Robert S. is dying today. He wants to share his thoughts.
November 14, 2020 5:13 PM   Subscribe

Robert S., on Reddit.

Rest in peace, Robert. You are not alone.
posted by cotton dress sock (29 comments total) 63 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thanks for the reminder that life is precious and temporary.
posted by signsofrain at 5:39 PM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]


I hate cancer.

I hate lung cancer with the fire of a thousand suns because it took my mom before she could meet my sons. I hate it took Robert, even though he is 4 years younger than me, because he never got to know the joy of a son's embrace.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 5:51 PM on November 14, 2020 [5 favorites]


Happy that he got to be so lucid so near the end and share his thoughts. Relieved that he had adequate palliative care, as so many do not.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:04 PM on November 14, 2020 [12 favorites]


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posted by lalochezia at 6:06 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]


Got only part of the way into that before I started to recognize aspects of my Dad's death last summer in his description of someone who slid downhill faster than expected and received insufficient palliation. Can't read further because I do not have space for those feelings just now, but bless this man for having the courage to talk about this so openly at a time when he must be in severe pain and distress. It's a perspective that's hard to know because the people who get this close to the end generally don't have the time or ability left to talk about it.

May he rest in peace.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:30 PM on November 14, 2020 [11 favorites]


Not everyone dies so quickly while still being lucid enough to speak eloquently on it. One doctor in the comments said his perspective is invaluable and will shape how they treat patients in the future and I agree, he made his death a gift to others who are suffering the same fate, and that is worth a great deal indeed.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:53 PM on November 14, 2020 [22 favorites]


My mom died from pancreatic cancer 22 years ago. What she went through haunts me to this day. The more we talk about it, perhaps the better we can make for people going through it now.
posted by mollweide at 7:23 PM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]


In September, I lost one of my oldest and dearest friends to cancer. She had completed her chemo and the doctors declared she was in remission, and then two months later she was gone. A talented, intelligent, strong, beautiful woman felled in a few weeks. I don't know what the end was like for her, because no one outside her immediate family knew she had reached the end, but this man's final words give me hope that she had caring people to help her go. I don't know if I could bear it to think otherwise.
posted by briank at 7:32 PM on November 14, 2020 [3 favorites]


My father died of lung cancer when I was four years old. (He was a heavy smoker. People were back then.) He’s a wispy, ghostly presence in my life. I have maybe three or four vague, random, and disconnected memories of him. In one he’s bedridden in the house where we lived then, and I am oblivious to what’s happening. Otherwise, nothing, and I used to think that meant his passing hadn’t affected me, that I was too young at the time to be hurt by it. It’s only now, looking back, that I can see all the ways I grew up or didn’t grow up because he wasn’t there.

My little girl is four years old now. She’s so crazy about her dad. It’s hard to imagine all of that fading away if I were suddenly gone - just a handful of memories without any context, and a few photographs that don’t connect to any of them, that seem mysterious, like pictures of two strangers. But that’s my experience with my father. I have no reason to expect death at the moment, but neither did this guy a month ago.

I couldn’t face it the way he has. I have to be here for her. At the very least I have to be here long enough to form some kind of lasting presence in her life that she can carry into a difficult future. I could bear my own death, but not that slow fading in her mind. Of course the universe doesn’t ask us about these things. It does what it does.

Still, fuck cancer.
posted by Naberius at 7:46 PM on November 14, 2020 [21 favorites]


Lung cancer took my grandma. It was a long process and tore grandpa up. It also took my mom. This was a much shorter time. About a month and a half from diagnosis to passing, and she didn’t have many bad days. She was fine, getting ready to start chemo... and then a couple of days later, wham. However, we do realize in this case, it may not have been the worst thing, because she had been dealing with MS for ten years, and had lost a lot of muscle function. She was wheelchair bound and required help with daily tasks, and after seeing the Richard Pryor documentary and seeing the condition MS put him in... oh fuck no. My wife lost her grandpa to it over 30 years ago, and she still misses him something fierce. It’s definitely something that scares me. I need to be here for her.

