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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Signed up over a decade ago with Australian Red Cross blood service. Haven't heard anything but it's good knowing that if the call ever comes, I personally might save someone's life. (Donating O- helps in a more general way.)
Haven't heard anything? You should be getting regular pings as they make sure they can reach you annually or more frequently.
As 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…
This sounds great, but it is a grave error to assume that all patients should think this way. First of all, many don't get the chance. Some patients are too alone, too poor or have too much chaos in their lives to be able to get anywhere near the 'one way'. For some patients, their cancer arrives suddenly and kills them before they have time to accept or deal with anything.
But the main point is that you can't a priori decide what is the right way for someone to deal with their illness. For some people, they need to fight it like a battle, before they can ever accept the fact they will lose. For others, they 'fight' because they know it is important to the people they love, even though they know it is probably a lost cause. Who are we to tell them that they aren't thinking about things the right way?
The final thing to say is that a cancer is incurable until it isn't. The worst thing is when a new treatment comes out (like immune checkpoint blockade), and a patient whom you know would have benefited immensely from that treatment dies just before they could have received it. 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. That is a dreadfully uncomfortable notion, and something that a health system can't possibly deal with, but try telling those people that their 'language around cancer' is unhelpful. By the same token of course, there are many who never accept their illness, and waste precious time pursuing expensive, futile therapies.
In medicine, avoid generalisation and homogenisation at ALL cost. As colourful and varied as people are in their healthful lives, they are only more so when ill.
[1] In other words I give drug therapies to people with cancer. About 70% of the people I see have advanced, incurable cancer, with life spans ranging from a few years to a few months.
Jeeeesus. I'm incapable of understanding the mindset the man is in - total awareness of impending death. It must take tremendous courage - I think I would have been reduced to a quaking pile of jelly faced with the fact of mortality. What a person, what a reality.
I mean, your death is impending too.
Jeeeesus. I'm incapable of understanding the mindset the man is in - total awareness of impending death. It must take tremendous courage - I think I would have been reduced to a quaking pile of jelly faced with the fact of mortality. What a person, what a reality.
> I'm incapable of understanding the mindset the man is in - total awareness of impending death. Seriously? Every human being on Earth over a toddler's age is totally aware of impending death. To date nobody has ever lived forever. The only question, for every human being, cancer or no, is how many years you get before you eventually die. Modern man just makes my head shake in disbelief sometimes...
If you’re reading this bud I hope you know your work has made a lasting impression on many.
As 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…
When her last chemo failed, my Mom lived for about two weeks, in excruciating agony despite intensive care. Leukemia won, there was no other way to put it.
This man is living my worst fear. Also 34, watching my 6 year-old play a video game. Good luck, Alex. All I can say is, I don't know how you stand, but I know a man who can.
There's a cure for everything, including eventually old age; whether you find it or not is another story.