A week ago a friend received a phone call when I was in her house. One of her friends had died after battling cancer. He was being fed through a pipe. Maggots had started appearing in his throat and they got to his lungs. It was horrible to hear a person dying like that.

A couple of months ago a friend had told me about an initiative being launched to help a young boy who was in a serious condition. A part of his intestine had been removed. I got in touch with some more friends. All of them promised to help. I contacted three bloggers on Sulekha who happen to be doctors. Each of them was extremely helpful. But before the matter could be taken forward the child's parents shifted him to a government hospital from the private one he had been admitted to. And then I came to know that the child was no more. Inspite of my best efforts I went into shock. I could not even inform my doctor friends on Sulekha. I did not know what to write to them. I realised that helping others isn't an easy task always.

Death and suffering are two aspects of life which are related as suffering can lead to death and the extinguishing of life. I feel that each one of us thinks about how one's last moments will be. I used to jocularly tell my friends that I would rather shoot myself or take a cyanide capsule (where on earth can one get them?) rather than suffer. But that is wishful thinking. I remember the writer Arthur Koestler and his wife had made a pact that each would assist the other in euthanasia in case one of them were suffering from a terminal disease. In 1983 he and Cynthia committed joint suicide by taking an overdose of drugs as he was suffering from Parkinson's disease and leukemia. His death was not without controversy as Cynthia did not seem to be suffering from any disease. Many people believe that he forced her to join him in his exit from the world. 

The writer Dom Moraes was suffering from cancer but he refused to take any treatment for it. He was lucky in that he died of a heart attack in his sleep.   I wonder how many people would have his courage to refuse treatment for cancer. 

Cinema has also shown us many heroic characters who have fought pain and suffering. The Hindi film Anand which was released in the early seventies is popular to this day. Rajesh Khanna had played the role of the cancer patient with the golden heart who made everyone cry. And Amitabh Bachchan, who was not yet the superstar he is today, played the role of the doctor who got attached to his patient. There were more such films which made India cry. I remember Safar and Mili. 

A few minutes ago I read an article titled Anything to Go on Living  A Review by Brigitte Frase . This article is a review of the book  Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir  by David Rieff . Susan Sontag, the writer and filmmaker, was Rieff's mother. She died after suffering a lot. She had defeated cancer twice. But she wasn't  so lucky the third time. In 1975 Susan defeated Stage IV breast cancer. In 1977 she wrote Illness As Metaphor.
She was angry about the fact that everybody, including the patients themselves,  blamed the patients for cancer. 
She was also angry about the fact that doctors tended to treat patients like small children and hid the facts from them. 

In 1998 it was discovered that Susan had developed a uterine sarcoma. She emerged victorious in this battle as well. She had faith in science and reason. In 2005 she came to know that she was suffering from myelodysplastic syndrome,  a lethal form of blood cancer. Susan was extremely optimistic about defeating cancer a third time. She had done it twice earlier. She used the internet to find out as much as she could. She kept quizzing her doctors. She wanted her doctors to go all out. She even allowed them to try out untested experimental procedures.

Susan was in love with life. She was always on the lookout for new experiences - new books, new music, new films, new friends and lovers. She was unwilling to hear anything about her death. So much so that her doctors would sift and sieve through all the information they had on her disease and then tell her only the 'good' bits. 

David and his mother were alike in their refusal to romanticise suffering. Both of them believed that if one was suffering from a terminal disease it was something that one had to face. Susan was an atheist whose God was science. After her death her son David went through trauma. He asked himself many questions. He wonders whether he was right in going along with her in the belief that science may find a cure for her disease. This is one book which seems to be written by a person who does not use religion and faith as a crutch. He seems to accept the fact that suffering and death will cause trauma. And it is for each one of us to cope individually if we are unlucky to see someone close die painfully.

Read Anything to Go on Living  A Review by Brigitte Frase 
Courtesy:Art and Letters Daily.