
Breathing - cromulent
http://blog.duncandavidson.com/2010/02/breathing.html
======
whyenot
This brought tears to my eyes. I know exactly what he is talking about, and he
described it better than I ever could.

I saw a talk by someone from Stanford Hospital on diagnosing lung cancer a few
weeks ago and the statistics are dismal. Most people have nodules in their
lungs that will show up as false positives on scans. The window where a
possible tumor on a scan is large enough that it's worth risking a biopsy and
where you catch the tumor early enough is very small. By the time a patient
has symptoms, it is too late, the cancer has already metastasized and spread
to other parts of the body. Across all forms of lung cancer, median survival
time is less than seven months after diagnosis.

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chuhnk
"The most horrible thing about watching a cancer like this kill your sister is
that you can’t give up hope, yet hope is something that you can’t drum up in
large doses. Evidence and facts work against that. But still you hope. And
pulled between the two, eventually you can’t even breath."

I really have to agree with this statement. My dad was recently diagnosed with
stage 3 myeloma at 56 years old and is fighting his way back from what looked
like the end. He has a 30% chance of surviving beyond 5 years. Hope is
difficult, you hope that he will be the exception, the one that defies all
scientific data. But the numbers say eventually the cancer will beat him.

What can you do? Does life stop? Even my father says life has to go on, I am
400 miles away doing my job, paying my bills and he's just trying to keep
going.

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DanielBMarkham
Excellent essay.

Over the past few months we've discovered that my mother has inoperable
cancer.

I know the feeling. As do many others, I'm afraid.

~~~
mleonhard
My mother fought breast cancer for 4 years, until 2 weeks ago. Don't wait too
long to start hospice care and get your mom the best pain medicines.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
We got her into hospice last week, and are moving her to be closer to family
this week.

She still thinks it's all temporary, though. One on level she knows the
doctors can't do anything, but on another level she really, really, really
wants to believe that it'll all just go away if she ignores it enough.

The emotions of the parent when they get older and die was something I was not
expecting, and it's definitely the hardest part.

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rodyancy
This is a touching piece of writing. I think anybody who has lost someone
close can relate to this. It is tough being pulled between continuing and
mourning. You never know what to do, and no matter what you do you're no
closer to the one you lost.

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gr366
How do you comment on something so heartfelt and meaningful other than to say
I'm very sorry for his loss but deeply grateful that he shared this.

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tom_ilsinszki
Death is almost a taboo in our society. I don't really know how to handle it,
or what to think about it. It's just sad.

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scorpioxy
Terrible story but beautifully written.

These types always make me reconsider the value of the work I am doing.
Because it seems so inconsequential to be writing code when so many
significant problems in the world remain unsolved.

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rogermugs
1 in 1 people die.

i'm leaving this comment here and not on his blog because, while true, its not
very graceful.

death is a part of life for all of us, and yet we cant process it. i don't
blame him.

~~~
larrywright
True, but having experienced both I can say that there's a big difference
between someone in their 80s dying - we expect that, to some degree - and
someone in their 30s or 40s dying way before they should.

~~~
rogermugs
agreed... there is a difference. a big one indeed... but both inevitably lead
there. i'm not saying therefore we should all go out and kill ourselves...
just that its an inevitability. and very few people struggle with the reality
of what that means in this life.

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Snark7
Huh.

My mother (age 67) got breast cancer in 2007. She did all of the treatment for
it and was basically free of it 12-18 months later.

Fuck yea.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Your mother was lucky to be of an age when some cancers grow slowly:

 _"Some cancers, such as particular cancers of the prostate, stomach and
breast may grow extremely slowly in older people."_

from:
[http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Cancerinformation/Livingwithanda...](http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Cancerinformation/Livingwithandaftercancer/Practicalissues/Cancerolderpeople/Cancerinlaterlife.aspx)

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CytokineStorm
Was I the only one left wondering why this ever made it onto Hacker News? If
you want personal essays read the New Yorker.

~~~
gr366
Would it feel more relevant if you were familiar with the author's
credentials? James Duncan Davidson, among other things, wrote Tomcat and the
Java build tool Ant (and got both donated from Sun to the Apache Software
Foundation). He wrote or cowrote a number of O'Reilly books on Cocoa and OS X,
and contributed a chapter on deployment to the well known Agile Web
Development with Rails. All that prior to his budding career as a
photographer.

Having that information might make it feel more appropriate in this forum, but
I would hope a topic like this, which will affect everyone at some point in
their life, would be fair game on HN.

