6 Months left to live...what would you do?

[garrettwc]

Quit my job. There's nothing in this place I would want to waste the last 6 months of my life on. (probably a lesson in that).

Spend the time with my son doing whatever he wanted.

[DrAmazon]

Possibly track down my biological parents.  I was adopted as an infant and there's a lot of questions I'd like to have answered.

I wouldn't be able to quit my job, I'd have medical bills to pay with the insurance.  I'd just try to live well in the life that I have.  I worked with a woman who had been given one of those 3 month diagnoses.  She lived 8 months and came to work almost every day.  I learned so much about my faith and learning to "enjoy the journey" from her.  I  still cry when I think of her and how generous she was the entire time she was sick.

[crt360]

I'd probably just get up and go to work each day - do the same old stuff.  I don't have the funds to quit work and do whatever I want.  That "live each day like it's your last" stuff is depressing, especially since I seem to live each day the best I can to get to the next one.  

I don't have many dreams or goals that can be accomplished within 6 months, so I'd have to be satisfied with something simple.

Maybe I'd sell some things, buy a Barrett w/plenty of ammo, and spend some quality time out on the farm.  Maybe I'd smoke the medicinal weed to relieve my occasional discomfort.  Since I don't have a wife or girlfriend at the moment and it's pretty hard to get one when you tell them you've got a short time left, I might have to find some hot, high end hookers that will give a sympathy discount.  I've always wanted to fly a helicopter, too.

[Nathaniel Firethorn]

1. Quit my job.
2. Get my affairs in order. Make out a will and living will. Transfer my assets to joint accounts with the missus. Dispose of firearms she won't want. Lay in a supply of morphine.
3. Spend the remainder of my days in the most beautiful places I know. Adirondacks. Finger Lakes. Idaho Panhandle. Nova Scotia. Maybe others.
4. Do the most good I can.

- NF

[Guest]

I'm sorry. Sympathy discounts made me snicker. I'm 12.

[Guest]

I'm trying to think of what I'd do. There are things I'd like to do, like go to Israel and Mesopotamia and dig around in the sand, and visit Prague, and I'd do my best to get there, but other than that, I'm not sure. Raft the Snake River? Hangglide?

[Oleg Volk]

Spend time with my closest freinds and family. At the end, go hunting for my enemies as a courtesy to the living. Make their world a little less perilous.

[Guest]

I had a conversation with a real close buddy of mine.  His wife has been having a tough time with cancer.
This is wearing my buddy down.

"Two days, two weeks, two months" they were told not long ago, and it has been really rough, I mean rough. Recently she has had serious reactions to treatment, I mean once they brought her back from flatline.

Doc comes in with all these students [ teaching hosptial] on this lastest violent reaction and said to her with students and my buddy standing there...

"Well, we kept you alive long enough to see your kids and grandkids, what else do you expect us to do? It has been over two weeks now?"

That is when her eyes rolled back again from the wrong dosage and all hell broke out again...

My buddy has buried his parents, and his brother, and will be burying his wife.

My buddy and I had a chat awhile back, if he ever gets down, he is NOT going to the hosptial.  He may take that trip to the Bonneville Salt flats and drive full out until the engine blows, or just scatters in the sand.

He may just go skydiving or wingwalking and just lose the chute.

He will not go thru what all others have or are going thru  - he wants to go out in style, dignity and have a hell of a good time whatever it is.

I cannot blame him.

[doczinn]

This thread just turned a little more serious for me. My neighbor, a friend though not a very close one, just told me the doctors have discovered a "mass" on his pancreas. They say every year 27,000 cases of pancreatic cancer are diagnosed, and 26,000 result in death.

He wants me to teach him kayaking. I think I will.

[Nathaniel Firethorn]

"Well, we kept you alive long enough to see your kids and grandkids, what else do you expect us to do? It has been over two weeks now?"

That "physician" should be flipping burgers for a living. And the students are going to need a re-education.

- NF

[Guest]

Nathaniel Firethorn,

It seems many Professions, are dictated to much by Legalese and Insurance Companies.  I know folks in the Medical Community, some old school , some new school. Medicine spends a lot of study time on legalese, and insurance regulations. New classes in magaging a business.
This is akin to LEO' s not getting training they NEED and WANT and instead are taking classes on how to listen to whining folks and "not upset the applecart for bad PR".


Pancreatitius.

This is going to be hard for me to type.

There is a special lady in my life, since just out of HS. We dated, then went out our separate ways. Folks had us pegged to be married at that time.

About 25 years later we met, and did get married. She is one helluva Peds nurse, she has that gift. I have seen her with the kids dying, and that Peds hosptial is a remarkable place - one feels the difference upon entering its doors.

Our marriage ended.  She was smart, just got blindsided and did not - a rare rare thing - percieve what her body was going thru. We could talk and I simply stated my concern about her hormones. Even her son did.

Divorce, and later she called to apologize.  Pancreatitius and yes it screws with the hormones.    She did not drink. Back in the old days , she might have a drink or two...rarely.

Oh we did the dumb dating bit after the divorce...I said we needed to go ahead and let the pain hit, and then we could recover best can. I did not want that boy of hers, my stepson for a bit going thru anymore of what he had been thru.

I do not know about her health. I have heard good, and bad.  Some folks that knew/ know us both - well some are good folks and some are not so good - just the way they are.  They are jerks no matter.

