Christopher Hitchens - Topic of Cancer

[bik0]

If you get a chance read his Vanity Fair article on his recent diagnosis and treatment for cancer.. very honest, raw and moving.

snip...

The new land is quite welcoming in its way. Everybody smiles encouragingly and there appears to be absolutely no racism. A generally egalitarian spirit prevails, and those who run the place have obviously got where they are on merit and hard work. As against that, the humor is a touch feeble and repetitive, there seems to be almost no talk of sex, and the cuisine is the worst of any destination I have ever visited. The country has a language of its own—a lingua franca that manages to be both dull and difficult and that contains names like ondansetron, for anti-nausea medication—as well as some unsettling gestures that require a bit of getting used to. For example, an official met for the first time may abruptly sink his fingers into your neck. That’s how I discovered that my cancer had spread to my lymph nodes, and that one of these deformed beauties—located on my right clavicle, or collarbone—was big enough to be seen and felt. It’s not at all good when your cancer is “palpable” from the outside. Especially when, as at this stage, they didn’t even know where the primary source was. Carcinoma works cunningly from the inside out. Detection and treatment often work more slowly and gropingly, from the outside in. Many needles were sunk into my clavicle area—“Tissue is the issue” being a hot slogan in the local Tumorville tongue—and I was told the biopsy results might take a week.

Working back from the cancer-ridden squamous cells that these first results disclosed, it took rather longer than that to discover the disagreeable truth. The word “metastasized” was the one in the report that first caught my eye, and ear. The alien had colonized a bit of my lung as well as quite a bit of my lymph node. And its original base of operations was located—had been located for quite some time—in my esophagus. My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a “race” life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/09/hitchens-201009

[Submariner]

1. My Dad died from the same cancer of the esophagus

After surgery and the subsequent 3 year battle just before his death, I was standing at the foot of his bed in the hospital ICU, and I never forget his words. "If I had it to do over again, I would not have had the surgery."

The physical pain for those 3 years, and the onset of Parkinson's and gout due to the weakness caused by the cancer treatment, was excruciating. I'm pissed he did not get better pain management. It was 1991 with no internet or other source to clue me in on the pain management issues between doctors and patients.

I wish Hitchens well, and I'm paranoid as hell about getting the same cancer someday.

[frazzled]

2. I read this yesterday and could not help thinking ...

I disagreed with Hitchens often when he was on the left, and I disagree with him always since he moved to the right. But he is one of the damned finest writers around, one of that rare breed of public intellectual the likes of which we barely have anymore. This article moved me with its honesty and, frankly, its beauty.

Sickness and death levels all fleeting politics. When it comes down to it, those journeys to another country affect us all in the same ways.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. How sad.

At first glance, my eye saw "Chris Hedges" for some reason.
61 seems young once you pass....60.


K&R