Brave? Yes. Unique? No.
Bookworm on Jun 02 2008 at 8:50 pm | Filed under: Media matters, Medicine
If you stop at the first paragraph of this AP article, you might think that Teddy Kennedy is the only person on earth who has ever faced a cancer surgery as daunting as the one he underwent (emphasis mine):
Bravery in the face of cancer? Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has given it new meaning. Few things require as much courage as being wide awake and aware, lying perfectly still for hours, while surgeons methodically slice out bits of your brain.
In fact, although this approach to surgery is not common, Teddy is by no means the only one who has done it:
To avoid cutting through vital areas controlling speech, doctors often return the patient to consciousness and stimulate tissue in the planned surgical path with a probe.
“We’ll have them do language tests like hold up pictures, name objects, repeat words, hold a conversation,” Ewend explained.
After that, the patient is usually put back under while the tumor is cut out, which takes about three to four hours.
However, Kennedy was awake for the removal of the tumor, his doctor’s statement says. That usually means local rather than general anesthesia.
His head would have been in a vise-like device and he’d have to remain very still for hours while the doctors poked, probed and sliced away the cancer, using his responses to guide them.
“That’s the best way you can determine if you’re incurring neurological impairment” as the operation proceeds, said Dr. Kevin McGrail, neurosurgery chief at Georgetown University Medical Center.
“It’s a safe way to do the operation, but it can sometimes be very stressful on the patient,” who is aware of what’s going on even though it is not painful, he said.
As it happens, I am extremely impressed by the fact that Teddy was willing to do this, although I can understand the motive too: the best surgical outcome. Frankly, I don’t know if I could have done that, even sharing his motive. Let me say again, therefore, that I am not writing this to denigrate Teddy’s courage in the face of what seems to be an incredibly uncomfortable and frightening procedure.
My beef — as it almost always is — is with the way in which the media spins things like this (and I’m confident that the spin would have been . . . um, different if Cheney had been the one undergoing surgery). That first paragraph makes it sound as if Kennedy is unique in the history of cancer patients and that no one, absolutely no one, has ever demonstrated this type of courage before. Courageous? Definitely. Unique? Only in AP’s eyes, and that’s true despite the fact that their own article gives the game away.
On the subject of bravery in surgery, I’d like to recommend to you Fanny Burney’s experience. She was a late 18th/early 19th century courtier and writer in England who, in 1811, underwent a radical mastectomy — without anesthetic. Here is her description of that surgery (which is not for the faint of heart):
Yet – when the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast – cutting through veins – arteries – flesh – nerves – I needed no injunctions not to restrain my cries. I began a scream that lasted unintermittingly during the whole time of the incision – & I almost marvel that it rings not in my Ears still! so excruciating was the agony. When the wound was made, & the instrument was withdrawn, the pain seemed undiminished, for the air that suddenly rushed into those delicate parts felt like a mass of minute but sharp & forked poniards, that were tearing the edges of the wound – but when again I felt the instrument – describing a curve – cutting against the grain, if I may so say, while the flesh resisted in a manner so forcible as to oppose & tire the hand of the operator, who was forced to change from the right to the left – then, indeed, I thought I must have expired.
I attempted no more to open my Eyes, – they felt as if hermetically shut, & so firmly closed, that the Eyelids seemed indented into the Cheeks. The instrument this second time withdrawn, I concluded the operation over – Oh no! presently the terrible cutting was renewed – & worse than ever, to separate the bottom, the foundation of this dreadful gland from the parts to which it adhered – Again all description would be baffled – yet again all was not over, – Dr Larry rested but his own hand, & – Oh Heaven! – I then felt the Knife tackling against the breast bone – scraping it! – This performed, while I yet remained in utterly speechless torture, I heard the Voice of Mr Larry, – (all others guarded a dead silence) in a tone nearly tragic, desire everyone present to pronounce if anything more remained to be done; The general voice was Yes, – but the finger of Mr Dubois – which I literally felt elevated over the wound, though I saw nothing, & though he touched nothing, so indescribably sensitive was the spot – pointed to some further requisition – & again began the scraping! – and, after this, Dr Moreau thought he discerned a peccant attom – and still, & still, M. Dubois demanded attom after atom.
Burney lived another twenty-nine years after that ordeal.
Related posts:
Email This Post To A Friend
20 Responses to “Brave? Yes. Unique? No.”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I must comment on this in a personal manner and I apologize beforehand for that.
I am almost two years into my wife’s death due to a rare disease described by her doctors as “horrible,” she was 48.
There is no courage in undergoing a medical treatment, and there is no courage in observing it.
The courage is her’s when she said to me before she died, “what about you?”
Now, Had They Waterboarded Him Between Slices…
THAT would have been bravery. Not to mention, appropriate…….
Anybody who watches Grey’s Anatomy, House, or ER knows that brain surgery is often performed with the patient awake. Yes, I’m sure it takes courage to endure the procedure, but I can’t imagine that fear would stop anybody who thought they could be cured, or gain more time by having it.
Allen, I’m sorry to hear about your wife. You obviously loved her very much.
Ditto to what judyrose said, Allen. She must have been a woman of rare generosity of spirit.
It is insulting in the extreme to have the MSM virtually deify Edward Kennedy for undergoing admittedly delicate procedure tagged with potential risks which nevertheless is a relatively frequent procedure.
The insult is individual to contributors like Allen, or one of my patients who lost her hearing from total brain radiation, and general to all those who underwent the first new surgical or medical procedure.
