Its taken me a long time to write this second post. I wasn't sure it was even worth the time. But something changed this morning after reading an Op-ed piece in the New York times. The piece linked to another essay about a man dying of ALS. That man had already decided not to take advantage of all medicine had to offer. And that's the primary reason for this blog.

How do we advance our beliefs, mores and feelings at the rapid rate of medical advancement? I dare to say we humans have fallen behind our own science.

In Lewis's case, he was 72 years old and still driving his granddaughters to school. One day he fell. Then he seemed to be falling more often in the next couple weeks.

His congestive heart failure kept him on a strict fluids intake diet along with a myriad number of other "directives": Low sodium, low cholesterol, and low fluid, (yogurt and pudding are fluids). That doesn't leave much if you think about it and is almost impossible for a 72 year old deaf person living alone to comply with.

The fluid was the most important. He was to monitor himself by weight. If he gained a couple quick pounds it meant he was retaining fluids. A more visible sign was that his lower legs would swell. He was supposed to "just go to the emergency room" if he began to retain too much fluid.

He didn't like the emergency room wait and sitting there with all those sick people. His choice was to stay home in front of the TV and swell, or get up and go. Understandably, he would always wait until he was as sick as he could stand before agreeing to go in.

He would be bloated, his heart working too hard, short of breath, nauseous, and delirious at times. But these episodes, as we called them, required a few days in the hospital where they would drain off the fluids, shake their finger at him, as would his family, get him back to reasonable health and then send him home for more "recovery". Sometimes this would include the use of daily nurse visits for meds supervision and therapy.

As Lewis felt better he would skip the nurse visits as he would be back out driving, shopping, etc. To his credit he never just holed up. He wanted out and would go at the first chance.

The finger shaking I mentioned earlier was about trying to convince Lewis that more frequent visits before he got so sick was better than infrequent visits that were debilitating. They also included stern advice on food and fluids. Lewis was always thirsty and pushing the amount of fluids he took in.

It seemed that he could just go in for a tune up and come out fine.