Fuck cancer.
posted by azpenguin at 7:57 PM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]


We lost my mother’s twin sister to pancreatic cancer five years ago this summer. It was less than two months between diagnosis and death. An inexperienced doctor talked her into starting a round of strong chemo that led to her developing a massive skin infection on her legs. Her last weeks alternated between agonizing pain and semiconsciousness. The look on her face after she was gone was the polar opposite of “peaceful.” I wish I’d been able to talk to her near the end, and know what she was thinking and feeling.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:11 PM on November 14, 2020 [3 favorites]


Just a little more than three years ago, I lost my best friend to glioblastoma.

A few years before that, another friend almost died when, during removal of a cancerous kidney, a device failed and did not properly seal the artery into the kidney, requiring what he refers to as “the full grease and oil change” (six and a half liters of blood and fillers!), but they did save him and he is cancer-free today and doing well (except, as his doctor told him, he shouldn’t get into any bar fights where he might get stabbed in the remaining kidney).

A third friend died in pain when a doctor did the shittiest diagnosis ever, and did not properly check his colon cancer, which if he had done it initially could have been treated, but ended up with him untreated and dying in the charity ward.

Fuck cancer and fuck this world sometimes.
posted by mephron at 8:13 PM on November 14, 2020 [9 favorites]


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posted by anadem at 8:32 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]


I have been watching so many recent Twitter posts about relatives' and friends' COVID-19 deaths, and about positive test results, and wondering what there would be to say as one faces a possible-terminal health crisis.

Do you put on a brave face? Do you scribble down all your passwords? Do you confess things -- or chose secrets to go unrevealed?

Jesus, end-of-life is hard enough when handled with grace like Robert S. does, but to go into a health crisis not knowing whether you'll emerge or not.... Yikes.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:34 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]


Also: Naberius, I love that you're conscious of this, and making the effort to be more and to do more.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:36 PM on November 14, 2020 [1 favorite]


TW for Suicide:

I am reminded of the documentary The Bridge about people that jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and survived. A common thread in their stories was that the instant they were over the railing and there was no going back, all those woes and everything that seemed like an unbearable, insurmountable problem was suddenly solvable and tiny compared to the immediate problem: they'd just jumped off a goddamn bridge.

May we all face our own time with his grace and courage.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 8:43 PM on November 14, 2020 [22 favorites]


This is not lung-cancer related, just related to other cancers discussed in this thread: Lynch syndrome is something you can get tested for, if you want. If your family has a history of colorectal, endometrial, uterine, ovarian, pancreatic, kidney cancers or glioblastomas, it might be some Lynch syndrome stuff.

I was sent to a genetic counselor after both parents got colon cancer, and it seems like these genes are running right through the family. Existing in the US healthcare system as I do, I had the option to get tested for Lynch, but the counselor let me know that I should get as much life insurance as I wanted before the results came back, because I would be a bit uninsurable afterward. I didn't get tested, since my results could have affected my sibling and all the cousins on that side.

The good side to that story is that if you suspect that's what's running through your family, you can get screened for a lot of its related cancers in a normal physical. (It is a huge assumption to assume that any American at all has a regular physical. If you have one, there are tests your primary person can bring up if your family is Lynchy.) Knowing you might be prone to certain cancers can help you request certain cancer screenings, which are almost always easy.

Anyway, cancer killed my mom and my favorite uncles and has been trying hard on a number of people I love. Thank you, cotton dress sock, for posting this, and thank you to everyone who told your stories. Thank you to anyone who knows anything about palliative care posting up, because our culture is so bad at talking about what people need at the end.
posted by lauranesson at 11:22 PM on November 14, 2020 [4 favorites]


My father died almost two years ago, of a glioblastoma. There were just over six months between his first visit to the doctor, complaining of headaches, until he died. During those six months, he underwent surgery to remove the tumor, then six weeks of debilitating radiation treatments. None of his treatments bought him much time. He wanted to die at home so we made that happen for him. He was a difficult patient who brought my mother and I to tears more than once with his unkind words. No matter, we did all we could for him and I felt it an honour to be at his side when he died.

