Reading my local newspaper a la internet yesterday morning, I stumbled across an article about a middle-age man medical doctor who is living his last days in the final stages of a neurological disorder known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The afflicted doctor shared how he found himself unable to lift his arms above his head so he had to give up basketball and golf, and how he cut short his medical career when he grew too tired to get through a work day. He quit singing when forming words became too difficult. The article went on that this 55-year young middle-age man has been contemplating how many more losses he can endure before life is no longer worth living.
What glued me to this article were two things. First, he was my physician about 15 years ago and I remember giving him a piece of my mind one visit when he did something that offended me. Second, as a card carrying 100% Roman Catholic, I follow my faith and believe that life ends only when God and nobody else decides. I found comfort later in the article when this dying doctor shared that he is against euthanasia and assisted suicide; believing still to this day of the Hippocratic oath he learned in medical school which pledges that doctors “will give no deadly medicine” nor “suggest any such counsel.”
The food for thought in the article was the part about how he maintains a mental list of things most important to him, from kissing his wife to taking vacations to enjoying food. He shared that he’ll be ready to die when he has lost “enough things that matter”. He calls his approach “100 things”.
Upon finishing the article and clicking on to other morning news, I made a promise that I would include my former doctor and his family in my prayers and thoughts as he enjoys his final days, and to privately thank him for cultivating in me the desire to define my final 100 things.
Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum
The afflicted doctor shared how he found himself unable to lift his arms above his head so he had to give up basketball and golf, and how he cut short his medical career when he grew too tired to get through a work day. He quit singing when forming words became too difficult. The article went on that this 55-year young middle-age man has been contemplating how many more losses he can endure before life is no longer worth living.
What glued me to this article were two things. First, he was my physician about 15 years ago and I remember giving him a piece of my mind one visit when he did something that offended me. Second, as a card carrying 100% Roman Catholic, I follow my faith and believe that life ends only when God and nobody else decides. I found comfort later in the article when this dying doctor shared that he is against euthanasia and assisted suicide; believing still to this day of the Hippocratic oath he learned in medical school which pledges that doctors “will give no deadly medicine” nor “suggest any such counsel.”
The food for thought in the article was the part about how he maintains a mental list of things most important to him, from kissing his wife to taking vacations to enjoying food. He shared that he’ll be ready to die when he has lost “enough things that matter”. He calls his approach “100 things”.
Upon finishing the article and clicking on to other morning news, I made a promise that I would include my former doctor and his family in my prayers and thoughts as he enjoys his final days, and to privately thank him for cultivating in me the desire to define my final 100 things.
Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum
2 comments:
Very good blog today.
Thank you Charles.
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