Ph.D.”, and when it was appropriate to address someone with a Ph.D. as “Dr. So-and-So”. Dad’s response:

Hi Meg,

Tricky as tu and vous in French, depends upon his preference. Formally he can be called Professor… or Dr. (the kind that doesn’t help people… teasing!).

Medical doctors can be pompous claiming they are the “real” doctors, though doctor doesn’t mean physician but rather teacher, according to the notion they are licensed (exchanged rights for duties) to employ Death Star technology in the healing of humanity.

Ph.D’s often have to remind them that prior to receiving this technology its (Ph.D.) designers have scrupulously removed most of the buttons that would make medical doctors a danger to themselves or others by friendly fire.

Ph.D. is a doctor of philosophy in a given discipline, indicating he, for example, has published a dissertation and defended it before a jury of peers in a public square (now before a graduate faculty, wives, and hecklers).

When considering the issue of titles, just remember, that in one case you’re dealing with a savant idiot (doctor who’s a dummy) or an idiot savant (dummy who’s a doctor), and that a rose by any other name is still a rose.

Hugs, D

In my dad’s case, he defended his dissertation before a graduate faculty, his wife, and me—but I promise I did not heckle. (I was quite a bit younger, though, so I did doodle.)

Today is my Daddy’s birthday!! He is a FANTASTIC number today, which is 60. It is a nice even number to help showcase his awesomeness. (Next year, when he is 61, I will say: “It is a nice odd number to help showcase his brain-damaged-ness.” My dad is so awesome, he is awesome for even AND odd numbers!)

Please read this post that I made for Father’s Day in 2005. It is all about my dad and how awesome he is. And, here are some photos from his birthday last year, when I visited him!

You should read this post, too, about me and my dad having dinner with Mom and Grandma in Dublin last autumn. It is about tape worms, and how to ambush them with sausage and a hammer, and how my dad keeps me sane.

My dad has the best songs and the best ideas. He also gives the best presents, because they come out of nowhere and make you feel the most best good in the whole world. He gave me a headlamp once. You should read about that, too. Also, here are some pictures of me wearing it.

Dad visited me in Austin in July. I got to have him here for two weeks! We ate lots of delicious food, except for when we ate lentil soup, which he likes (but I don’t). He stayed on our comfy couch and had a nice vacation. It was awesome! I want to go to Youngstown to visit him soon, but I need $250 to do it. I miss my dad. I want to watch the first season of Dr. Who with him. I think I have mostly bonded with my dad near a television, which is kind of funny and amusing. :P

When I was growing up, sometimes we would watch Henry V. This is one of Dad’s favorite movies. It has Kenneth Branagh in it, and was written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, too. That makes it extra awesome. Dad’s favorite part is the St. Crispin’s Day speech. It’s my favorite part, too. Henry V was Welsh, like me! When I watch Henry V, it makes me feel safe and comfy and happy. (I feel that way when I watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, too!) It is the same when I watch Kingdom Hospital, or read Stephen King books, or study French. Those are all because of my dad, and that makes me happy.

I have tons of pictures of my dad in my office. He is all over the place! I have a bunch of pictures with him that I like the best of anything. There is the picture of us when I was little and we had matching hair. And there is the picture of us with Mom in Apple shirts. And there is the picture of us at dinner when my Aunt Joan visited us. And there is the picture of us at the sushi restaurant when my Aunt Cheryl visited us, and a picture I took of us while we were on a train traveling across England, after our trip to Wales. And there is the set of photos I made from when we ate at a tapas restaurant in Swansea and he made lots of faces trying to get his handheld to access the internet!

There are also lots of photos of him being proud of me when I sang in Swansea, and I like those photos a lot. (There are also more pictures of him being silly. I like those a lot, too!!)

See the awesome?? I love my dad a TON. I hope he has the bestest birthday in the whole world and I promise to come visit him soon (or fly him here to visit me, or take him to Wales or Ireland again, or have a nice picnic, or all those things!) I think he is pretty much niftiest dad ever.

Happy Birthday Daddypie!

