A New Life, A New Heart

[DonH]

This is always such a hard decision with CA patients - and others I'm sure. I was talking with a longtime female friend of mine this weekend who has been battling stage 4 lung CA for about 18 months now. She's already surpassed the median one survival and is getting close to doubling it. Never smoked a single cigarette or anything in her life - still... In her case, all of the rather aggressive treatment and the many side effects that go with it have extended her life - and with decide quality as she was out at an Oktoberfest when I spoke with her. Not the case for a guitar player friend of mine who first started with symptoms about a year ago, was diagnosed in mid-October with Stage 3b and was dead by January 5th. In his case, his life was neither extended nor the quality improved with all of the treatment he went through. It's such a hard "guess" to know what to do.

I was really surprised to read your comment about the 30 day survival rate for CABG. I was then totally shocked when I read one study that showed that the 30-day mortality decreased from 4.07% in 1999–2000 to 2.44% in 2011–2012. So at least this one study shows it at nearly two and a half percent. For some reason I thought it was much lower than that. Clearly I was mistaken. Still, if it were me and I had the chance of being one of the 92 people out of 100 that survive the surgery and had a good chance at a longer quality of life, I think I'd opt for the surgery as well.

CMM is very lucky you came into his life. I know if it were me, I'd rather go through something like this with a loving, caring new female friend, girlfriend, whatever, than by myself. Bonus if said lady had solid medical knowledge. It's great you are stayng with him and helping him like this kml. You just really never know where life will take you.