Colonoscopy... Insight into one man's experience
Apr 2, 2015 20:22:04 GMT -6
kdog, Mystic Wanderer, and 3 more like this
Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2015 20:22:04 GMT -6
Doug,
For the record...I watched my father die, in a way I'd call hard even by cancer standards, back in 2010. It was enough to take both cigarettes and excessive alcohol out of my life, forever. He suffered in silence with a misdiagnosis of COPD for almost a year (and enough Valium, alcohol and pain meds to suppress more meaningful symptoms), is what they figure happened by the way it ended. When the coughing up blood began, they checked deeper and found Stage IV, Small Cell type 'A', aggressive lung cancer. Within a few days, they confirmed it had metastasized beyond all real hope of effective treatment, even by Stage IV standards. 11 days after checking in..was the timeline of the whole thing.
He went into a coma he never came back out of during the initial 'hit' from the first Chemo treatment in the hospital. A couple days later, I personally, for lack of anyone else to do the duty, signed the paper and gave the instructions that the situation demanded. He passed shortly after, so blown on injected morphine from staff, even if awareness exists in the state he was left in? He had none.
So, I make my choices with all the awareness that life altering experience gave me, atop a lifetime of living somewhere out where adrenaline isn't too hard to find, when desired. Maybe heroic measures started earlier would have changed my fathers outcome and the situation I had to face at the end. Then he'd have died in some other way, at or around the same general time.
I stop short of crediting 'intelligent design', but having seen enough things play out over the years, I have no doubt left in saying 'Fate' for lack of a better word, and whatever that actually is, exists as a larger thing around our relative free will in daily life.
That doesn't mean I invite dying....as if anyone does. It just means I'm not getting violated or 'preventive maintenance' like a car and giving doctors a crack at making an illness which isn't already there, either by sloppy procedure or hospital infections. I've lived a full life if fate dropped a tree on my little furry head tomorrow. I honestly think my only regret would be that those to survive me did have to survive me, and not the other way around. That actually would probably be among my last thoughts, to be downright morbid for a moment.
For the record...I watched my father die, in a way I'd call hard even by cancer standards, back in 2010. It was enough to take both cigarettes and excessive alcohol out of my life, forever. He suffered in silence with a misdiagnosis of COPD for almost a year (and enough Valium, alcohol and pain meds to suppress more meaningful symptoms), is what they figure happened by the way it ended. When the coughing up blood began, they checked deeper and found Stage IV, Small Cell type 'A', aggressive lung cancer. Within a few days, they confirmed it had metastasized beyond all real hope of effective treatment, even by Stage IV standards. 11 days after checking in..was the timeline of the whole thing.
He went into a coma he never came back out of during the initial 'hit' from the first Chemo treatment in the hospital. A couple days later, I personally, for lack of anyone else to do the duty, signed the paper and gave the instructions that the situation demanded. He passed shortly after, so blown on injected morphine from staff, even if awareness exists in the state he was left in? He had none.
So, I make my choices with all the awareness that life altering experience gave me, atop a lifetime of living somewhere out where adrenaline isn't too hard to find, when desired. Maybe heroic measures started earlier would have changed my fathers outcome and the situation I had to face at the end. Then he'd have died in some other way, at or around the same general time.
I stop short of crediting 'intelligent design', but having seen enough things play out over the years, I have no doubt left in saying 'Fate' for lack of a better word, and whatever that actually is, exists as a larger thing around our relative free will in daily life.
That doesn't mean I invite dying....as if anyone does. It just means I'm not getting violated or 'preventive maintenance' like a car and giving doctors a crack at making an illness which isn't already there, either by sloppy procedure or hospital infections. I've lived a full life if fate dropped a tree on my little furry head tomorrow. I honestly think my only regret would be that those to survive me did have to survive me, and not the other way around. That actually would probably be among my last thoughts, to be downright morbid for a moment.