MSI Press Blog

Watching the always-obese Carl waste away from cancer (though he still had quite a bit of poundage when he died) evoked terribly deep feelings of helpless and frustration. We were losing the fight to keep Carl healthy, and Carl was losing the fight to stay alive. Some days, it all seemed so pointless.  One bright light that we experienced near the end was that perhaps some good could come of Carl's experience. Yes, there is good that comes from sharing experiences, such as through Cancer Diary. But there is something more: whole body donation so that researchers can learn more and medical students can be trained.  Carl wanted to leave that kind of legacy and, the father of a neurobiology professor who had needed cadavers for her training, wanted to help out medical students become better doctors, and if some research into cancer of unknown primary, of which little is known, could shed a little more light on a dim subject, then he was all for that, too.  We researched and found an o

  What some people leave behind when they die can help so many others -- either making  medical care possible for them or making medical care better for them.  In the first category is a young mother (age 38) who died of ovarian cancer. Her name was Casey Ryan MacIntyre, and her dying wish was to wipe out the medical debts of other people. Through a memorial page on the  RIP Medica Debt page, she, with the help of her survivors, has already wiped out over 100 million dollars in debt of those who cannot afford medical care. (Donations are still being solicited -- until December, it appears -- if you would like to donate.) Newsweek tells the story HERE . In the second category are those who donate organs. For the most part, the process for doing that is easy to follow; hospitals have staff members who follow up on those who have indicated they wish to donate (e.g., on their driver licenses) or through those they leave behind and will often contact the latter whether or not there a wish

Carl, so proud in his new, smaller, fully fitting Scott vest   Indeed, several months before Carl was diagnosed with advanced metastatic cancer (stage 4), he lost quite a bit of weight. Nearly 50 pounds overnight. Now, he was big, very big. Any weight loss, in our thinking at the time, was to be applauded. And so, he ordered s smaller Scott vest and showed off his new slimmer self. (Not slim, mind you, but slimmer -- he was still nearly 300 pounds when he died.) What we did not realize -- and I certainly wish we had is that such a weight loss is not to be celebrated. It is a sign of dying, or at least, of advanced cancer. Instead of showing off his success ("achieved" -- more accurately, "experienced" -- though he was not on a particularly regimented diet), he should have been rushing to his doctor and asking, "What is wrong with this picture?" Perhaps, hopefully, the doctor would have figured out the cancer diagnosis early enough to do something about it,