It was a music friend’s funeral recently. He died of lung cancer. There was much in common with my own situation.
He was very fit, and in early autumn was walking in mountains in Scotland. He retired a year ago from his job as head of English in a secondary school in the Sheffield area, and had just started the second year of a Masters course in Creative Writing. But there the similarities end.
In October, he noticed a slight shortness of breath when walking up hill and playing his flute. The doctor sent him for an urgent scan (unavailable to me during covid lockdown), and he was diagnosed with lung cancer. An early thought was to offer help with questions from our own personal experiences, seeing that is what I also have, and have had a wide range of tests and treatments. However, a day or two later, we heard he was in hospital after a stroke, and may then have had more. He died fifteen days after diagnosis. Fifteen days! He was 64.
And I’m still here after three and a half years, struggling, but still here and hoping, with luck, to see 2026.
His cancer was in the plural membrane, not one of the lobes.
It is a shame that your musical friend did not retire a few years earlier. It seems so unfair that he should die so soon after hanging up his mortarboard and gown.
ReplyDeleteSuch a short journey from walking in the mountains to a shockingly unexpected early death.
ReplyDeleteLife does work in mysterious ways, doesn't it? RIP to your musical friend.
ReplyDeleteThat was so sudden. And yes, such a different story from yours.
ReplyDeleteI guess it was the stroke(s) that sped things up so much for him. A terrible blow for his family and friends, but maybe a comforting thought that he enjoyed walking in the mountains just recently, and didn't suffer for so long - something I would have wished for my Dad, actually.
ReplyDeleteSo many people aren't making it to old age. The Bible says our life span is three score and ten. I know from personal bereavement this year that your dreams die with them.
ReplyDeleteHello Tasker,
ReplyDeleteClearly your friend was a man of action and adventure and that is a very good way to live life. The sadness is that he did not get to enjoy his retirement which would surely have given him even more freedom to roam. We are sure that you will treasure your memories of him and he will, of course, live on in your heart.
And, you must take the greatest care of yourself. We all must keep on keeping on!
His body was different than your body and his strokes and cancer are not yours. Wishing you continued strength and peace.
ReplyDeleteSo sad for you to lose a friend. RIP.
ReplyDeleteMy condolences to you and your friend's family. May he rest in peace.
ReplyDeleteThat was sudden. Maybe he had some symptoms before and ignored them. Men are bad at going to see a doctor. It is hard, though, when friends of a similar age die
ReplyDeleteYikes. I wonder if the stress of the diagnosis contributed to the stroke? It seems odd that they would be totally unrelated, though I suppose it's possible. Anyway, I'm sorry to hear you've lost a friend, and yes, here's to your continued medical persistence!
ReplyDeleteI wonder what your friend's thoughts were at the end ?
ReplyDeleteLife is baffling. Yet we know more about life than any generation.
Lewis Wolpert : *Scientific beliefs are special, and different from any
other kind of thinking. Scientific thinking is not programmed into our
brains, and only one society invented scientific beliefs.*
Lewis Wolpert, (1929-2021)
Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. Page 201.
He was Professor of Biology as Applied to Medicine at University
College, London.
All his adult life he struggled with crippling depression.
I am so sorry to hear about your friend. That's like my sister who thought she had inflammation from taking Ibuprophin, and thought she had hurt herself from moving heavy boxes at her store. Until finally after months with worsening pain she went to the ER and said, "I'm not leaving here until they tell me what's wrong." It was breast cancer metastasized throughout her body, and she died 10 days later. Cancer is crazy unpredictable. I don't trust it at all.
ReplyDeleteTerribly hard on his family and friends to lose him so suddenly but the long decline (and dreadful wasting, odema etc - my Dad suffered that route) is tough too. There is simply no good or fair way where cancer is concerned.
ReplyDeleteA tragedy to die so young and sad for his family and friends but as long as everyone remembers him, he still part of the universe.
ReplyDeleteCancer is very, very capricious. My own father was gone within 6 months of his diagnosis of lung cancer. I am convinced that part of it depends on your own outlook. When he was diagnosed, he said he was dying. He did. I like Thelma's words.
ReplyDeleteI've seen it before with friends and colleagues, we all deserve a long and happy retirement but life doesn't work out that way.
ReplyDeleteI think you meant pleural, not plural. I am pulling for you to see not just 2026 but well past it (emphasis on the 'well'). You have many friends in blogland, tasker, and I'm sure they are doing the same.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you're still here. My dear pal, Mary, began having shoulder and neck pain in the fall of 2021. She mistakenly thought it might have been a tooth ache gone rouge. It turned out to be lung cancer. She was an amazing person and friend. x
ReplyDelete