I talked to Dad late last night. The nurse told him they were taking the phone away when we were done—apparently he’s been getting a lot of calls. ;}

As of last night, he was still in intensive care. He seemed to expect to be going home soon, maybe by today; he sounded pretty healthy and comfortable, except for the awkwardly placed alarm button he kept accidently hitting with his elbow. I expressed a lot of concern about missing things like chest pains, and we decided to meet in the middle, because in a horrible way he’s right: to spend all your time being hyper-focused on your health is not to be spending your time living. But I can live with meeting in the middle. After all, I like my Daddy quite a bit.

He still has his phone with him and you can’t convince me he hasn’t been using it. His friends are insisting he rest instead of looking at his email, but he explained to me the following: There is no way his little internet-enabled cell phone is less relaxing than an intensive care bed where every time you nod off to sleep and move your arm two inches, a machine starts shrieking…

I mean, nurse alert buttons are great and all. I am totally for nurse alert buttons.

Further news from later phone call: Dad talked to the cardiologist, who says though there’s no guarantee, he may be released tomorrow afternoon. Awesomeness.

Got a call from Mom this morning letting me know that Dad had a(nother) heart attack this morning, that he is “okay”, that they aren’t going to do any kind of surgery, but they have him on medication and are putting him in a room. A hospital room, not a padded room. (Me, you can put me in the padded room.)

I am posting this primarily to let you all know why I will be wonky for a little while. Because as you might predict (or recall), as paternal medical notifications go, daughter wonkiness follows.

Update: He’s in emergency still, but he’s feeling better and the only reason he doesn’t have a regular bed in a cardiac room yet is that cardiac is full and they don’t have anywhere to put the person whose bed he will be occupying. Yes. Um. He sounded really fine on the phone, though he had a pretty awesome headache—awesome enough that the nurse came and gave him morphine. I talked to him for a little while before he went all morphine-y. They’re going to wait a few days before taking him to the cath lab out of concern for his kidneys, but at that point maybe we’ll know more about what’s up.

Choice quotes: “The only problem is, I don’t have a bed yet… I have to sit on the floor…”

Update, July 23: He has a bed in intensive care now, which is something! Apparently the kidney person came after we all talked yesterday and decided they should do the catheterization sooner than later… I have no idea how that happened, but they gave him some kind of meds last night and he went to the cath lab at about 9:30 this morning (their time), and is scheduled for 11:30. Mom is sounding slightly fragile but okay. My head hurts. Ow. (Do I get morphine?)

Note: He wasn’t actually ever sitting on the floor. I promise. (??!)

Update, July 23 Noonish: Of the veins they grafted in 2001, one had closed up two years ago and another one has closed as of this catheterization. Three of them are big and okay. With medicine they think they can keep everything stable and he’ll be fine. So they can’t really do heart surgery to unplug anything—you can only have heart surgery so many times, I suppose. Three, I guess, is enough. I feel dissatisfied and uneasy. This is not a fun game.

I’m sure I was doing something important when my father fumbles in his luggage looking for a particular item and instead comes up with a headlamp. And he puts it on his head and turns it on and it is the most awesome thing I ever saw, but I simply cannot get over the absurdity that he brought it with him—or even bought it in the first place. I ask him where he got it, many exclamation points and question marks, and he says, “I think I sent away for it…” Like maybe he’s almost as amused as I am.

And so I take a picture. Here is my picture!! And I am still experiencing absolute glee that the thing he took out of his travel bag was a headlamp and I tell him that it is the awesomest thing ever in the whole world, as I post my picture of him to Flickr. So he gives me the headlamp.

And so now instead of being unable to get over the absurdity that he packed a headlamp for no reason, I am also in confusion and delight and ridiculousness that he is giving me this awesome pointless wonderful toy!! And I ask him if he’s sure a bunch of times but at some point realize that will only annoy him because obviously he’s giving the thing to me. And I say it is possibly the best present—I search wildly for a time period to encompass this “best present” and find nothing—EVER. The best present EVER.

And I am still laughing because he brought a headlamp to Austin for no reason and then gave it to me. And he takes issue with “no reason”, he says it’s silly to say there’s no reason when obviously the reason was to give it to me. Even if he didn’t know it.

Pbph. Which is bizarrely, precisely the sort of thing he would say. And do.

And so, all I can do is show you the results, and play like a total goose with my new toy:

And, uh, if you want more—there are more. !! I HAS HEADLAMP !!