Insight: Examining life and death

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

My wife and I recently watched a TED Talk on YouTube presented by author and hospice and palliative physician Dr. BJ Miller called “What really matters at the end of life” and we found it fascinating how he was able to convey that as death approaches, many people just want respect, love, and comfort.

Author and hospice physician Dr. BJ Miller is known for
his TED Talk 'What really matters at the end of life' and 
says his own near-death experience has helped him to
transform how he looks at life. COURTESY PHOTO

Miller himself faced death as a sophomore student at Princeton University when after a night out with friends, he climbed onto the roof of a parked shuttle train and was electrocuted by 11,000 volts of electricity. First responders saved his life, but through his injuries, he lost both his legs below the knees and half of his left arm.

He was inspired to heal and adapt by his mother, who was disabled and in a wheelchair after contracting polio as a child. Spending months recovering in the hospital’s burn unit, Miller had time to think about how his mother embraced life with her disability and how despite his own physical limitations, he too had something to offer that would transform his life.

During his TED talk, Miller said he believes that a disability is not something to be ashamed of, not something to overcome or to put behind you, rather, he said he found it to be something to work with and it led him to seek a career in medicine specializing in hospice and palliative care, which he described as easing the suffering from physical pain.

According to Miller, through his work and his own near-death experience, he has been able to recognize and distinguish two separate fears that people have regarding death. One is the fear of dying and having to endure the suffering and pain associated with that, and the other is the fear of being dead and missing their loved ones and how the world will continue without them.

He said that from realizing those two distinctions, he can help address each concern and it’s made him a better hospice and palliative care physician.

Back in 1998, I had been experiencing lower back pain for several months and had unexpectedly lost weight. Four different physicians were unable to pinpoint what was wrong with me. Then I had CT scan, and it discovered a suspicious spot on my lung. It was recommended that I make an appointment to see a surgeon.

I met with the surgeon in his office on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and after examining my scan results, he suggested I might have leukemia or some type of cancer and scheduled me for exploratory surgery the day after Christmas. It goes without saying that the holiday season that year was not very merry for me, and I felt like I had the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.

After my exploratory operation, the surgeon informed me that I had a rare form of cancer. He had confirmed the results with the Mayo Clinic and recommended a course of treatment that included surgery and chemotherapy and said my odds of survival were 50-50. My thoughts while driving home from hearing that news turned out to be exactly what Dr. BJ Miller describes. I was fearful of the pain and suffering I would endure in treatment and wondered if this was indeed the end for me that I had accomplished very little in my life and I was unsure of what my purpose in living had been.

I spent many sleepless nights during my treatment reviewing my relationships with others, debating what I might have done differently and why this was happening to me. I came to accept that if I was going to die, that it was part of life and was my time to go. But I prayed that if I was to survive, I’d focus on being a better person and use my writing talent to tell stories that inspired others.

Miraculously, I survived, and within a few years, my life and career were back on track. Through personal experience, I can tell you that when you learn the end might be near, it’s not much of a fun and liberating time. The anticipation can be paralyzing and the stress of coping with it all can be utterly overwhelming.

Nowadays when I reflect on my health issues of 25 years ago, I am in awe that powerful medicine and some great physicians saved my life. It certainly gives me confidence to know I could have died but somehow didn’t. Because of that experience my outlook on life changed too. Some things that used to really get under my skin and bother me are now just trivial annoyances and not important in the greater scheme of things.

Dr. Miller’s TED Talk explores what's most important to people who are closer to death, and he lists those as personal comfort, feeling unburdened and not being a burden to those they love, finding existential peace, and living out your remaining days with a sense of wonderment and spirituality.

Those of us who have been given a second chance in life understand what he means. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all applied those attributes to our daily lives too?

Insight: Coming to grips with the inevitable

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Turns out there’s no manual for dealing with loss. There’s no shortcut to overcoming the sadness, the tears or the pain associated with the death of a friend, a family member or someone we’ve known and respected for a long time.

But somewhere in trying to reconcile that everyone sooner or later moves on from the earthly plain of existence, it’s comforting to know that others grieve, feel sorrow and try to make sense when death touches our lives.

Within the span of just under five months, I have lost a beloved neighbor, my favorite brother-in-law, and my trusted auto mechanic, and certainly all gone before their time.

My neighbor Andrew left us on Nov. 26 at the age of 37, done in by pneumonia. He had survived a severe traumatic brain injury in his early 30s after an accident that would have left others without hope of recovery.

Yet despite his disability, he fought hard to overcome significant physical challenges and was an inspiration to everyone he met. I’d watch him walking slowly down our street with his physical therapist and think to myself how he refused to give up.

Andrew loved the outdoors and would go camping at the lake with his family each summer and was adored by his nephews and family for his perseverance and his ability to live as normal a life as possible.

His death was another blow for his mother and his family, who were still coping with losing Andrew’s father suddenly in 2018.

Last summer, my brother-in-law Bobby informed us that he had been diagnosed with brain cancer. Bobby had always been someone I looked up to. I greatly admired his corny sense of humor and his hearty laugh and smile.

Whenever he talked to me on the telephone, Bobby always started the conversation that same way with a bad imitation of Lilly Tomlin portraying Ernestine, the snarky telephone operator.

“Is this the party to whom I am speaking,” he would ask and no matter how many times I had heard that silly joke, I always laughed and replied, “It is.”

Not to be outdone, when my wife Nancy and I called him on his birthday every December, I always started my conversations with him in a similar fashion over the span of the decades that I knew him.