I guess that a reasonably painful circle of hell for such news writers would be to read their own copy in front of the real medical heroes.
Allen, I can barely imagine your grief, and pray for your surmmounting it.
Al
lying perfectly still for hours, while surgeons methodically slice out bits of your brain.
Are people pretending to claim that this is the first time he has undergone such an op?
You wouldn’t have known it from looking at Ted Kennedy’s past. For one thing, clearly they had already removed Kennedy’s capacity for mercy, shame, and compassion when he voted to cleanse the South Vietnamese from the face of existence in the region.
I know some of the reasons why you don’t like John F. Kennedy, Book. This Kennedy is still alive and hurting people, however. JFK can be excused for not being given a chance to redeem himself. That excuse is non-existent with Ted.
His head would have been in a vise-like device and he’d have to remain very still for hours while the doctors poked, probed and sliced away the cancer, using his responses to guide them.
Normally you can’t count on a patient’s ability to remain still while his brain is being operated on. One false move and he will just have lobotomized himself. Of course, that isn’t very much a danger with Ted Kennedy, if you had asked me.
Courageous? Definitely.
The Spartans defined valor as the capability to hold the fear of death and of fear itself in contempt. Steven Pressfield defined valor for the Spartans as a love so great, death itself cannot stand in its way.
This is why the Spartans refused to give the medal of valor to those who insanely risked their lives because they feared being called a coward and “tembler” more than they feared the swords and spears of their foes. When a person overcomes one fear with another, that is not valor though it is of a kind of courage and grit. It is certainly better than denial and sticking your head in the sand.
In this case, it would be inappropriate to call Ted’s actions courageous without knowing what his internal mental state was. Did he fear dying without the operation more than he feared dying with it? Did he fear surviving the operation and being unable to speak in the Senate more than he feared the thought of being awake while they operated on his brain? Did he love life so much that he held the fear of being awake while doctors saved him in contempt? Did he love power and the exercise thereof so much that he refused to give into the fear of undergoing such an operation given that he would have ordered far more gruesome actions and sacrifices on others had he felt the need?
These are the questions the AP would ask if they had a pair and weren’t ideological fanatics and cowards in the bargain.
In the end, apropos to Allen’s comment, it is one thing to hold rare individuals up to the pedestal in order to inspire us all to greater efforts for our benefit and the benefit of humanity. It is quite another to raise unto the stage a parasite that can do nothing but remind us of the utter carelessness and destruction that results from admiration of false idols.
Kennedy also likely will receive the chemotherapy drug Temodar during and after radiation. It can cause typical chemo side effects — nausea, vomiting and fatigue — but treatments are much better for these than even a few years ago, doctors stressed.
It won’t be better for us in a few years because Ted Kennedy will do us all a favor and knee cap the evil pharmaceutical companies.
Allen:
Your wife gave you a gift that is priceless….she told you to live by asking, What about you.
My dad passed away more than 20 years ago from brain cancer. After suffering a seizure some weeks before he died (he was put into a medical coma) slowly he was awoken from the coma, opened his eyes and looked at me and started to cry. I had never seen my father cry and asked him if he was afraid. He said, “no, honey, I am crying for you”.
What my father did was to put life above it all and told me so in his own way. My father’s tears were a parent’s concern that his child would not linger in sadness.
I shared my personal history because I wanted to affirm what courage is and continues to be …the courage to continue with life – your life in a meaningful a way.
Your wife was a shining example of human kindness.
Actually, keeping people awake during surgeries of this type is pretty common. It confers the great benefit of immediate response.
The old joke among what used to be called brain surgeons as they proceeded was: “… there go the piano lessons… now we’ll have to teach him how to tie his shoes again… all those golf lessons: gone!” – and on like that.
Now you don’t have to wonder what you’re doing: the patient just tells you. A lot easier, a lot quicker, a lot more on point. Not at all uncommon, and becoming less so every day.
I’m NO fan of Ted Kennedy, but I have to admit that I felt a little sorry for him when I read about his surgery. I was wide awake for my third c-section, and it was an extremely unpleasant experience. It goes against all human nature to lie there awake and unresistingly let someone slice you up. It’s hard to understand if you haven’t gone through it. However, I was not particularly brave about it – I simply had no choice – the baby had to come out. Likewise, how brave was Kennedy? He really didn’t have that much choice either. He was also probably sedated a little to calm him, since he didn’t have a baby’s health to worry about.
Oh, and oddly enough, I just finished reading Fanny Burney’s Camilla two days ago.
After all these years, the real courage this man could have shown would have been to accept the responsibility for the death of a young woman.
I only have contempt for this man.
Submitted for Your Approval…
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council li…
Regarding the MSM talking about “courage.” This is just cliche writing. Every time someone has a serious illness, “courage” comes up. As for myself, I share the viewpoints of my parents, who died of cancer some years ago. I don’t want courage. I want the most powerful pain suppressant and/or sedative there is.
That, Gringo, was precisely how I felt about childbirth — give me the epidural NOW!
Thank you.
And may you all be blessed.
Submitted 06/03/08…
The Watcher’s Council submissions have been posted. Choice and Honor The Razor, our newest member, considers the cases of Scott McClellan and Barack Obama and how they reacted to choices they made. The former, if he was fundamentally opposed to the di…
The Council Has Spoken!…
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Memorial Day by Done With Mirrors,…
Watcher’s Council results…
And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Memorial Day by Done With Mirrors, and John McCain, Prisoner of War: A First-Person Account by US News and World Report. Here are the full tallies……