I recently started to watch Breaking Bad on Netflix. I am not going to go into elaborate details on what this show is about other than to say that the main character has lung cancer. He's a husband and a father to a teenage boy and a daughter soon to be born. He found out alone and had made the decision alone that he didn't want to treat it. During the episode that I watched tonight, the family had an intervention because they want him to make the "right" choice and chose treatment.
When it was Walter's turn to speak, he said that he had lived most of his life by choices that he hadn't made for himself. He said that even if treatment extended his life a year or two longer, he questioned what kind of life that would be after all of the side effects from chemo and all of the stress that it would cause his family. He didn't want to survive off of the pill after pill he would need to take each day. He's not curable and he's very aware of that. So instead of prolonging his life he chose to continue to live life as it is and to avoid an "artificial" life.
There are arguments for both sides. However, when it's terminal... when there is just a slight sliver of a miraculous chance that you will live well beyond the few months or year extension and live so relatively normally... I feel like that's a different ballgame. Dale used to tell me it was selfish for others to want someone to continue on when they couldn't fathom the pain they were in. Some would say that suicide or even this man's choice to avoid treatment is selfish.
As a person who knows what it's like to have lost, it's a horrendous place to be. Would I have wanted Dale to choose differently? Absolutely. But, I do wonder if that's how Dale viewed himself at the end, terminal, and he chose to go out on his own terms. In many ways this is different than a cancer patient, but in many ways it's very similar to anyone who has a painful, killing disease and there seems but little hope. I'm certain that Dale did feel that he had very little control over his life at that time. Did he grasp what he thought was the little he could control and make that choice then? I hope that there was a moment of pure clarity, where his mind stopped racing and the demons quieted, and he was able to make his choice with a sound mind. Just as Walter wanted to do for himself.
I've been angered, saddened, and hurt by his decision, but I never thought of Dale as being selfish in the choice that he made.
When it was Walter's turn to speak, he said that he had lived most of his life by choices that he hadn't made for himself. He said that even if treatment extended his life a year or two longer, he questioned what kind of life that would be after all of the side effects from chemo and all of the stress that it would cause his family. He didn't want to survive off of the pill after pill he would need to take each day. He's not curable and he's very aware of that. So instead of prolonging his life he chose to continue to live life as it is and to avoid an "artificial" life.
There are arguments for both sides. However, when it's terminal... when there is just a slight sliver of a miraculous chance that you will live well beyond the few months or year extension and live so relatively normally... I feel like that's a different ballgame. Dale used to tell me it was selfish for others to want someone to continue on when they couldn't fathom the pain they were in. Some would say that suicide or even this man's choice to avoid treatment is selfish.
As a person who knows what it's like to have lost, it's a horrendous place to be. Would I have wanted Dale to choose differently? Absolutely. But, I do wonder if that's how Dale viewed himself at the end, terminal, and he chose to go out on his own terms. In many ways this is different than a cancer patient, but in many ways it's very similar to anyone who has a painful, killing disease and there seems but little hope. I'm certain that Dale did feel that he had very little control over his life at that time. Did he grasp what he thought was the little he could control and make that choice then? I hope that there was a moment of pure clarity, where his mind stopped racing and the demons quieted, and he was able to make his choice with a sound mind. Just as Walter wanted to do for himself.
I've been angered, saddened, and hurt by his decision, but I never thought of Dale as being selfish in the choice that he made.
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For those of us lucky enough to be living without a sickness or a disease, I think back to what Walter said about not living a life based on choices that he made (prior to getting cancer). That's depressing. But I am sure that is true for so many people. Even people who feel liberated. Or those rebelling... is choosing the opposite really choosing? I know that I didn't always feel like I had much control over what was happening in my life. There were many choices that I didn't make, rather I let fate/destiny/life, whatever you want to call it, make decisions for me. It is a helpless feeling.
There are many things that I have no control over. I can't control my landlord and stop him from raising my rent. But I can choose to move. I can't control what I am asked to do at work. But I could choose to apply elsewhere. We can't control the choices that others make. But we can control our reactions and decisions that we make. That's what choices are. But whether we consciously make them ourselves or let outside forces make them for us, we are still individually responsible for whatever that choice may be and we need to own it.
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