MSI Press Blog

Happy Cat with his best pal, CB Leaver When you have a family of cats, you end up facing some of the same difficult decisions that human families face, the most difficult among these being end-of-life issues.  A couple of months ago, Happy Cat changed overnight from happy to sad. One day he was his affectionate self, nurturing the other cats; the next day, he was walking in circles, stumbling into his food bowl, and acting confused--and was clearly blind. After local vets ruled out physiological reasons for the behavior and the blindness, we took him to a neurology center for an MRI. He has a brain tumor, a melangioma. Options we were given included very expensive surgery ($15K), radiology (nearly as expensive and would require frequent out of town trips), or medicine (that would not cure or even put him into remission but would make him more comfortable).  Beyond the expense of the surgery, there was a bigger picture. Happy Cat is a geriatric cat, a street rescue between the ages of 1

  I recently read some striking words from a young cancer victim. Here is the link. See if you also find them remarkable:  I'm 30 years old with terminal cancer -these are the life lessons everyone should learn before they die . For other Cancer Diary posts, click  HERE . Blog editor's note: As a memorial to Carl, and simply because it is truly needed, MSI Press is now hosting a web page,  Carl's Cancer Compendium , as a one-stop starting point for all things cancer, to make it easier for those with cancer to find answers to questions that can otherwise take hours to track down on the Internet and/or from professionals. The CCC is expanded and updated weekly. As part of this effort, each week, on Monday, this blog will carry an informative, cancer-related story -- and be open to guest posts:  Cancer Diary .   Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow  MSI Press  on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with  MSI Press LLC ? Check out info

  When a dying loved one does not want to talk about the ramifications of dying is an issue I have been wanting to address for a time. it was a very difficult one for us. More than head-in-sand, it was a deliberate refusal by Carl, when he was dying, to become involved with completing really important paperwork, like advanced directives, will/family trust, power of attorney. It was as if he could avoid death by not talking about it. (Of course, to be fair in representing the situation, he found out from a fall, with no warning, that he had probably only days and weeks left to live. The local hospital said days; Stanford was more positive about taking steps to turn days into something longer.) Cancer Diary will address this topic again (and likely again). For today, though, I want to share Diane Hullet's Best Life, Best Death podcast interview with Barbara Karnes on these sticky end of life questions, from the point of view of hospice worker and family member. See related MSI Pres