Memorial

You have been very ill for about a month now. Next week you'll turn 66. Last year you went on Medicare and it has been a magic bullet for you. It has enabled you to seek and receive medical treatment anywhere you want. You have gone to virtually every medical facility in your area. And here too. You have just spent several days in the hospital. They tried some procedures to stop your internal bleeding. Did they succeed? I don't know. But you are alive and, as far as I know, you are winning the battle against pancreatic cancer.

I DO know that my friend and colleague doesn't have the same access to medical care but has been resourceful in getting into medical trials and experimental treatments. She has valiantly battled her cancer off and on for the past seven years. This week she turned 45 and it was probably her last birthday. The day before the doctors told her the last PET scan was not good. It showed her tumors multiplying and growing at an alarming rate. She began a new treatment, a trial, but they say she doesn't have the time left. This treatment takes several months to build up in the body and do its magic. She doesn't have the luxury of time required. They say she is dying. I say, "Unacceptable!"

I DO know that my lovely friend's good, kind, generous and altruistic husband left this earth last week, a victim of metastatic cancer, being mercifully granted a peaceful death, not the usual death of a cancer patient, drowning in watery lungs. He had ushered so many people out of this world in his work with hospice, God must have granted him mercy. He deserved it. He asked for a hamburger, fell to sleep, and died without suffering. But he was a good man who had dedicated the last fifteen years or so of his life to serving others and treating the homeless and the terminally ill. He didn't have access to much medical care. He had one choice: Kaiser. He couldn't go elsewhere. He took their one-size-fits-all treatment. It metastasized. He died. He was remembered fondly at the service this week. What a loss. Unacceptable.