“How old are you today,” I’d ask him. He would answer 64 or whatever age he was turning, and I’d say “Why Bobby, to me you don’t look a day over 63” or whatever age he was. It was a very poor joke, but he always at first would groan and then eventually laugh as the joke settled in.

I can’t recall ever visiting his home and not seeing the Music Choice on Demand 1960s channel playing on his television. He also played and sang at church services every week, something I thought took a lot of confidence to pull off successfully.

Bobby’s condition slowly deteriorated into last fall, and he could barely speak to us when we called to wish him a happy 73rd birthday on Dec. 16. He died in a hospice facility in North Carolina on Jan. 2 and in keeping with his wishes, the family will gather at a military cemetery in Vermont next week for a final sendoff.

Last weekend, I attended a visitation gathering at a funeral home and a church service to remember my friend Byron, who lost his life at age 39 to an aggressive form of cancer. It was especially poignant because Byron’s young daughter had been a student of my wife when she was in first grade several years ago.

Byron was a man of few words but was the best automobile mechanic I have ever known. He never overcharged or sold you anything you didn’t need and was known as a person of integrity and someone who tried to help others in the community.

His wife said that Byron loved to collect and restore old cars and he also had a soft spot in his heart for animals in distress, taking in dozens of dogs who needed rescuing.

Back in November when my vehicle wouldn’t start and an AAA-dispatched technician couldn’t diagnose the problem, I had my car towed to Byron’s shop. As the car was being lowered into the lot, the tow truck driver told me he thought being a newspaper editor made me famous and he asked if he could take a selfie photograph with me. I reluctantly agreed and then turned my car keys over to Byron.

“Hey Mr. Celebrity,” Byron said to me when he called later to tell me my car was ready. “Your battery needs replacing, and can I offer you some Grey Poupon?” Those were the final words that Byron said to me before he passed away on April 3.

All three of these men’s photographs are now displayed on the front of our refrigerator and I’m reminded of their untimely passing each time I open refrigerator door.

My wife says there’s surely a lesson to be learned from these unexpected brushes with the Grim Reaper. “Be prepared,” she said. “You just never know.” <

Insight: Watch out for misplaced boxes of bobbins

By Ed Pierce

Managing Editor

From personal experience, I can tell you that a small wooden box of bobbins can produce significant pain and suffering and leave you shaking your head in astonishment.

To set the scene, Friday, April 30 was my wife Nancy’s birthday. I had a full slate of activities planned to celebrate her special day and after she left for work, the plan was put into motion. I wrapped her gifts, then went and bought her a full bouquet of flowers and a birthday cake.

To be extra nice, I did three loads of laundry, swept all the floors and emptied all the trash cans. As the final load of laundry made its way through the dryer, I took a shower and expected to sit back and wait for her to return home to see what I had accomplished. We were planning on ordering take-out Chinese food and then enjoying the cake with her youngest son who lives nearby.

But a box of bobbins proved to be my undoing. Since it was chilly and rainy that day, I decided to wear a long-sleeve shirt, which I keep in our spare bedroom closet. To see my selection of shirts better, I stepped into the closet and turned on the light in there. I was barefoot as I was in the process of dressing. Suddenly my foot stepped on a wooden box of bobbins and sewing supplies stored on the closet floor by my wife.

Bobbins and sewing thread spools went flying everywhere much to our dog Fancy’s amusement. On the other hand, I was totally startled, slipped, lost my balance and fell backward, taking a hard fall onto the bedroom floor, landing awkwardly on the left elbow.

As I warded off the dog from snatching up the spools and bobbins, I began to feel some severe pain from the fall. But I was able to retrieve many of the small round bobbins, which are aluminum cylinders used by my wife as she operates her sewing machine.

I righted myself and slowly got up from the floor, tossing the bobbins back into the box and closing the closet door. My initial thought was why would anyone store that box on the floor where someone could step on it. However, having lived in this household for quite a few years, I’ve learned questions like that typically go unanswered or come with remarks such as “why not put it there?’

I finished dressing and thought that the pain would soon subside and would eventually go away. It was, in fact, Nancy’s birthday and nothing could spoil our plans for that monumental occasion.

With some difficulty and using strictly my right hand, I retrieved the laundry from the dryer and folded and put away the rest of the clean clothing and towels. I had lunch and then laid on the sofa waiting for her to arrive back home.

As time passed that afternoon, the ache became worse and it got to the point I could not comfortably turn my left arm or extend it without serious pain. The moment she got home, I told her what happened and sheepishly asked if we could put postpone the celebration to Saturday evening.

She agreed and drove me to the Emergency Room at the hospital to find out what was causing my pain. Five hours later, with my left arm encased in a splint and wrapped in gauze and in a sling, the doctor said that based upon my x-rays she thought I had a radial head fracture of my left elbow. She instructed me to rest the arm, told me to put lots of ice on it to reduce the swelling and prescribed morphine for the pain.

Driving home in pouring rain, I apologized to Nancy for ruining her birthday. Both of us were starving from not having eaten for more than eight hours and so we hastily gobbled down sandwiches upon getting back home and went to bed.

Days later, I’m still wearing the sling and although the acute pain has mostly disappeared, I’m still in the splint and sling and can’t get the gauze wrap wet when taking a shower. I have an appointment with an orthopedic specialist later this week and will know more then.

The moral of this story is to always be careful and watch where you step. You never know, a small wooden box of bobbins could prove to be your undoing too.