There is a vague line between refusing to greet death and strategically delaying death. In this short essay that arrived in my inbox today, an oncologist calls out useless delaying tactics for stage iv patients. She summarizes, “Multiple lines of therapy in stage IV solid tumors have diminishing benefit, and this is where patients and families need to know that the finish line is the same. You can take the expensive, toxic obstacle course or you can take the easier, cheaper, nontoxic route with excellent hospice care.”
She is talking about me.
I accept my death even as I have not stopped trying to delay it.
Which is the hospice exit?
Recurrent ovarian cancer, clearly terminal, has dozens of treatment options. But, as quoted above, they tend towards diminishing returns.
In my little mind, I decide that by bartering my body to move intriguing science forward I am not just a societal burden. I am paying my way. Kindof.
Today is the birthday of the great, late Martin Luther King, jr. I am used to paying my way in more overt ways that rally others and myself to live inclusively and fairly – to exemplify MLK’s description of beloved community where no one is left untended or in need by policy or neglect.
Today, instead, I hobble with the dog around the block. I hurt. I have hurt for weeks now. I replaced the illness of chemotherapy toxicity with the pain of presumed cancer growth rearranging my torso. There is no escape as each step hurts. Seated I hurt. I am not the builder of MLK’s dream; at best I am the recipient.
I am eager for the HEATT trial to start. I count down in hours knowing that each day off treatment is a burden just as each day on treatment ended up a burden. Weeks like these make me throb with the stupidity of trying to outlive my disease.
The exits are not well marked with terminal illness.
There are dozens of things left for me to try. But when is trying itself wrong.
livingly dying 