Act III scene 2

zz top, cheap whisky and a living will

and

Into a Nursing Home

       Even casual readers of the Desk know the battle that has been raging in Mrs. Desk's body for the last four years.
       If not, check these links: cancer, cancer 2, Pseudomonas.

       So here goes.
       The Desk's family is transforming the front bedroom of the house into a hospital room for when, if, Mrs. Desk comes home. In doing so the Desk and its helpers, supervisors, encouragers, found everything from a three Christmas's old brand new in the wrapper shirt, to a stray .380 auto round- also brand new, never fired or reloaded. It is amazing the stuff you come across when doing some serious cleaning and rearranging of where you've been kicking off your work shoes for a dozen years.
       Every room in the house, including the bathrooms have been hit. Major pieces of furniture have been or will be moved, including a queen size bed which is to be thrown out in the next day or so. A filing cabinet is sitting in the kitchen homeless. Milk crates full of school supplies have been moved from room to room then back again.
       OK, the Desk will admit it here and now. It is NOT the world's best housekeeper, it is an unorganized packrat and incorrigible slob. It has shoes older than its high school age daughter. It still has the badge it wore when it worked in a state prison, seven years ago. Files and books and cordless drills fight for space around the fish tank on its home desk which it cannot use for a desk because of the boxes and dog toys and spare parts from printers the Desk doesn't have any more. Not only can't the Desk use the desk as a desk, it can barely use the kitchen table as a desk because of the old black and white TV, bag of mixed nuts in the shell and leftovers from the take out Chinese lunch all over it.
       The house is a wreck. And nobody really cares.

       Nobody cares.

       Mrs. Desk. Is in the Hospital. Dying.

       It is that simple.

       All aggressive treatment of her cancer and supportive therapies have been stopped. It is medically pointless and was just making her sick.
       She will be sent home sometime in the coming week (as of this writing) or sent to a nursing home, or some combination thereof, for the final act.
       It looks so cold and impersonal in print. The Desk has told the story to aunts and uncles and great grandmothers and Mrs. Desk's hairdresser cousin Carol, and it still doesn't believe it truth be told.
       Yes it has researched everything to do with Cancer and its treatment to the point where it could probably walk in cold and sober and take the Oncology CNA test and pass it on the first try. But still.
       To have it sink in is another matter altogether.
       To admit it to yourself is something else again.

       The Desk told somebody in the last couple of days that it is as emotionally dead as the fossil skeleton it saw last month at Disney's Animal Kingdom. This has been our lives for the last four years. Treatments, and tests, and appointments and....

       The worst thing an oncologist can do to a cancer patient or their family is to give them hope.

       Yes. Sometimes you can beat the cancer.

       Sometimes, occasionally, now and then. Whatever.

       But when the cancer is not responding to treatment and spreads and grows and invades other organs no matter what you, they, anybody does, to give them HOPE that this next treatment of some drug you can't pronounce that is literally 'right out of the monkey's butt' in the approval process, is uncalled for.
       "It is the best we have for this stage of disease."
       Yeah sure buddy, and the Cubs will be in the Divisional Playoffs this year.
       Yes, it could happen. Miracles happen. Alien Abductions happen. ANYTHING CAN Happen.
       But to go through all that speech and then find out that there is only a ten to fifteen percent chance that the latest and greatest will work as advertised...

       There is a point when the best thing you can do for the patient is to make them comfortable and see who's on duty down in the chaplain's office.
       But the family shouldn't have to hold a gun on the doctor to find out that is the only realistic option available.
       No. We do not want the patient on a mechanical respirator, hold the tubes and pumps and brain wave monitor.
       When the patient looks like something from a 'Borg' episode of Star Trek things have gone too far.
       But why did the six foot four three hundred and ten pound desk have to stand folded armed and glaring down at the little sort of oriental doctor to get him to admit that further chemo was simply going to make her sick and do nothing against the cancer.
       He was still selling that nastiest of Cancer Treatment Options: Possible Hope.

       HOPE.

       Damn that is a nasty word. Almost Obscene in this context.

       No. It IS Obscene. Just like #(*)%&
       It should be on the 'Seven Dirty Words' list from TV.

       Hope, as defined in scripture, is:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
                            Hebrews 11 : 1 (KJV)

       Hope is FAITH. Hope is only valid in the Eternal. The Realm of God... Not Doctors.

       With Mrs. Desk things did not get to the Borg point. Almost, but not quite. They talked about the feeding tube and she is on a urinary catheter, but no more. The feeding tube is still an option, but things may not get to that point. Now we are talking about controlling nausea and pain and stuff instead of treatment.
       This is where the Living Will comes in.

       Somewhere down that path you HAVE to tell the doctors where they can put their needles and pills and nuclear medicine scanners. But you shouldn't need to surround the patient's bed with hungry junkyard dogs
       Circle the wagons and....

       "... send lawyers, guns, and money." -Warren Zevon

       The story of Mrs. Desk's life is at that break between the middle scene of the last act and the final one.
       In Shakespeare's RICHARD III in the last speech of Act Four (the next to the last scene of the play) King Richard addresses us.

Slave, I have set my life upon a cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the die:
I think there be six Richmonds in the field;
Five have I slain to-day instead of him.
A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

       It is not supposed to work this way. Women, indeed, Wives, are supposed to outlive their husbands by five years and change. The National Center for Health Sciences wouldn't lie to us now would they?
       Yet, as did Richard, we have cast our die and await our Fate. (The Desk still wonders what the King was doing playing dice... anyway.)

       Enough of this for tonight... more Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky is called for.

       "Ice! Ice! what's left of my kingdom for some ice!"

...

       There is still hope...

-selah-

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrews 12 : 1 - 2 (NIV)

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