A Friend’s Death
He gets a disease and suffers from it and dies. Before that Kirt visits him in the hospital several times. Once when Chris went in for tests to see what was giving him so much pain. Other times when he was in the hospital suffering from the disease the tests showed he had, and then the last time the day before he died. Kirt also visited him at home between the times he was in the hospital and also met him at a coffee shop once, but Chris got so sick there that Kirt had to take him to the hospital.
Chris was sitting up in bed the first time Kirt saw him in the hospital. He said “I know I’m very sick, even if they don’t know what I got yet. But it’s not in the head. Meaning it’s not in my mind, because the truth is I think what I got’s going to spread to my head. But that’s not here nor there now. Right now I know I’m very sick in the liver, in the stomach — one of those organs around there and maybe a couple of them. I know it’s going to kill me but I don’t know when. I’m almost sure I won’t be around in a year or so, and my real feeling is I won’t last six months.”
Kirt told him “The worst thing you can do is diagnose yourself. That’s what we have doctors and pathologists and people like that for. Ninety percent of the time the patient’s wrong in his self-diagnosis. What I’ve heard is that about sixty to seventy percent of the time the results from the tests turn out to be much better than what the patient predicted they’d be and that about twenty percent of the time the results aren’t as bad as the patient thought. It’s fear that makes you think it’s worse than it is. Just go through the tests, try not to worry about anything, don’t build things way out of proportion, think you’re going to get well and feel better and that what you have isn’t so bad and in fact is nothing, and your chances of something not being wrong with you will greatly improve. It has something to do with the body’s chemistry, I heard, but don’t ask me to explain what exactly that is or how it works. All I know is that if you think positively about your health, you’re already a few percentage points — maybe even ten to fifteen percentage points — better off than if you think the worst about your physical condition. And eat well, do what the hospital people say, sleep well — all of it adds a percentage point or two to your getting better and staying healthy from then on.”
“No,” Chris said. “I know it’s bad, I know it’s terminal, and I can’t face it. Maybe if I had had years and years to get used to it, but coming so suddenly, I just don’t have the courage to die.”
The next time Kirt saw him was at Chris’s home. He said to Kirt “Well, I got the test results from the doctor this week and I turned out to be absolutely right. What I have is fatal. The word is that people with my disease and in the form it’s taken and rapid way it’s progressed, usually don’t last a year. So, unless a miraculous cure’s discovered in the next few months — and the researchers working on it aren’t even close to one — I’m on my way out for sure. I can’t face it. I’ll never adjust to it. I’m going to get crazier and crazier in the head because of it. Long suffering and then death are the two things I fear most. What should I do? Tell me, you’re smart — what should I do?”
“Think that everything’s going to be all right, and I mean that,” Kirt said. “Think that the doctors, for all they know, could be wrong too. Think that they’ll find that the most important test result that came back was wrong. Or that one of the treatments they give you will work a hundred percent. Or that they will discover a miracle cure for your disease in the next few months and one that will take effect immediately on you. Listen. Even if you told me now that only five percent of those who have your disease survive after a year, think that you’d be one of those five percent. You will live and eventually be healthy, believe me. I know it in my bones and everywhere else inside of me that you’re going to pull through, and you have to believe that too.”
Chris was admitted to the hospital a week later. When Kirt saw him there, Chris was suffering terribly. “Nothing they give me stops the pain,” he said. “The experimental painkiller that was giving me some relief apparently has hurt more people than it’s helped, so they took me off it for the time being till they test it out some more. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. They’re putting me on I.V. Please don’t tell me I’m going to get better. I’ve done nothing the past few months but get worse. If I’m going through this much pain without anything much to alleviate it, what should I expect to come next? I’m also as scared as I ever was not only of dying but of being dead. My brother, who to him spent a considerable sum to fly here, couldn’t take my complaining and morbid talk anymore and flew back to France. You’re in charge of running things for me if you’ll do it. These are my instructions: I want to be kept alive no matter what. Life support systems and experimental drugs and treatments, if the more proven stuff doesn’t work, all the way. In the end, anything they’ve never tried before but want to start on someone, give it a shot on me. Only after I’m flat and out dead do I want the systems turned off. I’ve written all this down and my last wish to you is to carry them out.”
Kirt said “Believe me, it’ll never come close to being that bad. I spoke to the doctor in charge on this floor and she’s very hopeful the present treatments will work on you and that a complete cure will be found in a year or two. And she swears nobody’s said to you that your condition is terminal.”
“They haven’t because I told them not to, but I know it is but don’t want to know for sure. That’ll make it even worse for me in the head. But if they did tell you there was no chance in the world for me, and I’m sure they have, you wouldn’t tell me, right? Because you know I don’t want to know, and besides that, your philosophy is to keep the patient thinking positively. And how could I think positively if the most positive person I know tells me I’m going to die in a few months? But you will carry out my instructions, won’t you?”
“They won’t be necessary, but I’ll do anything you want.”
In one of Kirt’s next visits to the hospital, Chris was lying on his back in bed. Tubes were in him, he could barely speak. He paused after every few words and most of the time Kirt had to strain to hear him. He did manage to say in one spurt “I told you so, didn’t I? On a stack of bibles: it’s everything I didn’t want.” It took him about a half-hour to say “Don’t bury me belowground. You mustn’t. A steel casket, thoroughly sealed. If steel isn’t the most airtight and impenetrable casket going, then get what is. I want nothing coming into my casket ever, or at least while my body’s still relatively intact. I want to dry up to almost nothing before anything’s able to get inside. Maybe in a hundred years, maybe in two. Tell my brother that when he returns for the funeral. Insist. I’ve signed and given to my lawyer a power of attorney putting you in total charge of whatever there might be of my estate and all the funeral arrangements and things once I’m gone. But my brother might fight it, and being my only blood relative and a battler when he sees what he thinks is waste, he might win. You’ve my original instructions?”