Whelp, I've got cancer. It's the second time I've had it. About 9 months ago I was told the docs would treat me but I probably wouldn't make it.
Its been a hell of a time.
It's a blood cancer so at the moment I look normal from the outside. I've changed a lot though, in the sense that I've become more me.
I don't give a shit about anything except for spending time with people I like. I especially don't care about money or work.
It (death) is taking a lot longer to happen than I thought it would.
The real trip has been seeing other people's reactions; I accepted it early on but other people have had very different reactions. Mostly I think they just don't know how to react, or they don't think it will actually happen, or both.
I don't think the human mind is capable of understanding the concepts of "eternity" or "oblivion" very well.
I do believe in God but it's still scary.
Its the everyday things that catch you off guard; the other day I was wondering when the next soccer world cup would be, then I realised I probably wouldn't be around for it.
I think when I finally die it will be a relief from all the physical pain.
I had to watch my dad's being and body melt over 12 months dying of Glioblastoma.
And people just don't get that.
4 years ago next week marks my mom's diagnosis and the 10 months that followed. Watching your loved ones go slowly insane and become unable to speak and move in such a short time (she was mid 50s) when they should be healthy changes you. Everything I look at, everything I think about is now looked at under a different lense. And given my age, there just aren't a lot of people around me who have any idea what it's like and assume it's just handling the pain.
Like... no. I'm different now.
Sorry you had to go through that. I hope you've been able to use that experience to make the most of life.
Luckily I have a good therapist.
Who lost his sister to it.
Doesn't help that my brother also died of a heroin overdose (just 5 months before diagnosis ).
My mom moved away after Dad died to live near her sister... Which I understand. But dam I feel abandoned.
Also sometime in between I got a fibromyalgia diagnosis. So in also grieving my old life/body. Bleh. Hugs 🫂
I often think that as my body wastes away it will be a lot harder for the people around me than it will be for me.
They will have to watch it happen knowing they can't help, whereas once I'm gone I won't have to deal with the sadness and aftermath.
Sorry you had to deal with that.
Fucking hell dude, I wish you all the best there is and to enjoy the ride to the fullest while it lasts, which I hope it does for a long time.
I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this, it sounds like you have as great an attitude about it as possible though. If it’s too personal don’t feel obligated to answer, but I’m genuinely curious how you accepted it? Since my dad passed away several years ago I’ve become intensely afraid of dying. Like to the point I know I need to talk to someone about it. But I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts/ journey there
It's a tough question to answer, as it has been a very long and winding road, as they say.
I've had chronic health issues for most of my life, so thinking about dying isn't new. Plus I've even had cancer before, so I really thought about it then.
I think time is the main factor. Just sitting with the idea, being comfortable with it, not struggling against it, recognising that it happens to us all, some sooner than others, and that's OK.
When I feel upset or anxious about death I don't push it away, I focus on my breathing and tell myself that not only is it totally OK to feel this way, but it's completely normal. I imagine that I'm swimming in the ocean and a wave has lifted me up. I don't need to do anything, just relax and the wave will pass through me, and I'll still be there afterwards.
Early on into my relapse I got high (weed) and my brain took me to this place where I imagined life without me in it. Kind of like a ghost, watching everyone react before slowly getting back into their daily lives. I cried a lot that night but since then I've been a lot calmer and accepting of it.
Yes, people will be sad but they will ultimately be OK. Everything will continue as normal once I'm gone, and that's a good thing.
Today is the shitty anniversary of my brothers death from AML. He was sick for 3 years and its was good at times and then really hard.
He was already one of the most philosophical people I knew when he got sick. Social Security allowed him to have the time with his friends and family when he was deemed unable to work which really helped the whole process.
We got to drive across the US for the eclipse which happened during his last spell of better health (it was an upswing after a marrow transplant that ultimately failed). I’m taking my 6 year old and wife wherever we need to too see the eclipse this April. So I can show my son what his uncle and I saw right before he was born.
Damn bro thats rough af. Glad ur spending time with the people u love and hopfully u can set them up for success.
