A “scientific” explanation of homeopathy. This woman is either lying or completely deluded, either way she’s helping to take advantage of people. Her misrepresentations and misunderstandings of science are harmful. She is spouting meaningless drivel and calling it medical advice and claiming a scientific explanation. There is a scientific explanation for why homeopathy appears to work, it’s called a placebo and it’s just another delusion.
My wife died this afternoon. I loved my wife more than anyone or anything. She was my best friend, we spent so much time together and it was so easy to be around her that it always felt like we had been together forever. I loved her, I do love her, I will always love her.
Alas, after 4 days of marriage I am a widower. I am alone now, I have friends and family, but the emptiness is so great. A year ago I would not have thought I was strong enough to survive such an event, now I have no choice. I find solace in the fact that she went peacefully and painlessly. Her sister and I were present at the very end, we held her hand and kissed her goodbye.
My wife, my friend, my hero. She fought long and hard but death is inevitable for all things. Now we must all move on. It will not be easy, it will not be fun, but she fought hard for us, now we must fight hard to survive without her in our lives. She exists now only in our memories we must not forget the things she gave us, and the things she allowed us to give her.
Rannie, I love you.
-David
Except for hydrogen, all the atoms that make each of us up — the iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the carbon in our brains — were manufactured in red giant stars thousands of light years away in space and billions of years ago in time. We are, as I like to say, star stuff. — Carl Sagan
I was an atheist long before my father died but at his funeral I found a new peace in the sheer improbability of my own existence.
As I sat holding my weeping sister, sitting next to my weeping grandmother, listening to a Southern Baptist minister who still sported the slick backed hair long out of fashion except with the most fundamentalist televangelists and used car salesman, as I sat listening to him talk of a mansion in heaven, talk about my father being in a better place, I was reminded of the words of Carl Sagan. Perhaps reminded is the wrong word, I was bored of such unoriginal and unsatisfying platitudes.
“We are made of star stuff.” It took an amazing series of events to make one human and more amazing events to make my father and my mother and me. Atoms of iron and carbon formed deep within long dead stars traversing seemingly endless spans of time and space to end up inside of us. Of course it is not so improbable that a human will exist, since billions do, just that a specific human will exist. And of course if a specific human never exists then that human will never notice, so it is unlikely that any of us will be bothered terribly by not existing again. Our bodies will simply break down into our component parts over periods of time too long to truly imagine and our individual atoms will be reused as the universe sees fit and we will return to the stars from whence we came. Yes we are all star stuff and we will always be star stuff temporarily arranged into body and mind so complex that it can contemplate it’s own existence, but not so complex that it can’t introspect and over many generations come to understand how itself works. We are as Sagan put it “star stuff contemplating star stuff.” It is truly an wonderous thing.
It is with those thoughts and words that I find my peace with the inevitability of death. The death of my father, soon the death of my wife, the deaths of many more friends and family, and of course my own death.
Fear of death is not a useful state of mind it’s only purpose is to prevent you from truly enjoying life. So friends, hug a loved one, sit sipping tea and reading sonnets at sunrise. Enjoy your life, it will be over before you’d like but in the end you’ll hardly notice.
My father by all acounts died quickly. He had a heart attack while driving one night in April of 2008. By the time I found out there was nothing to be done but bury him, grieve, and move on.
This is a horse of a different color. This is a slow death but for her it is not a painful one. It is those around her who are in pain. Those who have no way of truly helping her. We do what we can but there is suffering, there is our suffering after long hours of being unable to give her what she needs and instead being forced to wait until she forgets she needed it.
Last night around 7pm two very nice notaries came over and pronounced us husband and wife.
That isn’t really something I ever thought I would do, but I’m glad I did it and I’m glad i got to do it with her.
She means the world to me and I know our time together will be brief but I’m glad it is going to be as husband and wife.
P.S. If you can come up with a reason to get married in bed in pajamas I highly recommend it.
The cancer started a year ago. A stage 4 mucoepidermoid carcinoma in her left parotid gland. She underwent surgery, a complete parotidectomy and neck disection to remove several lymph nodes to which the cancer had spread. Her surgery also included severing the facial nerve causing paralysis of the left side of her face, and grafting a nerve harvested from her shoulder into it’s place. She went through radiation and chemotherapy, she suffered through all of the usual side effects, sores on her mouth and tongue, vomiting and extreme weight loss.
From May until late July she was happy and healthy. She laughed, she played, she was self sufficient, taking herself to all her appointments and even going grocery shopping. She learned to bake bread and made some wonderful pizzas, cinnamon rolls, and challah.
In August after being sent to the emergency room for high fevers (up to 105F). There was much speculation as to the cause of the fevers, everything from the flu to mono to lupus. The whole time we knew, though never said aloud, that it might be her cancer recurring. After several days in the hospital she was given a PET/CT scan and would be sent home with several newly discovered malignancies. In her right parotid gland, a lesser salivary gland in her left cheek and some lymph nodes near her heart. Again she would undergo chemotherapy and the tumors in her parotid glands showed signs of remission.
It’s only been a few days she was given her terminal diagnoses. She was originally admitted to the hospital after her body became so weak that she was unable to stand up under her own power. Another PET/CT scan showed that her cancer had spread wildly in the last two months, to several more lymph nodes in her chest, to her stomach and on to her liver. There is nothing more that can be done.
The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
Carl Sagan - “In the Valley of the Shadow” PARADE magazine (10 March 1996)
It’s terminal. There is nothing more that can be done other than making her comfortable and waiting for her to die.
That is not an easy thing to bring myself to say. Every time I tell someone this my heart feels like it’s going to burst through my chest. So far it has not, so I carry on and I try to be there for her.
I’m also an atheist and a skeptic, as such there are few direct resources for helping me deal with the impending loss. Hopefully I will have the energy to continue to document my journey. Perhaps others may even find this useful.
