'And it's just sometimes an excruciatingly heightened awareness of being, loving being alive..."

Caitlin Flanagan wrote "I Thought Stage IV Cancer Was Bad Enough" at the Atlantic in June. Not many people, myself included, know her story. It's riveting. 

Well, she did a podcast with Sully, and this short segment is so existential. She's such a graceful woman. It's really inspiring:

Senator John McCain Returns (VIDEO)

This is the state of our discourse.

Worse than ever. Simply no decency left in American politics.

At Twitchy, "‘I hope he dies right now’: John McCain returns to Senate following cancer diagnosis, begins The Triggering."

Look, he's long been the bane of conservatives, but I don't see folks on the right cheering his brain cancer.

Here's the full speech, "McCain returns to Senate floor."

Dodgers, #Angels Have Mixed Reaction to Tobacco After Death of Tony Gwynn

I guess Tony Gwynn attributed his cancer to smokeless tobacco.

I thought "What the heck?" when I heard he'd passed. He was only 54.

In any case, at the Los Angeles Times:

For many players, the use of smokeless tobacco becomes entwined with playing the game. It becomes difficult to imagine baseball without it.

I can see that. But times are changing.

In any case, read it all at that link.

Back From the Colonoscopy

I mentioned my procedure this morning.

The test itself is a cakewalk. It's the bowel-cleansing preparations that were a pain. But I'm clean, no polyps, and I won't have to have it done again for ten years.

I'm reading Instapundit, who's blogged about his colonoscopies quite a bit. Here's the search link, but see especially, "I'M HOME FROM HAVING A COLONOSCOPY":

A colonoscopy isn't just a diagnostic test — if they find polyps, they can remove them, making it virtually certain that you won't get colon cancer. If you skip that because of squeamishness, well, you're just an idiot. Luckily, I was clean and don't have to go back for five years. By then, they may have replaced them with swallowable cameras, with actual scoping only when there’s something that needs fixing. At any rate, though, there aren't many simple safe procedures that can absolutely prevent cancer, and this is one. Don't forego it because you're squeamish.

I'm not sure why folks would be squeamish with the procedure; it was easy. After I was taken into the pre-op area, the nurses had me sign the final forms, hooked up my blood pressure monitor and chest nodes, and inserted the IV. The test itself took 10 minutes at most. The nurses gave me mild drug which was like a relaxant. I had no side effects and went out for a nice breakfast with my wife immediately after.

As noted, the preparation is unpleasant, and from reading around yesterday, avoiding the prep is one of the reasons people have skipped this screening. Perhaps the newer procedures will be coming available soon, like the miniature camera pill that takes images while traveling through your bowel. Until then, I'd do this again tomorrow if I needed to screen against colon cancer.

No More Colonoscopies?

Here's this, just as I go today for my first colonoscopy.

At WSJ, "New Ways to Screen for Colon Cancer No More Colonoscopies? Less-Invasive Methods Are Coming."

RELATED: At NYT, "Colon Cancer Screening Saves Lives." (Via Instapundit.)

Life-Shaming

A follow-up to this story, "Lisa Bonchek Adams and the Politics of Blogging About Cancer."

From John Nolte, at Big Journalism, "Ex-NY Times Editor Keller to Cancer Patient: 'Going Gently' Saves Money":

The Kellers are engaging in life-shaming, which like fat-shaming, is an excuse to tell someone else what to do while couching it in a "greater good" argument. To hell with personal freedom, let's force people to be healthy because obesity costs our beloved State money.  And now this brave woman, who is understandably desperate to see her children grow up, and who believes sharing her story will help others, is being life-shamed on the pages of the Guardian and New York Times because the Kellers are made uncomfortable by the idea of someone making the personal choice to stay alive for every possible day and minute she can.

What the Kellers appear to be doing is worse than lobbying for euthanasia, which at the very least is a personal decision. From their elite perches, the Kellers are tag-teaming a woman hospitalized with Stage IV cancer as a selfish and narcissistic financial drain over the twin sins of aggressively fighting for her life and, through her example, possibly encouraging others to do the same.

This is yet another glimpse into those I call "Soylent Green Liberals." The left's mask of compassion slipped late last year as they attempted to dismiss millions losing their health insurance as an overall positive.  And now the Kellers have given us another chilling example of those who are all too eager to sacrifice a few to serve some cold robotic vision of a cold robotic Utopia.

Hey, I'd be fighting for life just like Ms. Adams.

Shame on the Kellers.

Lisa Bonchek Adams and the Politics of Blogging About Cancer

At the Atlantic, "On Live-Tweeting One's Suffering: Journalists question the ethics of cancer—of fighting it, and of blogging about it."

Also at PuffHo, "Bill Keller Criticized For Op-Ed About Cancer Patient Lisa Bonchek Adams":

@nytkeller The main thing is that I am alive. Do not write me off and make statements about how my life ends TIL IT DOES, SIR.

— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 13, 2014

ORIGINAL STORY: New York Times columnist Bill Keller is under fire after writing an op-ed that appeared to criticize Lisa Bonchek Adams, a cancer patient blogging about her health battle.

Adams has been writing online and tweeting about her experiences fighting advanced breast cancer. In a piece entitled "Heroic Measures," Keller compared her "fierce" approach to that of his father-in-law, who he said died a "calm" death in a British hospital that emphasized palliative care. "His death seemed to me a humane and honorable alternative to the frantic medical trench warfare that often makes an expensive misery of death in America," he wrote.

Keller continued: "Her digital presence is no doubt a comfort to many of her followers. On the other hand, as cancer experts I consulted pointed out, Adams is the standard-bearer for an approach to cancer that honors the warrior, that may raise false hopes, and that, implicitly, seems to peg patients like my father-in-law as failures."

The backlash against Keller's piece on Twitter and elsewhere online was swift...

Keller's piece is here, "Heroic Measures."

That's a kinda grim piece. But remember, it's not okay to blog about cancer, according the totalitarian left.

The Guardian's already pulled a piece by Keller's wife Emma. Only the headline remains, "Forget funeral selfies. What are the ethics of tweeting a terminal illness?"

Keller's making the case for "palliative" treatment, which sounds mostly about letting the dying die without a big dramatic struggle to hang on. At this point in my life, I'd probably go the aggressive route, like Ms. Adams (although I'd be praying like never before, unlike some others I've blogged about).

Michael Douglas Backs Off Claim of Oral Sex Throat Cancer Cause

Here's this morning's New York Post, "Michael Douglas: Oral sex gave me cancer."

He's trying to back out of the claim now, but the Guardian UK has him pinned down, "Michael Douglas cancer oral sex claim: transcript and audio":

A spokesperson for Michael Douglas has claimed that the actor did not say his particular cancer was caused by oral sex. Here is the relevant audio and transcript to prove that he did...