One is her first husband, the boy's dad. Mental abuse and all...a real jerk.

I ran into him sometime back.  Great.  I was nice and civil, I have every right to want to be otherwise...still the past is past and no need to relive it.

"I bet you want to know how your ex's health is don't you?" He said, he continued " Of course you were out of state and out of town for some time , and you don't know if she died, thought I guess since you know where her family has that private cemetary you could go out look for yourself.

Bastard. He knew what he was doing, and enjoying every second of it.

I kept my cool, "Well we did have a history going way back and in one's life there are special folks, she is one, always will be to me , so yes I would like to know".

" I will not tell you".

He turned to leave all  smug and proud of himself. This is his mental game he likes to play.

He turned back , had this evil , resentful face and tone.  " I will always hate you for being the person you were to her and my son. Those two actually told me after you two divorced, that you were a better father to MY son as a stepdad than I , and she said you were and always will be "her guy" and the only reason she has any dealings with is because of the boy".


Last I heard from a trusted friend, pancreatitius was getting worse and reminded again - one cannot live without a pancreas.
She knew [ this person telling me] since she had been in my OR doing cellsaver, I / we have done Pancreasotomy and the life expectancy.

I do not know about her -  if I allow myself to think about this , it hits a nerve with me.

I guess having been around a Peds Hosptial, taking classes, doing rotations, working in a OR...then I changed directions in studies and left...

Add all the folks over the years...Time is short and life is fragile.

The quietest quiet I have ever heard - is in the OR and every machine stops , and the patient has passed on.

I have seen the young athletic who ate healthy die at 20-something of a heart attack. I have seen the 97 y/o get a new knee and then get fussed at by a unit charge nurse for being out of his room and sneaking down to the Cafeteria to get pie and coffee at 1 am.

Old boy made it to a 102.  He took a limit of doves at 101 " dang things fly slower than they used to when I was a  whippersnapper"

He missed a dove and his "reason" being he was swinging too fast on slow birds. LOL  

I will remember that excuse ...

[French G.]

2nd on the "quit my job bit"

Spend time with my family, make an heir if my wife wanted such.

Go hunting with my Dad.

Borrow a car and run it wide open through turn one at "the Grove" as many times as I could keep the car between the fences.

[Shalako]

A. Dang, I think I'd feel the need to help people. Maybe volunteer at my church or down at the Shriner's children's hospital. That and spend the rest of my time with my wife.

Then I'd feel like I did the most worthwhile use of my time, rather than be selfish and/or pout about things.

B. And if that didn't give me the great feelings of gratification I expect, then booze, sex, high speed cars, gambling, golf, and varminting would occupy my time after I go 'sindawe' a couple of real grade A bastards out there.


Plan A sounds better though.

[charby]

six months to live?

I'd go on a whirl wind tour of the US and try to see as many family and friends as I could.

-C

[Lee]

1) Get a second opinion
2) Get a third opinion
3) Buy a carton of Marlboros and start smoking again.
4) Take the longest leave from work that I could get, and spend more time with my kids.  Probably make lots of video tapes, like Michael Keaton did in that movie about dying. There's really not much I want to do that I haven't already done...so that's about it.

[Trisha]

Kathryn and I have been given some variant of such news more than once, had it verified through second opinion & tests and so on.  Aside from coping with whatever symptomology manifests, a realization has become almost a mantra here:

"Today, are you doing percisely what you would choose, where you would most prefer to be, and in the company of those you would select to have present if this was the last day, if not the last hours of your life?"

We truely enjoy the simple things, like each loaf of fresh-baked bread, each new batch of roasted coffee, seeing our home has no defecit in being good and reasonably comfortable shelter with both cats happy, enough in funds to see the pantry in decent shape and the utilities on.  We have good vehicles in good repair, clean clothes, a modest but cherished selection of quality, personal weapons and we live on the edge of the forest, high in the mountains.

We have defeated, or outlasted every enemy that has earnestly challenged either or both of us with intent or demonstration to kill or maim us.

We have contributed and lifted the quality of life of some in dire straits and made made real friends, parting ways as their renewal brought them courage and motivation to challenge themselves and celebrate the gift and wonder of having a sound mind and body.

And we continue to work to learn, and to better ourselves by demanding the highest personal standards, rarely sated, never apathetic, and found new discoveries in achievements are sweet and priceless though they may consist of little more than words on paper or a melody played or an industrious day completed to one's satisfaction with energy enough to share a tickle-fight after the evening's dishes are done and the sun set.

We have faced death, perhaps too often; perhaps more often than is typical for most.

One seems to understand more about the act of living, the worth of choosing to live well.

If I had six months of quality time before certain death?  It would be one thought to try and complete the five volume story uninterrupted - but that would be physically unlikely in the extreme (not to mention horribly selfish).  I would love to dive the great kelp forests off California one more time.  I would love to wander Denali again, and watch the aurora borealis.  And I would love to hear Mozart performed in Helsinki.

But I would be completely satisfied with a good bottle of wine, elk steaks and fresh bread, and home-made ice cream on the deck with Kathryn.

There are no loose ends - and that makes the challenges present manageable.  A little.

We have not wasted time.

[lee n. field]

There are no loose ends

What?   All life is loose ends.

[Trisha]

(quiet smile)

YMMV