If you haven't already, please, do this now. For me. Become an organ donor.
Well, the test results came back and the news is bad. My uncle, who I previously mentioned might have liver cancer (although he has never had a drink of alcohol in his life), does in fact have liver cancer. He went in to the hospital about a week ago so that the oncologist could do some exploratory surgery, and it was confirmed.
The cancer is invasive. The cancer is aggressive. The cancer is rare and, even had it been caught right away, there is no known cure or treatment for this kind of liver cancer. While nearly unknown in the United States, this kind of liver cancer is prevalent in Africa and Southern Asia, and comes from a kind of mold found on nuts from these areas. The mold produces a toxin (Aflatoxin or something like that) which causes the liver cancer.
My uncle has never been to Africa or Asia. I would guess that someone bought him some sort of nut sampler for Christmas or something, and that’s how he got the toxin.
My uncle will be dead in under 2 weeks.
His liver and surrounding tissues are liquefying, and the people at the hospital already suctioned out 54 pounds of fluid from him. Today, they sent him home with a hospice service to wait for his death.
It kills me that I’m up here in Seattle with no way to go home to see him. I wish I had the money to buy a plane ticket, but the one I have is non-refundable, and I don’t have enough money to buy another one. I won’t fly out of here until the end of the week, and by that time, it may be too late.
Whenever bad things happen, I tend to switch off the emotional side of my brain and focus on policy. I ask questions like, “How could this have been prevented?” and “What should we do next time to ensure that this turns out better?” In that vein, I have come to three policy determinations.
1) We should increase the amount of funding for cancer research. It galls me to think that we have spent almost 300 billion dollars on the Iraq war, when we haven’t federally subsidized cancer research in that amount even if you added it up over the past decade.
2) We need to reinvigorate the stem cell research programs in the United States. The United States and a select few other countries are the forefront of scientific research in the world today. It is unacceptable for us to turn our backs on what is potentially the most astounding breakthrough in modern medical science just because a vocal minority want to save frozen embryos which will never (ever) develop into children. If we could have started regrowth of my uncle’s liver when it was first caught, we could have halted the cancer in its tracks.
And most importantly,
3) We need to reverse the presumption on organ donation. Currently, when a person dies, their organs are not-transplantable unless the person has give their explicit permission to do so. It is one of the vilest wrongs I can imagine to bury or cremate viable organs that could save hundreds of thousands of lives each year just because people were too lazy to fill out a living will or get the required signatures on the back of their driver’s license. To me, burying viable organs is like standing in front of a person who is starving to death and burning a large, sumptuous meal, just to watch it burn. It’s wrong, and we, as an enlightened society of the 21st century, ought not to allow it to happen ever again. If you want your organs buried in the ground, denying others the right to continue their lives when you die, you ought to have to make that clear, rather than the other way around.
The cancer is invasive. The cancer is aggressive. The cancer is rare and, even had it been caught right away, there is no known cure or treatment for this kind of liver cancer. While nearly unknown in the United States, this kind of liver cancer is prevalent in Africa and Southern Asia, and comes from a kind of mold found on nuts from these areas. The mold produces a toxin (Aflatoxin or something like that) which causes the liver cancer.
My uncle has never been to Africa or Asia. I would guess that someone bought him some sort of nut sampler for Christmas or something, and that’s how he got the toxin.
My uncle will be dead in under 2 weeks.
His liver and surrounding tissues are liquefying, and the people at the hospital already suctioned out 54 pounds of fluid from him. Today, they sent him home with a hospice service to wait for his death.
It kills me that I’m up here in Seattle with no way to go home to see him. I wish I had the money to buy a plane ticket, but the one I have is non-refundable, and I don’t have enough money to buy another one. I won’t fly out of here until the end of the week, and by that time, it may be too late.
Whenever bad things happen, I tend to switch off the emotional side of my brain and focus on policy. I ask questions like, “How could this have been prevented?” and “What should we do next time to ensure that this turns out better?” In that vein, I have come to three policy determinations.
1) We should increase the amount of funding for cancer research. It galls me to think that we have spent almost 300 billion dollars on the Iraq war, when we haven’t federally subsidized cancer research in that amount even if you added it up over the past decade.
2) We need to reinvigorate the stem cell research programs in the United States. The United States and a select few other countries are the forefront of scientific research in the world today. It is unacceptable for us to turn our backs on what is potentially the most astounding breakthrough in modern medical science just because a vocal minority want to save frozen embryos which will never (ever) develop into children. If we could have started regrowth of my uncle’s liver when it was first caught, we could have halted the cancer in its tracks.
And most importantly,
3) We need to reverse the presumption on organ donation. Currently, when a person dies, their organs are not-transplantable unless the person has give their explicit permission to do so. It is one of the vilest wrongs I can imagine to bury or cremate viable organs that could save hundreds of thousands of lives each year just because people were too lazy to fill out a living will or get the required signatures on the back of their driver’s license. To me, burying viable organs is like standing in front of a person who is starving to death and burning a large, sumptuous meal, just to watch it burn. It’s wrong, and we, as an enlightened society of the 21st century, ought not to allow it to happen ever again. If you want your organs buried in the ground, denying others the right to continue their lives when you die, you ought to have to make that clear, rather than the other way around.
posted by The Academian | 3:10 PM
2 Comments:
Sorry about your uncle.
ya, so sorry to hear about your uncle. :(
i totally agree about reversing the presumption on organ donation too. i have the donor heart on my license, but i just noticed today that i ALSO have to sign the back, date it, and get a witness signature! why do i need to jump through hoops to donate my organs? people who want to be buried with theirs ought to have to get a witnesses signature confirming that they actually want to try to take it all with them.
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