I've just stumbled upon a news item, which was dated 3 April, that Iain Banks had announced he had terminal cancer, and was unlikely to live for more than a year. I thought reading it that they'll have told him he may have up to a year, but really it will be 2-3 months. So I searched "Iain Banks health news" and sure enough he died on Sunday 9 June. 59 is too young to die.
I was watching an episode of Frankie the other night and a patient who knew she had terminal cancer and thought she had a couple of years and was planning to live them to the full was informed that it was worse than she thought and she only had a few months. So that upset her, but she was stoic about it and thought she'd better get on with living to the max.
People seem to imagine, and film/TV perpetuate this myth, that when you're told you have a couple of months to live then you're the same degree of well and then suddenly you drop dead. Er, news flash: you generally discover you have a disease like this after having lots of ill health and misdiagnosis and pain and misery. You die, because between the point of getting the diagnosis and the end, you just get more and more ill/frail/sick until your body packs in its basic functioning all together.
My message to myself and anyone reading is DO NOT put off living your life to the max and doing what you want to do until you are told you are on a count down. We're all on the bloody count down. You need to be doing it now as later you won't have the energy.
I was watching an episode of Frankie the other night and a patient who knew she had terminal cancer and thought she had a couple of years and was planning to live them to the full was informed that it was worse than she thought and she only had a few months. So that upset her, but she was stoic about it and thought she'd better get on with living to the max.
People seem to imagine, and film/TV perpetuate this myth, that when you're told you have a couple of months to live then you're the same degree of well and then suddenly you drop dead. Er, news flash: you generally discover you have a disease like this after having lots of ill health and misdiagnosis and pain and misery. You die, because between the point of getting the diagnosis and the end, you just get more and more ill/frail/sick until your body packs in its basic functioning all together.
My message to myself and anyone reading is DO NOT put off living your life to the max and doing what you want to do until you are told you are on a count down. We're all on the bloody count down. You need to be doing it now as later you won't have the energy.
