The guest on “The Colbert Report” on Wednesday night was a software
engineer named Rob Rhinehart, creator of Soylent, a new food substitute
intended to supply all of our daily nutritional needs while avoiding many of
the downsides of our usual diet. To be honest and to put it mildly, it looked
pretty disgusting, even after Stephen added the Hershey’s Syrup! And it raises
what in my mind is a deep and fundamental question: how much are we willing to
deprive ourselves in exchange for the possibility of an increased lifespan? As
Carrie Bradshaw of “Sex and the City” would put it, “will we really live
longer, or will it just feel that way?”
I have thought about this quite a bit lately, not because of the illness that brought me to blogging, but because of my (seemingly completely independent) pulmonary condition. Recently, my pulmonologist hired a nurse practitioner to assist with her practice. The upside of this from the patient perspective is that it helps to fill in the gaps for a physician who is carrying an enormous load, enabling more attention to be given to patients. But this attention may also be the downside of such additional personnel. After many relatively quiet years of routine visits to my pulmonologist, and without experiencing any meaningful clinical change in my condition, I am finding myself being advised to undergo many additional tests with discussions of all sorts of additional treatments. The current discussion is the possible addition of something called continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP. I am not sure I can tolerate having that mask over my mouth and nose, since I find anything covering my face extremely stressful. CPAP would require yet another piece of equipment, let alone a noisy one, that has to sit near the bedside. That may sound like a minor inconvenience, but for someone trying to continue with a moderately active life in two locations, there is nothing minor about it at all. I cannot help but wonder whether there is a limit to which I would go to possibly – remember, there are no guarantees – extend my life by some small amount.
Perhaps I am a bit too prone to morbid thinking, but I, as undoubtedly most cancer patients in remission, think about what happens if the cancer returns. I am not sure I could get through this again either physically or emotionally. More importantly, I am not sure I want to put my husband and daughters through this again. I know they will all pooh-pooh this, but there may be a point beyond which I would no longer feel that the meager ends justify the heroic means.
How did I get to this after watching a funny bit about nutritional supplements? Does it have anything to do with the fact that it is Friday the 13th?
Have a nice weekend!
Love,
Rebecca
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