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Modern medical miracles are creating the
possibility that we can live forever--almost.
An organ such as a kidney can be removed from one person and put
it in the body of someone with a failing kidney.
Other organs from heart to liver to cornea can be donated from a
dying a person to give continued life to another. Mechanical inventions are being discovered daily
to replace human organs. Even
parts of animals are used in transplants.
A body can be kept functioning with a semblance of life long
after the legal death of a human. No
longer is the brain necessary to keep the body functioning.
A brain dead patient is kept on tubes and machines long after the
life that was there is gone. Loving
relatives can’t let go. Governmental
officials yielding to moral public pressure sometimes insist the body
continue without a conscience life detected. Drugs are constantly developed and available,
often at an astronomical cost. Even
without miracle drugs and heroic artificial methods, the life can span
can be greatly expanded with the advice offered by nutritionists as well
as the medicine men. Simple
things like eating right, exercise and moderation will do the work.
With obesity approaching cancer and heart disease among causes of
death, it’s easier to keep the same lazy life style and pay later. It’s easier to use liposuction and tummy tucks than it is
to skip that extra helping of potatoes or pass up on the slice of apple
pie. We can always buy
fattening potato chips at the super market as long as we get a bottle of
diet soda to go with it. It comes down to our life style.
Is good health worth it, worth changing the way we live? My dear friend Guss Howe retired from the Air
Force after a colorful career which ranged for looking for the hydrogen
bomb dropped off Spain to flying on Air Force One with presidents
Johnson and then Nixon. Included
with his military routine was heavy use of alcohol. He had just turned 65 when he was fighting mouth
cancer. Doctors told him he
could quit drinking and smoking to increase his life span. He loved his Scotch (which he called a “jabadoo”) and his
Lucky Strikes. He chose not
to change his life style and died shortly after diagnosis. All of us would be better off if we had followed
a healthy routine from birth. Usually
we wait until late in life to begin caring. Aldous Huxley was best known for his novel
“Brave New World” which was a forerunner of futuristic science
novels written in 1932. He
later dealt with America’s obsession with superficiality and obsession
with youth. His novel
“After Many a Summer Dies the Swan” was written by Huxley in 1939
and alludes to the supposed long life span of a swan.
In the story, a couple lives to extreme age in seclusion and
denial of any kinds of a life style. It’s a bit reminiscent of Howard Hughes’
last years. If we gave up the things we enjoy from a
beverage to a spicy food, we might live longer.
Is it worth it? Don’t
we somewhere have to balance the benefits of old age against the
pleasures of getting there? Three years ago I had to quit smoking my Pall
Malls. No choice.
I had gotten so I couldn’t take a deep breath. Likely this has given me a few extra years.
Of course, I would be better off if I had never smoked or had
quit earlier. I would be
better off if I had never indulged in many habits I considered pleasure.
But look at all the memories I would have lost. One thing we have, when we grow old, when we
reach the point our love life and athletic participation are more of a
strain than pleasure, is remembering what we once did.
Perhaps that man or that woman in a nursing home, tied to a wheel
chair, and in a semi coma, still cherishes memories in the caverns of
the mind, flashes of the days when the world was young and the body was
able. Perhaps the best life style is living somewhere
between Frank Sinatra’s advice of “doing it my way” and doing it
the way we should. Losing
just a little bit of the dream of living forever for the pleasure of a
remembered tender moment.
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