The Last of the Chemo?
Tuesday was, hopefully, the next-to-last chemo session for a while, and, if I am very, very lucky, perhaps ever. This reminds me that a long time ago, someone told me my body is just a vehicle that gets me from point A to point B—or maybe I read that in some New Age book. Nevertheless, it’s an image I can live with, and, pushing the analogy a bit, I can recognize that the minute I drove my vehicle off the new body lot, it began to depreciate. We basically start aging from the moment we’re born, and a goodly part of our existence as functioning humans is spent keeping decay at bay. In fact, it strikes me that it’s a wonder most of us survive to any age.
I look back over the past few years and, aside from cancer, these were without really major illnesses—Bell’s palsy (WTF?), shingles, a bout with sciatica that sent me twice to the emergency room, allergies and infections; a few weeks of flu and a back that acts up three or four times a decade. There’s been stupid stuff too, including a Weed-Whacker incident that led to a scratched retina, and another gardening event involving a dozen-or-so mud dauber stings. I had a motorcycle accident many years ago when I hit an eight-point stag, and when I was still drinking, I fell off a roof while playing Frisbee. Surgical procedures prior to the cancer included a hernia, a deviated septum and a shoulder fixed with arthroscopic procedures.
On Tuesday, speaking with the doctor, I was told that, after the many surgeries, I am now slightly below the cusp of the 50 percent survival rate. Could be better, could be worse, and I can still get hit by a bus tomorrow.
I'm a big believer in the right to die. In fact, I plan to have "Do Not Resuscitate" tattooed on my chest before too long and my will has a clause forbidding caretakers from taking extraordinary steps to lengthen my life. I am a proponent of a dignified exit with no interest in spending whatever I may have accumulated during a lifetime on hospital and medical care.
To me, insisting on life while striding through the gates of death is the ultimate silliness. We don't like to talk about death and dying and we don't want to face the fact that our health care system is a money-syphoning sham. As one physician put it, "No one wants to talk about what we really need: a good kick in the ass and rationing care for our terminal patients."
S.K. Jindal, a physician and author for the Indian Journal Of Medical Ethics, writes, "Technological advances in the last few decades have made us believe death is an unnatural event and that life can be prolonged at will. This has resulted in the adoption of life-supporting measures, which are sometimes antagonistic to the very dignity of life. Death is an inevitable conclusion of life. The dignity of death therefore is as important as that of life.”
I totally agree. I will not have an everyday life that involves tubes draining liquids or solids from my body. My oldest sister, who more than a decade ago died from bladder cancer and preferred life at all costs, was in constant pain and a shell of her former beautiful self by the time she passed away. I don’t want that.
This, hopefully, is mindless conjecture. The surgeries and chemotherapies may indeed make everything all right again, but bladder cancer, as it turns out, has a nasty habit of coming back time after time, and each recurrence lowers the survival rate.
After all, if we are not given a choice of when to be born, shouldn't we be given the choice of when to leave? And when is the right time to retire the vehicle that is our body?
All this being said, I have no intention of leaving anytime soon. Something happened within on Tuesday that have been striving—and failing—to fully understand. An internal switch was tripped. I remain scared and concerned, but I plan to do my best to not let this nasty disease control me anymore.
And then, early this morning, I received messages from friends with a link to a New York Times story headlined ‘FDA Approves an Immunotherapy Drug for Bladder Cancer.’ I read about Tecentriq from Roche, a drug that shows such promise the FDA approved it four months ahead of schedule. A similar drug was used on Jimmy Carter, and at 90, he went into remission and is now cancer free.
Patients are effusive about the drug’s efficacy! It shrinks tumors, and in some cases the cancer completely disappears.
I read with mounting excitement. I’m going to have to call my doctor! And why didn’t he mention this new treatment when we spoke?
Halfway through the story, I understand.
Tecentriq will cost $12,500 a month, and you have to take it for almost two years.
Ah jeez.
I’d better get that bestseller published soon.
I look back over the past few years and, aside from cancer, these were without really major illnesses—Bell’s palsy (WTF?), shingles, a bout with sciatica that sent me twice to the emergency room, allergies and infections; a few weeks of flu and a back that acts up three or four times a decade. There’s been stupid stuff too, including a Weed-Whacker incident that led to a scratched retina, and another gardening event involving a dozen-or-so mud dauber stings. I had a motorcycle accident many years ago when I hit an eight-point stag, and when I was still drinking, I fell off a roof while playing Frisbee. Surgical procedures prior to the cancer included a hernia, a deviated septum and a shoulder fixed with arthroscopic procedures.
On Tuesday, speaking with the doctor, I was told that, after the many surgeries, I am now slightly below the cusp of the 50 percent survival rate. Could be better, could be worse, and I can still get hit by a bus tomorrow.
I'm a big believer in the right to die. In fact, I plan to have "Do Not Resuscitate" tattooed on my chest before too long and my will has a clause forbidding caretakers from taking extraordinary steps to lengthen my life. I am a proponent of a dignified exit with no interest in spending whatever I may have accumulated during a lifetime on hospital and medical care.
To me, insisting on life while striding through the gates of death is the ultimate silliness. We don't like to talk about death and dying and we don't want to face the fact that our health care system is a money-syphoning sham. As one physician put it, "No one wants to talk about what we really need: a good kick in the ass and rationing care for our terminal patients."
S.K. Jindal, a physician and author for the Indian Journal Of Medical Ethics, writes, "Technological advances in the last few decades have made us believe death is an unnatural event and that life can be prolonged at will. This has resulted in the adoption of life-supporting measures, which are sometimes antagonistic to the very dignity of life. Death is an inevitable conclusion of life. The dignity of death therefore is as important as that of life.”
I totally agree. I will not have an everyday life that involves tubes draining liquids or solids from my body. My oldest sister, who more than a decade ago died from bladder cancer and preferred life at all costs, was in constant pain and a shell of her former beautiful self by the time she passed away. I don’t want that.
This, hopefully, is mindless conjecture. The surgeries and chemotherapies may indeed make everything all right again, but bladder cancer, as it turns out, has a nasty habit of coming back time after time, and each recurrence lowers the survival rate.
After all, if we are not given a choice of when to be born, shouldn't we be given the choice of when to leave? And when is the right time to retire the vehicle that is our body?
All this being said, I have no intention of leaving anytime soon. Something happened within on Tuesday that have been striving—and failing—to fully understand. An internal switch was tripped. I remain scared and concerned, but I plan to do my best to not let this nasty disease control me anymore.
And then, early this morning, I received messages from friends with a link to a New York Times story headlined ‘FDA Approves an Immunotherapy Drug for Bladder Cancer.’ I read about Tecentriq from Roche, a drug that shows such promise the FDA approved it four months ahead of schedule. A similar drug was used on Jimmy Carter, and at 90, he went into remission and is now cancer free.
Patients are effusive about the drug’s efficacy! It shrinks tumors, and in some cases the cancer completely disappears.
I read with mounting excitement. I’m going to have to call my doctor! And why didn’t he mention this new treatment when we spoke?
Halfway through the story, I understand.
Tecentriq will cost $12,500 a month, and you have to take it for almost two years.
Ah jeez.
I’d better get that bestseller published soon.
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