6 weeks

Surgical ward rounds with the colorectal team have not been exciting or fruitful. Unlike my brief stint with the breast/endocrine team where the fellow would ask me questions as we walked from bed to bed, all I do is stand there and look good (more standing and less looking good on days when I haven't gotten much sleep). Breasts: 1, Ass: 0

Today we saw a man with advanced stage liver cancer with multiple organ metastases. The palliative care team had told him he had maybe 6 weeks left to live (I always get a bit sad when I see the palliative care stickers in charts). He had developed a bit of bowel obstruction and we were consulted with the possibility of resecting a portion of his large intestine, removing the obstruction, and giving him a stoma to collect his feces. I was surprised at how little he understood about his condition. Nobody had fully explained to him why he should have this bowel surgery when he thought the cancer was in his liver. Shouldn't we be operating on his liver to take out the cancer?

Although I was tired of standing and looking good all morning, I was really glad that my registrar paused the round, sat down, listened to the patient, and answered all of his questions. "We can't operate on your liver cancer because it's spread too much. The bowel surgery won't cure you but will hopefully make it so that you can eat solid food again. There are significant risks of this bowel surgery and, in your current weakened state, all of them are increased dramatically." In the end the decision will be up to him.


If I was told I had only 6 weeks left to live right now, what would I do? Would I finish off my last two weeks of surgery, studying hard to pass the last set of exams for the year or would I just quit immediately? Would I fly around the world doing things that I've always wanted to do before my time expires? Like...go meet Brooke Fraser (and get her to autograph my never-to-be-washed-again arm? hey, it'd only be for 6 weeks); see Lincoln Brewster and John Mayer live in concert (get them to sign my guitar); skydiving; bungee-jumping; spend a weekend riding roller-coasters in Cedar Point, Ohio; go snowboarding in the alps from a helicopter? Probably not. In and of themselves, they would all be pretty pointless I think (and supremely selfish) - utterly meaningless and a chasing of the wind once I breathe my last breath and my heart beats it's last beat. But perhaps it wouldn't be meaningless to those around me? What if I spent as much time as I could with my family or met up with as many friends as I could or called up all the friends that I've neglected to keep in touch with over the years?

Who knows, maybe I actually only have one day left. Maybe I need to just live such that nothing much in my life would change because I'm already maximizing every single moment I have investing in things that last forever...something that moth and rust can't destroy and that thieves can't steal.

"I tell you the truth,
unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies,
it remains only a single seed.
But if it dies,
it produces many seeds.

The man who loves his life will lose it,
while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Whoever serves me must follow me;
and where I am, my servant also will be.
My Father will honor the one who serves me."
- Jesus Christ