I was in the hospital in January following a heart attack.
I woke up one morning and was on my phone when the nurse came in.
"Were you asleep about an hour ago?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Your heart stopped for 8 seconds."
". . . Uh, thanks? I guess? I'm not sure what you want me to do with that information."
Never knew it happened.
Apparently it alerted at the nurses station but didn't set off any alarms in the room... or so I was told... I mean, I WAS asleep...
Death by massive head injury is not a bad way to go. I remember a sunny morning, heading to the bank a mile from my house to deposit my paycheck, and riding towards work. I merged behind a Jeep Grand Cherokee to pass an idiot that was double parked in the bike lane. It was down hill and I easily topped 35 mph to match speed with the Jeep. That is the last thing I remember. Like it was all totally blank and even worse than anesthesia level blackout.
Three hours later, someone pulled a large piece of glass out of my face that severed major nerve in my lip. That woke me up.
That is how I want to go; a pretty day on a nice bike ride, feeling fantastic, then totally blank.
In reality, I was lucid the whole time apparently, or so I was told. I honestly do not have ANY memory of it whatsoever. If you know of anyone that dies tragically with a major head injury, I want you to think of me. Even if they appeared conscious or aware but disoriented, that wasn't the last thing they felt or remembered, I promise, I've lived it; only barely survived it. I still don't remember a thing.
Consciousness and memory both require communication between different regions of the brain. It's entirely possible that you were "alert' amd responsive while still suffering a brain injury that prevented you from remembering any part of it.
Anesthesia scares me for similar reasons. It halts the communication between different brain regions, and we know that people have no memories while under general Anesthesia, but are they lying there unable to move, suffering extreme agony throughout the surgery, and just unable to remember it afterwards?
Death itself isn’t necessarily the worst part of dying. In many ways, it’s the most merciful part, that can free a person of their suffering.
I took care of my Dad for some years before he passed away, after it became apparent that he was losing his mental faculties and having physical problems after he had had a stroke. It was a slow & steady decline, month after month, just seeing him lose the ability to do regular, basic things.
At some point, his personality died and the person I knew was gone long before the physical body died. He turned into a zombie of sorts, just wanting cigarettes & soda, those were the only things he wanted anymore to the exclusion of everything else. I felt powerless to do anything about it, I helped him as best I could, but years of him smoking and eating/drinking like crap had caught up with him finally.
I'm in a line of work where I see death very very often.
I don't know what I've learned from it. Besides that it's coming. I also know there are things worse than death. Often, in the end, people/families can't accept it, and they end up uselessly suffering.
I suspect the suffering is often compounded by certain cultural beliefs and practices, that (arguably) have less healthy outlooks on death or approaches to grieving. Western countries rooted in puritanical belief systems immediately come to mind.
Death can come to anyone at any time and unless you live to be 150 years old it will always seem like you didn't get enough time, so it's best not to worry about it.
A dead body doesn’t look real. The stillness and one’s denial mechanisms combine to make it look like a mannequin.
Also, if the person has a protracted fight with a disease or simply old age (ie anything that isn't a sudden death) they rarely look like themselves. One elderly family member had an open casket and I could barely recognize them, they wasted away to half of their normal size.
When my mother went she had an aggressive immune therapy to fight lymphoma. That's what actually killed her. Ended up looking like 3rd degree burns all over, unconscious and shivering... didn't look like her.
This one is macabre.
I am a homestead farmer so I have hundreds of animals most of which I raised like a baby, they all have names, each was hand fed and raised from birth by my wife and I. We are deeply attached to each of them and it is like losing a child when one dies.
Firstly I can tell you that you can get used to your children dying, you can repress it. I've spent many hours digging graves over time made all the more painful by the fact that often times I would stay with these animals through the entirety of their ill health. Often they would sleep in the room with my wife and I or even in the bed if the right type. When you read something like charolettes Web or what have you and see some old farmer indifferent to their child who wants to keep their animal friend. That is not from some kind of "depersonisation" or dissonance or even indifference to this animal, it is knowing acceptance from a lifetime of pain watching their friends and children die and being forced to bury them.
