Jun. 03, 2006 - 19:32 MDT

CAN'T BACK UP

It would be so nice to be able to go back and live things over again. This time getting it right.

Impossible of course, I know that. And doubly impossible to back up and live someone else's life over.

There is an article in this morning's Rocky Mountain News by Marilynn Marchione of the Associated Press that caused me to think deeply and have deep regrets. Quoted herein in full:

NOT WILLING TO GIVE UP YET

Study says cancer often fought even when it's futile

ATLANTA -- "Doctors are reporting a disturbing rise in the number of cancer patients getting chemotherapy and other aggressive but futile treatments in the last days of their lives.

"Critics say doctors instead should be concentrating on helping these patients die with dignity and in comfort, perhaps in a hospice."

"Nearly 12 percent of cancer patiennts who died in 1999 received chemotherapy in the last two weeks of life, a large review of Medicare records revealed. That is up from nearly 10 percent in 1993, and the percentage is probably even higher today, researchers said."

"Patients don't like to give up, and neither do physicians," said Dr. Roy Herbst, a cancer specialist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston who had no role in the study."

"Overly aggressive treatment gives false hope and puts people through gruelling and costly ordeals when there is no chance of a cure, cancer specialists said."

"There is a time to stop," said Dr. Craig Earle of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical SChool. "It's sometimes easier to just keep giving chemotherapy than to have a frank discussion about hospice and palliative care."

Part of the problem is that doctors cannot predict how soon an individual patient will die, even when they know the cancer has spread widely and is incurable."

"Earle led the federally funded study and presented the findings Friday at a meeting in Atlanta of the American Society of Clinical Oncology."

"He examined Medicare records on 215,488 people who died of cancer in the 1990s."

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Perhaps I should not have read this article -- too soon even now. Rob was diagnosed with cancer in March of 2003 and after a valiant fight passed away a little over two years ago on May 31, 2004.

He went through chemotherapy and radiation for a goodly amount of that time after he was diagnosed. At the end he was a bald, nearly crispy critter, in terrible pain.

Many folks have gone through this with loved ones of theirs, those who haven't probably can't understand the depth of feeling we have -- who have watched a loved one pass through those terrible days.

I guess it was my realization that he was near the end was when I went to hospital to see him and noted that he was in the Hospice section of the hospital.

Yet the chemo and the radiation continued, even there. One blessing was the staff, the nurses who would do their best to get him some kind of relief. They were so very kind and considerate.

Yet as the man said, "Nobody wants to give up, patient or doctors and of course the relatives, although they have no real say in the matter are praying for the survival of their loved one.

Our dear son, robbed by the existing system of all humanity, doctors and patients alike, of more time of comfort at his end. You, our dear son are at rest, hurt ended. Would that it could have been a miraculous cure. RIP sailor.

No, one cannot go into the past and redo life, but fight it as you will you CAN'T BACK UP . . . . . . . . . .

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