My father was never a Stoic when it came to pain. Growing up with him, his every stubbed toe was good for a loud outburst, every head cold was a debilitating trial. But during his last weeks, he never complained of pain. Being a curious person and knowing he was close to death, I looked into what to expect when someone is dying. The most common thing is increasing tiredness, more and more sleeping, until sleeping become unconsciousness, then something like a coma, then death. This is absolutely what it was like for my dad. Every day he drifted further away from us, the living. The last meaningful exchange I had with him was telling him that my sister had brought over Chinese food. For years we had winced at his casually racist insistence on calling it 'C***** Nosh' and pleaded with him to stop doing so. I told him she was there with some 'C****** Nosh' and he raised one of his so expressive eyebrows in a gesture of amusement. This may have been the last communication he made from that far-off place where he existed at that time. Four days later, he was gone.

Since he died, I have been unable to listen to the Pink Floyd song, Comfortably Numb because although it's not about dying per se, the imagery of drifting away, 'this is not how I am'....well it hits me in the gut so hard I can hardly breathe. Today my associate had left YouTube running his playlist and it came on (it's not a song either of us listen to a lot, even before this) and I had to walk out of the house.

Anyway, my father died a peaceful death and an unremarkable one. I heard this CBC documentary not too long afterward, and the doctor who is featured says people's deaths are 'mostly okay' and I suppose it was....https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whitecoat/it-s-not-what-you-see-in-the-movies-doctor-demystifies-dying-1.5496491
posted by alltomorrowsparties at 1:09 AM on November 15, 2020 [11 favorites]


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posted by james33 at 6:27 AM on November 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


I thought this was really beautiful, and I hope the rest of his journey is / was as easy and pain-free as possible.

But I hate that there’s been such a history of bad players on the internet, that I can’t read something like this and let it move /me without a twinge of “is this real?”
posted by Mchelly at 8:23 AM on November 15, 2020 [9 favorites]


My father-in-law died last week, while I was still an hour away from the hospital.

The only good thing we can say about his cancer, especially pancreatic cancer, is that it was epically fast, five weeks from diagnosis to death. I don't think he was ever really in pain, just varying quantities of discomfort.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 11:58 AM on November 15, 2020 [4 favorites]


I read this yesterday and it brought back memories of traveling to Ohio to see my brother-in-law for Thanksgiving in what we suspected were his last days. He'd had abdominal surgery along with chemo and was a shell of his former self. His wife was in complete denial but we knew. Originally diagnosed in July, he was gone before Christmas.

I know far too many people taken by cancer. We all do.
posted by tommasz at 12:26 PM on November 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


He was given Versed at 3 PM his local time today and, presumably, passed soon afterwards.

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posted by mephron at 4:41 PM on November 15, 2020 [5 favorites]


. for a man who chose not to be silent.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:46 PM on November 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


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posted by cotton dress sock at 5:18 PM on November 15, 2020


Robert S's hospice volunteer doula has posted an update. He has passed, peacefully.

R.I.P.
posted by vitout at 6:52 AM on November 16, 2020 [10 favorites]


I ran into this post two evenings ago because I saw that he was on suboxone and thought "hey, another person on suboxone! I wonder what they have to say" and then as I read I realized he was a cancer patient (like me) and he was far too young (like me) and it ripped me apart.

My cancer is so rare that the docs refused to give me odds, but some googling puts my 5 year survival odds at around 10-20%. The chemo has given me brain damage (the thing I am most proud of and have relied on the most in my life) - I'm trying to finish my PhD and I have to look up the categories for the index I have created every time I need to remember them, despite the fact that *I* invented them and I work with them every day. There are days when it's merely difficult and days when it's soul-crushing.

But as bad as it has been for me at times, I can't imagine being slammed with 4 weeks notice of my death. I've been dragging my feet about getting into shape again because my gym is closed and I hate running, but his post encouraged me to sign up for a softball tournament in January even though I haven't played in 3 years. I'm going to finish this response and go for the run because life is too fucking short to say "I'll do it tomorrow". So thank you, Robert.

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posted by zug at 11:26 AM on November 16, 2020 [27 favorites]


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posted by jragon at 8:04 PM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]


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posted by Joey Michaels at 6:12 PM on November 17, 2020 [1 favorite]


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