Cancer is a good death. I think Dr Smith has a point here. His is a pragmatic view of death and it mirrors my living will. If I am diagnosed with cancer, I don’t want months or even years trying to prolong the inevitable with chemotherapy and invasive surgery. When the end is nigh, accept it with good grace and go out with style.
This struck a chord.
“You can say goodbye, reflect on your life, leave last messages, perhaps visit special places for a last time, listen to favourite pieces of music, read loved poems, and prepare, according to your beliefs, to meet your maker or enjoy eternal oblivion,” Dr Smith wrote in a blog published for the BMJ, a journal he edited until 2004.
“This is, I recognise, a romantic view of dying, but it is achievable with love, morphine, and whisky. But stay away from overambitious oncologists, and let’s stop wasting billions trying to cure cancer, potentially leaving us to die a much more horrible death,” he wrote.
Doubtless the rest of Dr Smith’s profession will be experiencing paroxysms at the moment. After all, he has strayed from the abstinence script.
This was interesting in the comments.
However, Dr. Smith has not taken into account the researches of Dr. Ian Stevenson, who spent forty years accumulating cases of children who appear to have memories of previous lives. In more than 70% of these cases, the “previous personality” died suddenly by violence. This at least suggests that a quick violent death gives you a much better chance of being reincarnated (at least, on this plane, if there are others).
Hmmm… News to me…
Perhaps if we don’t complete a proper life we have to do it again until we have – a sort of Irish referendum? is that a good thing?
I’ve always found these public health stories annoying, “x% die of cause y”, similar to the “35% of heat is lost through the roof”, (shock horror, 100% of heat put into a house is lost, always). The ultimate death figure is 100% – perhaps we were made to be finished off by sabre toothed tigers at 30?
I may have told you this tale before.
Many years ago now, I had a small lump just to the left of my left eyebrow and just below it. It looked something like a rather large blackhead. In fact, from time to time, I had tried to squeeze the blackhead out, without success. After some years, the lump had grown to about 10 mm in diameter.
I went to the doctor for some other reason and mentioned the lump in passing. He said that he didn’t think it was anything but referred me to hospital anyway to get it checked. The hospital took a tine sample of the lump and also another of a ‘lesion’ at another place on my face. About a week later,I got a message from the hospital to go in to see a certain doctor, who told me that it was a malignant cancer, but not to worry because ‘he had known people to survive for 40 years’ with this sort of cancer. Right. Right.
Anyway, cutting a long story short, the lump was removed and the surgeon told me that they had got it all.
But what is interesting is my attitude to being diagnosed as having a malignant cancer. After the initial surprise (and not at all being reassured by the doctor’s statement about 40 year survival), I was not at all afraid. Somehow, I just accepted it. I made some tentative plans to sort out my affairs with the intention of just waiting for whatever was going to happen, to happen.
In the event, of course, as I have explained, above, after a couple of weeks of suspense, all was well.
I think that people accept the inevitable with more equanimity than is generally recognised. I know my Dad did when he had his first stroke. The second, about two weeks later, caused his death. Between the two, he was partially paralysed and unable to speak, but could make signs. He pointed to himself and gave a ‘thumbs down’ sign. He pointed to me and my sister to indicate a ‘look after each other’ signal. I know too that my mother was resigned, although the situation was different. In her case, the situation seemed to be exhaustion. We did not know that she was close to death.
One of the most terrible thing about the ‘Public Health’ blitzkrieg of propaganda has been the the deliberate misleading of the people to believe that death can be postponed indefinitely. First, do not smoke. That will postpone death by ten years. Secondly, do not get fat. Staying thin will postpone death by another ten years. Do not drink alcohol – another ten years. And, no ‘added’ sugar, and no ‘added’ salt – another ten years. I reckon that, for a total absteemer, death before 130 years of age would be a bit premature.
Come off it – old age is pain and poverty.
It used to be that pneumonia was an old mans friend but nowadays they meddle in that.
I will be eighty come next April. And will stay away from good intentions if I can.
I was the same when I was given a cancer dx nearly five years ago. I simply took the view I would get better or I wouldn’t. So far so good but I only had surgery, didn’t need chemo. Should I get a new cancer I would have to think very hard about chemo, sometimes the treatment is worse than the disease. I recently lost a friend to cancer who was in a dreadful state with the chemo and suffered terribly in her last few weeks. Another refused it and was given about 3 – 4 months, she lasted nearly two years and, although she grew frail she was bright and kept her wonderful black sense of humour until the last two weeks when she slipped into a coma. The oncologist was furious that she refused chemo but as the cancer was already in her bloodstream she knew the odds and wanted to enjoy what time she had left.