I can tell you that if you need cpr I'm your man, I've had alot of practice. There's lots of things cpr won't fix but that had never stopped me from trying. Maybe just maybe if they can have that extra breath or beat they can beat whatever ails them so I try. Here's the fucked part; there is a moment where when something dies, it's easier to see in mammals, there is a moment just before the death rattle, you can see the thing is dead and if you have seen this before you will know what I'm talking about. At this moment of gasping you can "catch" them, like you are catching their escaping souls with your lungs and blowing it back into their mouths. Their eyes get glazed and they do this straining wail and tilt their head, all things in the same way, that is your moment to bring them back and you can see it instantly as their eyes come back to focus and they usually scream in some way.
I've only ever saved 2 in this fashion and I have a large grave yard.
There is no God.
As a fellow homestead owner I agree. There is no god. I was driving a goose to the emergency vet when she died in my passenger seat. It wasn't...peaceful. Also have a large graveyard. Life is too short sometimes.
I used to think I wanted whatever possible done to keep me alive. Use the machines, keep me in the coma for years, what have you. Maybe someday they’ll fix me.
My grandmother had a pretty massive stroke. She had some sort of living will, Do Not Resuscitate, something like that, but none of the family could really bring themselves to enforce that so they put a temporary feeding tube in and I think when that reached its limit switched to a more permanent variety.
I can’t remember if she woke up before or after the second feeding tube, but she did wake up in just a couple days; the stroke happened on a Friday and she was definitely awake the next week. She said she was glad they did the feeding tube.
However, while she was still able to talk pretty well, she lost her ability to swallow. Not only could she not eat anything and had to stay on the feeding tube, she couldn’t even drink anything or she risked it going into her lungs. Every time she felt her throat get dry she had to have a nurse with a wet sponge come moisten her throat. They tried electroshock therapy, but it never helped. She described it as the worst torture she’d ever felt and wouldn’t wish it on her worst enemy, but continued trying it because there wasn’t any other alternative from the doctors and it’s really hard to live and not be able to swallow.
She spent months like this, back and forth between the hospital and rehab/nursing centers, doing better but then getting sick in the homes and having to go back to the higher care of the hospital. She never returned to her own home except for a couple hours when one of her sons took her just to see it. In the end one of those times in a nursing home she got sick and started vomiting, some of which went in her lungs and led to her death in just a day or two. All those preceding months of suffering seemed like a waste, just delaying the inevitable.
I don’t want everything possible done to keep me alive anymore. I don’t want to die, but sometimes there are worse things than dying.
I live in the Midwest, right on the edge of tornado alley. When the sirens go off there's three kind of people. People who do the right thing and go hide in the basement or the bathroom or whatever. People who just completely ignore them and keep doing whatever. And then the dip shit rednecks who run outside like 'IMMA SEE ME A TORNADER'
I bounce between option two and three depending on my mood. One time this happened and a tornado actually started to form directly above me. Three times in a row it started to come down and then crap out.
What really surprised me the most was my reaction was a calm 'huh. So this is it...' Didn't try to run. Didn't even move, and not in a frozen in fear way.
And i guess what I learned is I'm ready when the time comes.
Stop worrying about the news, turn it off, and spend more time with family and friends.
"All you get is today
try to see it that way
don't hold on too tight
Loosen your shoes
don't listen to news
that keeps you up a night
Don't try to explain
try not to complain
no one really cares.
And don't try to find
your place in line
'Cause it's everywhere."
Thanks for sharing that video. What a true artist, beautiful song. Lots of heart and experience.
Never take the people you love for granted. Don't wait on any deed or utterance that is unfulfilled, and know how fast they can go in a matter of minutes if you take your eyes off them. I made that mistake more than once. In the blink of an eye, life can go from 42 to 0.
That god isn't real and religion is a lie. It has made me more of an atheist than I'd ever care to proclaim and even more interested in science.
It's a shame though, right? I wish they'd all be correct and there was an afterlife where we'd all live together forever in peace and harmony.
