Dying is very real and very scary notion.
Leukemia Has Won
161–170 of 196 posts
Re: Leukemia Has Won
#162As a human it makes me so sad to read this post. I hope the rest of his life is meaningful, comfortable and pain-free. As a doctor it makes me so mad. We talk about winning and losing against cancer like its some game or some foe personified. Just because there aren't any more chemo therapy options doesn't mean there aren't treatment options. Just because he'll be home and not in the hospital doesn't mean his doctors…
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Re: Leukemia Has Won
#163My dad had one month and one day from diagnosis ("surprise, you have stage 4 lung cancer") to death. Fuck cancer. Thank you, Alex, for trying to make the world a better place. Open source is a wonderful legacy.
That's awful. My condolences :(
There's a weird way to look at it...
If he was going to die, he wouldn't have wanted to linger, or suffer, or be a "burden."
Also, he should have died 12 years ago from alcohol and depression, but he found AA and it worked for him.
In those 12 years he got to see me married, and got to enjoy 5 years with my daughter.
Yes I'm incredibly sad that he's gone, but I'm so thankful he got those 12 years... and that he didn't kill anyone in a DUI.
Thank you, AA.
Re: Leukemia Has Won
#164As a human it makes me so sad to read this post. I hope the rest of his life is meaningful, comfortable and pain-free. As a doctor it makes me so mad. We talk about winning and losing against cancer like its some game or some foe personified. Just because there aren't any more chemo therapy options doesn't mean there aren't treatment options. Just because he'll be home and not in the hospital doesn't mean his doctors…
Oh boy. Here's more "feel good" language change suggestions. No. Just not. This kind of thing is extremely hypocritical and insulting to all those who are actually fighting cancer. Both the patients, the doctors and research teams. >Cure seems like a goal that isn't realistic anymore. Where did you get that from? Both cure and 5 year survival rates are higher than ever and are slowly encroaching advanced stages of ca…
> I've seen people give up and accept their low chances of survival. It's very rare.
This strikes me as being normatively loaded in a way that's unhelpful, at a minimum. There's a cost-benefit analysis that has to take place by patients and their families and there's a choice to be made between optimizing for length of life and quality of life.
I don't have any issue with the "fight" language, but the associations I make are to the body's fight with the disease, not the patient's actions.
In general though, all this talk of "fight", "battle", "never giving up", etc, strikes me as being somewhat American (in a pejorative sense of the term) -— it bespeaks an immature relationship with death.
Re: Leukemia Has Won
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a medical oncologist[1], your paragraph and that paternalistic and annoying article you cited makes me mad. The outrage with 'our language around cancer' is a recent phenomenon, and I think it is actually not that important and even harmful. What you are proposing is to homogenise how patients cope with cancer, assuming that one way of dealing with it is qualitatively better than another. This 'one way' is a kind…
> There are patients I see today who decided to fight, sought out any avenue they could and are alive and going on holidays with their kids today because of it. 20 or so years ago my uncle was given 6 mos. to live. I don't remember the exact type of cancer, but the survival rate was low. My grandfather, being an ex-military hard ass who had to fight and claw his entire life said to hell with that. Long story short, m…
A fighting attitude is harmful if it leads you to prioritize prolonging life at any cost.
Re: Leukemia Has Won
#166Reading posts like this one makes you feel bad about your tiny little problems and how grateful you are with your life in front of death.
Re: Leukemia Has Won
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's relevant to anyone who's facing their own death, which is all of us. Knowing that everyone goes through the same thing is comforting.
Is not the same dying at 80 from 'natural causes' than at 35 due to cancer after a grueling experience fighting it. Which is why I don't see how I'd find that comforting if I were diagnosed cancer when still 'young'. That's just me though.
Fair point.
Re: Leukemia Has Won
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ...some foe personified. > ...make sure he doesn't think he lost anything While I have vast respect for those that can have a different viewpoint, I'm not sure I'd be able to look on it as anything but an intensely personal attack from the universe that definitely takes things - notably, a future - away from me. With time I might find the wisdom to feel otherwise. But time is what would be taken away.
It's not personal, but it's no less an attack for that. I hope death ultimately resolves to an engineering problem.
I hope for the same, but only after solving inequality and other "human condition" issues. I do not look forward to an Elysium-like dystopia with an immortal (ruling) overclass; undead corporations are already problematic enough.
Re: Leukemia Has Won
#169It seems fasting can potentially help starving cancer. https://gero.usc.edu/cll/ It can help liver problems too, so maybe worth a shot as a last-resort attempt to stay alive.
For fucks sake man. You and the others leaving comments on his site about green tea, olive oil, diets, fasting, "ayurveda", and god(s) that will save us if we really believe... wtf.
This is a guy that has a death sentence over his head. He's being doing treatment for years, his body is weak, probably has or will have pain regularly. Is this the moment to do fasting or drink freaking green tea?
It's cancer guys, not a simple cold.
Re: Leukemia Has Won
#170Well the body will eventually "loose the battle" for us all. But Consciousness... since quantum information isn't lost, consciousness might be another story and not get lost with the body.
Well, I'm sure that will help the guy with cancer. C'mon.