Quantity vs. Quality
Is longer necessarily better?
by Sue Saltmarsh
I’ve worked with and along-side HIV-positive people for the last seventeen years. I’ve watched them decline in health and I’ve lost too many. I’ve watched them rally miraculously when they were expected to die. I miss the ones I’ve lost and am grateful for the ones I’ve found and can embrace. But nothing really brought home the reality of the life and death see-saw they’re on until I had my own run-in with the specter of life-altering illness.
Granted, diabetes is nowhere near as destructive as HIV and the dangers of imminent death are fewer, but, as I’ve discussed with Jeff and other colleagues, after 52 years of pharmaceutical-free living, I can now understand better what a life-changing thing it is to be dependent on a pill, to be constantly aware of the precarious balancing act going on inside my own body. And it has brought me closer to my own mortality and consideration of the possibilities of how I am going to die.
I joked with a friend on my birthday that it would be a great way to go if I ate so much birthday cake that I went into a diabetic coma and never woke up. But I don’t think suicide-by-cake is the best approach! I know that when the time is right, the “how” won’t really matter. It’ll be good, whatever it is. Death is something that has never scared me, but dealing with the input of all the medical people I’ve interacted with since August, adjusting to the fact that I now have to do math (something I HATE!) every time I even consider eating, missing the sugar in my coffee; all of these things have made me think about the time I have left and how I want to spend it, in short, the quality vs. the quantity of my life.
these things have made me think about the time I have left and how I want to live itI am so very grateful to have found my doctor, Dr. David Moore—as with any hard lesson, I believe he is one of the reasons all this happened, since I might never have met him otherwise. He is a true healer and puts up with my incessant questions, doubts, resistance, and weirdness, knowing that I am nothing if not determined to maintain my right and power to decide my own fate. I feel sorry for him sometimes, because even though I think he sort of enjoys me and my irascibility, I will never be an “easy” patient. I struck a compromise with him today—I’ll try the statin he wants me to take, as long as he understands that if it makes me feel nauseous or achy or tired, I’m going to quit taking it, accepting the risk that comes with that choice. It really is OK with me if a heart attack or stroke is the way I’m going to go, but I also know I have more to do around here before the time comes, and I don’t want to feel crappy every day until then. Unfortunately, my HIV-positive friends and colleagues have a harder choice than mine, since the risk of quitting their meds is more life-threatening than mine.
So when I read about the side effects of most of the AIDS meds (and after proofing the Drug Guide, they’re vivid in my mind!) I am infinitely grateful that I don’t have to weigh quantity vs. quality concerning them. Watching friends suffer through chemo and radiation makes me grateful that I don’t have to make that choice either. What would I do? If you don’t take the treatment, you might die too soon, and not pleasantly. What if a cure is right around the corner? What if there never is a cure? What if it’s something we already know about but haven’t used in the right way yet? What if it’s something that has yet to be discovered?
I’ve always thought I’d die when I was 82—old enough to have seen my nieces grow up, to have driven a car fueled by water, to have seen Israel and Palestine become a united country at peace, to have seen health care become a birthright, not a privilege for the wealthy few, and yet still together enough to continue to write Oscar-winning screenplays, cheer the Bears to victory in Super Bowl LXXIII, and celebrate the 50th anniversary of Positively Aware with Jeff, Enid and Keith (who will be President by then!). Whether Metformin and Pravachol get me there or not, the important thing to me is that I love the steps along the way. I hope that whatever treatment options you choose make that possible for you, too!
Breathe deep and live long (and well!).
