[quote=bearishgurl]Piggs, I don’t know if you remember Randy Pausch, a brilliant professor of computer animation, who died at the age of 47 of pancreatic cancer after holding out for 22 months after a debilitating surgery while undergoing intermittent chemotherapy. When he delivered his “Last Lecture” in September 2007, a tradition at Carnegie Mellon University, where he taught, he caused an internet sensation. Diane Sawyer subsequently did a full-hour special on him on 20/20 (4th link). I followed his online journal until his death and bought a few copies of his book, “The Last Lecture.”
Here’s a video on Pausch’s professional legacy, “Alice.”
In 2008, Randy had a spouse and 3 children under the age of 5, so as a “last-ditch effort” to buy some more time, he signed up for a “clinical trial” at MD Andersen Cancer Center in TX. He soon realized it wasn’t helping, its side-effects were making him very sick and so went home to enroll in hospice.
My younger sister, wildly successful, was cut down in 2007 in the prime of her life 10.5 months after diagnosis of a similar cancer to Pausch. Grabbing at straws, she underwent every form of grueling chemotherapy available to her with no guarantees of any success. Both she and Pausch lived in close proximity to one another and had the finest doctors and medical care in the country available to them but this didn’t matter. The same age as Pausch, my sister would have been 50 years old yesterday.
I just feel that we can’t control everything and we can’t choose our fate. We just have to accept what happens to us or our loved ones. Money can’t fix everything and death is a part of life. This young man was a shining example of acceptance and living his remaining life to the full . . . an inspiration to all![/quote]
BG, I’ve read about Dr. Pausch, and saw the televised lecture. It truly is inspiring. What’s more, even though his diagnosis and subsequent death from the disease is tragic, you come away from the film focusing on life rather than death.
Control is very important to people in our day and age. There has been a major change in attitude about illness in this nation, and a relatively recent one. Up until WWII, many more Americans had the attitude you mention in your last paragraph. At that time, if your 5 or 10 year-old got a mild case of pneumonia, chances were 1 in 3 that he or she would die. Many, many people died in the flu epidemic of 1918. There were a number of polio epidemics in the 1900s, the worst in the 50s. Only the oldest Americans today remember the fear of those times, and the devastation. However, from the end of the war to present day, it’s been a different picture. 80% of people with pneumonia are treated at home, including babies and people in their 80s, thanks to the discovery of penicillin, and subsequent development of a wide range of antibiotics. Vaccines have been developed for a number of influenza strains. Polio has been all but eradicated world-wide, thanks to the Salk and Sabin vaccines. Between overwhelming sensationalistic media coverage breathlessly touting the latest laboratory and clinical trial results, and anecdotal evidence of “miracle” cures, Americans have changed from pragmatic acceptors of fate (AKA God’s will) to fearless and eager consumers of health services, confident that, if there is not an existing cure for their latest diagnosis, one is mere months in the offing.
Given the incredible advances in microbiology and biochemistry over the past few decades, it is difficult for Americans to comprehend, much less accept, that cometimes cure is simply not possible. We have also become a much more proactive society: unable to simply sit back and let nature take its course.
In addition, the psychological side of medical treatment has been virtually ignored up until about 20 years ago, and it remains the poor neglected stepchild of medicine. Many doctors currently practicing medicine are unfamiliar with the concept, or are resistant to the positive findings detailed in the medical literature. (By psychological side, I’m not referring to “theories” that hold that the mind can cure cancer. I’m talking about the psychological effects of physical disease)
In cases of terminal illness, there is a clear dividing line between therapeutic care and palliative care. Making the decision to discontinue therapeutic treatment is an extremely difficult one, and many physicians are unable to do so, or neglect to tell their patient that the decision has been made. Some physicians, despite evidence clearly to the contrary, internalize the failure of conventional treatment as their own. And many patients themselves are unable to make the decision to discontinue aggressive treatments, believing that that is the only time when they are “fighting” the disease.
As long as these types of attitudes and thought processes are permitted to flourish, there is little chance of a “philosophy of dying” to develop and take hold in this country. Over the next 20 years, millions more people will undergo tortuous treatments and surgeries, extended stays in hospitals, terminal connections to dialysis machines and respirators – all of it unnecessary and not capable of producing a cure. Unfortunately, this is a development is essential if we are to have the ability to provide health care to all our citizens.