I've been the spiteful knowitall atheist for the longest time, but seriously... I wish I was wrong.
I hear you, I wish I believed in something, I’d give anything to know there’s an afterlife and I’ll see everyone again. I can’t force it though, wouldn’t work if it’s not an authentic belief. But man it sounds so comforting
Grief...doesn't motivate you. In movies, guys like me, people who have had loved ones killed through prejudices and big evil organizations 🐘 do something about it. Whether that's activism or something more illegal. But I was way more aggressive about my political views before my girlfriend died. Now it's like...I can't muster up the ability to give enough of a shit to do more than vote.
Grief affects people differently. I'm not going to go to into what happened to me, but it definitely motivated me and I've been a camp counselor (week long camp counselor, not a licensed or practiced one). I've seen a mix of (mostly) kids but still some adults during my volunteering. Rule one is still "you don't know how they're going to take it".
No matter what, if you love somebody, tell them as often as you can. Say it every time you say goodbye. Don't let someone walk away when you've both said nasty, hurtful things. If you are putting off seeing someone, or calling someone, just do it.
You cant take ANY of that back. And you'll never forgive yourself.
Yeah but also remember the important thing is the totality of the relationship, not one thing you said in an angry instant. Yes we should try to always let the people we love know how much we love them and how important they are to us but also give ourselves grace for being human. I remember being 16 or 17 driving my dad to the airport for a flight and I was mad at him for something and when he got out of the car my heart sink to my stomach in fear that could be my last interaction. I reversed quickly, got out of the car and ran to hug him and said I was sorry, I didn’t want him to leave that way. He made a point then of explaining that what truly matters is the totality of the relationship, not the last angry thing I said that was a blip of our lives. He knew how much I loved him and how important our relationship was and didn’t question it despite us arguing. He taught me so many amazing things, I miss him so much (he passed away many years later).
I regret saying "you'll never forgive yourself", because that was extreme projection. All the deaths close to me were sudden, out of nowhere, unexpected tragedies, and I have struggled to cope with my grief and guilt. I just want to urge people to see and speak to their loves ones every chance they have, because I didn't do that and I regret it now. It is unhealthy to walk around thinking "they're gonna die any minute!!!" but losing someone before reconciliation has very much affected me.
I was in the waiting room for my friend when the surgeon came in and told us he had a week to live. The sound his family began to make was haunting and terrifying. It was a deep groaning and crying that I haven't heard since. It made my hairs stand up on end and it made me quake. There is nothing heavier than death.
Condolences for your friend.
That's how I cry, when I do cry. I can't help it. I hardly ever cry though I'd like to be able more because it's such a strong catharsis, but when I do it's like a very deep voiced whale trying to make air bubbles over and over. "Awhuuoooo oo oo oo aahhuuuooooo"
It usually only happens when there's a severe loss, my body takes control from my brain, accepts defeat, and starts wailing.
Coincidentally I had a cry a few days ago watching this: https://youtube.com/shorts/ixouwqK4_Ls - so many emotions piled into one scene, it's overwhelming.
The most important things in the world to you could be here one day, perfectly happy and healthy, and the next day gone. The weight of discovery and their limp body.
Every time I would see someone acting in movies I used to think, that’s a bit of an over reaction. No it’s not. When you see a movie and the reaction seems a bit over the top, it’s not.
I've only observed that it seems to be a relief, at the very end.
72. Strive ever to more! and if thou art truly mine -- and doubt it not, an if thou art ever joyous! -- death is the crown of all.
73. Ah! Ah! Death! Death! thou shalt long for death. Death is forbidden, o man, unto thee.
74. The length of thy longing shall be the strength of its glory. He that lives long & desires death much is ever the King among the Kings.
Excerpt, Liber AL vel Legis, Chapter II
Life is short.
If you have time to say goodbye, many insecurities fall by the wayside. If you don't have that opportunity, you'll carry a load of "what-if" around and you'll consume plenty of your short time being concerned with it.
Death comes to everyone. Make the best life you can and try to laugh every day.