A new television show, as well as a recent CURE campaign, gave insight to life with cancer.
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 03, 2018
Jane has earned three advanced degrees and had several fulfilling careers as a librarian, rehabilitation counselor and college teacher. Presently she does freelance writing. Her articles include the subjects of hearing loss and deafness, service dogs and struggling with cancer. She has been a cancer survivor since 2010.
She has myelodysplastic syndrome, which is rare, and would love to communicate with others who have MDS.
It is interesting to observe the lessons one can learn from a supposedly recreational television program. I was watching a new series this year called “New Amsterdam.” Surprisingly, the show features a medical director of the hospital who has cancer. He was talking to a Rabbi with cancer faced with what seemed like an impossible decision. The Rabbi could either go home and live a year with his family, doing chemo and radiation, or have a surgery which he had only a 10 percent chance of surviving due to a bad heart, but he would be cured. He chose the surgery.She has myelodysplastic syndrome, which is rare, and would love to communicate with others who have MDS.
When the doctor asked him why he made the decision he did, the Rabbi’s answer hit me like a ton of bricks. He replied, “I can either wake up dead or cured, but will no longer be a patient.”
Later in the show, the doctor decided to have a clinical trial targeting his cancer rather than chemo and radiation in spite of the lesser chance of surviving with the trial. His oncologist was dismayed, but he told her emphatically, “I don’t want to be a patient – I want to be myself.”
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