bony fingers

a friend recently spent several days in intensive care, having had his 2nd heart attack in 5 years. he is 42.

2 months ago, another friend, age 45, had a massive heart attack and had to miss 8 weeks of work.

another friend has a tenaciously persistent tumor on his spine and is undergoing debilitating radiation.

a former co-worker who was pronounced cancer-free last summer, is back under chemo for breast cancer. she is 40.

a colleague was in a car accident last week and broke his neck.

a friend is at a funeral today for his favorite aunt who died of uterine cancer. in one month she went from feeling fine to being a dried apple doll who couldn't swallow water.

the editor has a relative who at 90 recently underwent a mastectomy. she was sufficiently healthy for the surgery. but what is recovery like for a woman so incredibly old? what then is quality of life? and how many more years does she truly get?

rhetorical questions, really, i won't know til i get up there. it just seems i'm young to have so many sick friends and conversely that seniors now have a skewed perception on their entitlement to *robust* health. the medical interventions required to keep them alive can be staggering. how much did that operation cost for that old lady? really? my friend with the tumor has gotten bills approaching $200,000 and he is in his early 50s. sure, insurance is paying for them both. (digression alert: in the meantime, i can't get insurance to pay for my birth control pills because *not* being pregnant isn't a condition.)

my friends, including those with such recent close-calls, all claim a willingness to take the spiked applesauce rather than prolong the inevitable. i still cannot wrap my head around being 90 and getting myself carved up so badly. only to worry about breaking a hip while on meds and dying a month later anyway.

my genetic hand of cards is sound. although not outrageously long-lived, most of my relatives' deaths were either lifestyle (smoking) or their body was simply done after a lifetime of hard work. ya know 80+ is old. i don't feel those bony fingers or cold breath on my neck quite yet. it just seems like maybe this actually is the age where bodies start to falter. not just feeling creaky when getting out of bed, but more insidious and organic breakdowns. technology can prolong things, but to what end? it's the gerontological equivalent of the tremendous interventions to keep profoundly premature babies alive. sure it can be done, but for staggering sums and those babies are never quite right.

it is not my place to play god, nor to judge the personal health decisions of others. however, i do think sometimes less deus ex machina and more rational willingness to accept mortality might give us all more peace. and leave some money in the pool to fix the beyond fucked-up health care system. if something did happen to me now? it would be the end. i'd get the equivalent treatment of an indigent, with a quick trip to potters' field, or go bankrupt and lose everything anyway.

i'm very careful crossing the street. best i can do. :)