Doing Nothing

"Let me say to you now that to do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual." Gilbert, Intentions, Part II by Oscar Wilde

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone. . .but they've always worked for me." Hunter S. Thompson, quoted in Life, Jan. 1981

I went to the Stoddard Cancer Center yesterday. Got a CT taken, as well as blood counts, and went to see my oncologist. The tentative plan was to do another round of chemo unless the cancer had spread so far in the lung as to make chemo irrelevant.

I had been antibiotics for the previous 10 days ending Sunday and the cough and hacking I had was gone. After I stopped the antibiotics, the cough has come back some, but I'm no longer coughing up the white crap.

So we go in to see Dr. Heddinger, and he said that after reading the CT I have a partially collapsed right upper lung lobe and I could do one of three things: have chemo again, do a bronchoscopy (the procedure where they stab you in the back with a humongous needle), or do nothing. The CT showed stable tumor (at least in the lung), so he wasn't going to recommend chemo. The bronchoscopy is highly invasive, hit or miss on results, and in all likelihood would only reveal the partially collapsed lung which we can't do anything about. That left option three: Do nothing.

As an attorney, this was often my advice especially in criminal cases. It's hard for the attorney to give, because he or she isn't making any money doing nothing. It's hard for the client, because they want to feel like they (or their attorney) was hard at work on their case. So usually, they were too dumb to follow the advice and would either open their mouths as soon a cop asked them a question, or often, would actively seek out the police to "tell their side of the story." They ended up screwing themselves, of course, whereas the people who followed the advice often ended up with their cases dropped by the county attorney, or sometimes (if they came to me early enough) not even being charged.

Similarly, doctors don't make much if they are not performing procedures or surgeries and only running diagnostic tests. It's hard advice to give and to take. So I admire Dr. Heddinger even more for giving this advice.

This doesn't solve the brain mets problem upon which I'll probably have stereotactic surgery (again) in mid-May. But for now, it's morphine, Crown Royal and Smithwick's. Breakfast of Champions (with apologies to Kurt Vonnegut).