I read a very interesting article a while back entitled "I know you love me - now let me die". The article speaks about the ends we go to in today's world to prolong life, and often suffering. We have at our fingertips machines, technologies and medicines that can be used in a multitude of ways to prevent us from ageing, to make us look and feel better, to heal us from illness that was previously deadly, to make us live longer. When faced with a fatal disease, and I speak less from experience than from exposure, it seems that a will to live kicks in, both in the patient and in his or her circle of family and friends. In an earlier post I wrote entitled "Musings on death and dying" I wondered about the choices we have and the fears we face.
When I was studying pharmacology at University we were told that the goal of chemotherapy in the treatment of Cancer was to kill the Cancer quicker than it killed the patient. This is certainly a dramatic over-simplification of the process and todays therapies are vastly different to those available when I was a student. I currently work in Oncology Clinical Research and so am continually exposed to novel and seemingly ground-breaking treatments working in ways that often could not have been envisaged or made possible twenty years ago. We can treat or cure many more diseases now than what we could before, and in 100 years they will say the same. But it is not always an easy path to choose. On more than one occasion someone has contacted me and asked for information about a treatment and I have said that while it may give a few more months, the end result is often the same but the path there can be vastly different depending on the choices made.
I am not the authority. I speak less from experience than from exposure.
My dogs are my children. They are my family. My life is made greater and fuller because of them. I sometimes struggle to fully grasp the impact they have on me, the unconditional love they offer freely, the naivety and simplicity in which they live and the joys that they experience in every smell and every treat. But their lives will always be shorter than ours; they are here as companions and teachers of love and letting go. And they get Cancer too. When Jessie got sick at 5 years old we decided to treat her with radiation because it was non-invasive; she had no side effects at all and she lived to almost 11. We still laugh at the underhanded methods of getting her in and out of the human treatment center (click on her name to read about it). Dexter was sick for about a month and we struggled to figure out what was wrong. On the day he was diagnosed with a brain tumour we let him go.
In February, Troy got sick and was rushed to the emergency veterinary hospital for surgery. A tumour had perforated his bowel and he was suffering from sepsis. He spent almost a week in ICU but he recovered remarkably quickly and came home to rest and recuperate. Within a few weeks he was back to his old self, barking and rolling around on the grass. Two weeks ago he had a follow-up and they found another tumour. We ordered some specific tests to find out exactly what it was and decided to try oral chemotherapy. He started his first dose on Monday and within hours he was throwing up. After his second dose he stopped eating and just slept when he wasn't being sick. There wasn't even a hesitation in either of our minds that we would not subject him to one more tablet ever again. In fact tomorrow I may just bake him a chocolate cake, because chocolate is what he loves the most and because dogs don't eat chocolate so he doesn't get that (well sometimes he gets a little piece but only when he asks really nicely and only when nobody is looking).
Just because we have the ability to treat, doesn't mean we should. Or should we? Troy currently has no clinical signs or symptoms of this tumour. Any symptoms he has experienced are as a direct result of me putting a tablet in his food. I put that tablet there to see if it will make the tumour shrink, or stop growing, so that I can have him longer than an undefined period. He knows nothing of this other than Sunday he was barking and rolling around on the grass and yesterday he was throwing up. By tonight he was back to his old self, symptom free and barking and rolling (this is what he does best).
Troy is 12 going on 13. These tablets are not going to cure him. I have no more control over his end date than I have over my own. He is an old man. He is a happy old man. He is not a sick old man. We choose to let him be. We choose to let him bark and roll around in the grass until he can't any more. We have no idea when that will be because this is how things are, and how they should be.
When he is done, it will be because it is his time, and not because we made him too sick to be a happy old man.
I hope the same would be afforded to me, if it were me.
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When he is done, it will be because it is his time, and not because we made him too sick to be a happy old man.
I hope the same would be afforded to me, if it were me.
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