I am overwhelmed with the fear my mother has as she goes through upsetting and potentially deadly health issues. My main quandary is what the health care providers are really doing to help her. My own fears make me question what they’ve done for her so far and how those treatments have seemingly made her worse. Every time they try something else, my gut wrenches and I wonder what side-affect will occur and how far back it will set her.
So much of health care seems to be guess work and although I can agree that during the ages of man, it makes sense that guess work comes into play, I’m left wondering why we are still guessing. Perhaps I expect too much from our humanity. Perhaps I compare our ability to leave earth or make incredible electronic devices or break land speed records, way too much to our ability to understand the human condition.
Watching people die throughout my life has brought me to the understandable, if not ‘duh’, realization that death sucks. I’ve watched a friend die of a brain tumor and lung cancer, my step father die from lung cancer, my grandfather die from excessive stokes, my father-in-law die from cancer, my grandmother die from pancreas issues, and my great grandmother die from being 97… the happiest I can get from a person dying.
It just hurts and I cannot understand why we can’t fix it. I know that’s a childish thing to wish but I’m not trying to stop death. I’m not complaining that people die or suggesting that we find the fountain of youth. What I’m complaining about is the way we go about trying to live longer. We shouldn’t give up, that’s not what I’m saying either, but of the people I spoke of, three of them had either chemo-therapy or radiation and it didn’t help in any way other than end their lives sooner. It’s not that they were fine before the therapy but they sure as hell weren’t find after it. It pushed them to the top of the hill faster and right over the edge. So is it better to go through the process to prolong life when the process ends our lives sooner?
I like to think that health care is set up to help us in the present but I wonder if it’s geared more to help people years from now. Are we guinea pigs living in someone else’s past just to help them in the future? People living 200 years ago were certainly guinea pigs for us so it seems logical that we are experiments as well.
My logical mind says that it’s okay… we must learn now so we know more later. But it doesn’t make it hurt less knowing that people I care for may die because someone decides to ‘try’ something to see if it works. I don’t want the people I care for to be another statistic in another health journal for another student to ponder.
And what about me? How do I feel about putting myself into the hands of physicians who guess? What decisions will I make if they tell me they want to pump my system full of drugs while trampling my immune system into the dirt? Will I weigh the pros and cons and let fate guide me or will I fight tooth and nail trying anything and everything. I can give no answer because what I think I know or feel now is so far from what may be. A friend of mine said “if it happens to me, I will drive into the mountains and die”. When the time came, she let them fill her full of whatever treatment possible so she could see her grandchildren one more day.
We can say anything we like to a ‘what if’ question but when it becomes to reality… no one knows until that time arrives.
This post was originally seen on Alexandria (aleksandreia.com).
