Nothing Else to Do

American Spectator ^ | 10/10/2008 | Lawrence Henry

[PurpleMan]

Beautiful fall weather has come to Northeastern Massachusetts, the kind of calm, golden, balmy day when I would, not too long ago, have gone out joyously to play golf. With my right shoulder gone -- no more rotator cuff at all, the joint grinding bone on bone -- I can no longer swing a golf club

[PurpleMan]

Read the whole thing.

[raybbr]

People used to die like that, not nibbled bit by bit by modern medicine, keeping alive an ever-weakening husk of the self.

Oh, boy. The "keep humans alive forever" crowd won't like that.

It's sad. A friend of mine's father had stage 4 renal cancer that had spread to his bones. They operated on him and gave him chemo. My wife and I both agree it was because he had good insurance.

[Melinda]

OK, I read the whole thing. Is there more that I missed or is this just a good self-pity piece? Thanks for the ray of sunshine. It's not surprising this man is in MA, as most everyone here thinks like this all the time. You are either an optimist, pessimist or realist. Guess which one this guy is? I, for one, am an optimist. Times like this bring out the best in those who can and culls the rest from the pack. I've been through all sorts of pain and more too, but I keep going because I can, and I will. I want to win the battle, as most here on FR do too, and will.

[Jeff Head]

You may not be able to swing a club, but you can type. Do so...find enjoyment and fulfillment there and at whatever you can do until the good Lord calls you hiome.

Can you vote?

I'M VOTING FOR SARAH

[renosathug]

Oh, and by the way, my 401K lost another 5K today. It’s down to a 396K.

[Between the Lines]

I am somewhat confused as to why you posted this article. Every patient has their good days and their bad days.

Here is part of a recent aticle by Henry that I have printed out and saved:

That could have been my fate, too. My kidneys failed in 1975.

"If your kidneys had failed just a couple of years earlier," my friend Dr. Leslie Dornfeld told me, "we would have just let you go. There wasn't enough dialysis to go around, so we had to ration it."

It did not work out that way. I dialyzed for nearly six years, then had a transplant that lasted 20, another that lasted two, and now here I am, trying for another but looking at very long odds.

LET ME ADD UP the pluses and minuses. Truly, there are very few minuses. I had my blessings. I had two marvelous decades. Most important, I come to what may be life's end without any guilt or regret.

Maybe I'm wrong about this, but, judging from the testimony of literature, I don't think so. I think most people come to the end of their lives thinking, "If only I had done this" or "If only I had not done that."

That doesn't mean I have not done bad things. I have. But I have come to terms with having done them, and I have been forgiven.

I have had a job I loved. With every new assignment, my first thought was, "Oh, boy, I get to write." I am crazy about my wife, and I have two wonderful sons.

It would be nice to have another decade. I may get it if a transplant by Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles works out; I have a donor. The docs better be willing to get to it fast.

These days, my default prayer is, "Lord, deliver me or take me." Followed by, "Lord, forgive me for telling You Your business. Thy will, not mine, be done."

SUPPOSE I HAD died in 1975. Looking back, I regard that old world as much superior to this one. I am scared again at the prospect of a new President -- with much better reason this time.

But this is better. If I had died in 1975, without faith, without family, without love, I would have gone with a bitter curse on my lips.

Now, my heart raises a blessing with every remaining breath.

God bless Lawrence Henry.