So, many have blogged about Senator Edward Kennedy’s (D. MA) recent seizure and all the drama surrounding it. Regardless of the airlifting and the million dollar workup, one thing is clear. Elderly people who have a new onset seizure have a brain tumour until proven otherwise. Unfortunately, that has turned out to be the case with the senator. He has a malignant glioma. Regardless of how you feel about his political leanings, it is sad when someone develops this tumor. The survival rate, if it turns out to be a GBM (Glioblastoma Multiforme), is very poor and can be as little as 6 months. If he has a less aggressive variety, he could get 5 years. I personally dread brain tumours more than almost any other “bad” diagnosis. He is not up for re-election til 2012 so I am pretty sure he will not finish his term - I am also pretty sure there are a lot of his opponents that are beginning to salivate.
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If he has GBM, hopefully they won’t torture the poor bastard by keeping him alive for very long with maximum interventions.
I agree…what does his ‘liberal leanings’ have to do with anything in this matter? How does one’s ‘political persuation’ dictate how we should respond to and treat them any differently as fellow human beings with a health problem .. that is clearly ad hominum thinking. Otherwise we just become mean, cold conservatives like Ann Coulter. (They do the same with AIDS patients,etc.. I have noticed, or anyone they have ‘problems’ with. People like that should not go into the helping professions.
I agree lurgid. There are a lot of blogs out there very critical of him and of other “liberals”. My point was that I hope people can see past his political leanings and see him as a patient. I am no GW Bush fan but I would not revel in his misery if he were to get cancer.
That was my first thought, some type of tumor. I was hoping it wasn’t a glioma, but …..
My prayers are with him.
My best friend died of this a couple years ago. From day of diagnosis she lived just 5.5 months. Her only symptom that made her seek medical care in the beginning was seeing sqiggly lines. She had 3 tumors on her brain when she was diagnosed. One was the size of a tangerine. It was horrible to watch what she went through.
my Prayers to the Kennendy’s and I don’t think anyone should be referring to him as a “Poor Bastard”…There are still a few people in this world who know how to talk without being so outright disrespectful. It is scary that she is a nurse.
Hey, mca, I was a neuro nurse before being in ER. I took care of these GBM patients (and every other type of brain tumor patient). Trust me, if you’re diagnosed with a GBM or any other reasonably aggressive glioma, you’ll have people mumbling “poor bastard” when referring to you too. It’s rather tragic, you see. While I don’t normally respect Ted Kennedy for various reasons, having a brain tumor makes him like any of my other patients I referred to as “poor bastard.”
Maybe a little respect from you too? I don’t see you wiping these folks’ butts, re-loading their feeding tubes bags, and preventing their pressure ulcers while their family holds on to false hope of recovery, seemingly unaware that their loved one would never have wanted that 4th craniotomy in one year for a tumor debulking. Getting a brain tumor truly does make you a poor bastard.
My brief time as a floor nurse was mostly spent on two cancer floors, and GBM is extremely horrible - totally debilitating, fast-moving, and hopeless. When you go from being a vibrant, independent adult to a diapered, contractured, seizure-prone, skinny, empty-eyed shell of who you were in a matter of months, “poor bastard” is the accurate term. (In my part of the country, it was “poor SOB”. Either way, the profanity expresses emphatic angry disgust for the disease, not degradation of or anger at its victim.)
My own father, whom I loved and respected, died of a super-aggressive neck cancer, and I would have completely understood and agreed if I’d overheard someone call him a “poor bastard.” It is just terrible when someone dies an abrupt and very bad death. Pity is entirely appropriate.
My father died when I was 18 (12 years ago) from what I believe was “stage 4 glioblastoma”, something about it being shaped like a butterfly rather than an egg made it almost impossible to treat.
From the time he was diagnosed, he lived about 3 months. He had been having increasingly severe headaches at work for over a year, but they were attributed to stress for too long before any proper scans were done.
The worst part of it for me was that my father was very intelligent and well-spoken, and at the time he was diagnosed properly, he was unfortunately not able to put very many coherent thoughts together.
It was very difficult to deal with, but it hit my younger sister much harder, being that she was 12 and he was the team “mom” for her softball team (he wasn’t effeminate, just the only dad to be in that position in our area, so forgive me for the inside joke).
My heart and hopes go out to all of those that have to experience this type of tragedy, both those who have the tumors, and (maybe) more importantly, their family and friends.
Nurse K wrote, “If he has GBM, hopefully they won’t torture the poor bastard by keeping him alive for very long with maximum interventions.”
How do you read this and not see the empathy?
In response, mca writes, “There are still a few people in this world who know how to talk without being so outright disrespectful. It is scary that she is a nurse.”
mca, there is nothing disrespectful or scary about Nurse K’s comment. As a nurse, Nurse K may express empathy differently from what you feel is respectful. Your attack is inappropriate.
You apparently read one word that was a No No and disregarded the rest of the sentence. Nurse K deserves an apology.
Hope all those who quickly jumped on the “must have been late for the first drink of the day” bandwagon will not be so quick to judge. This man has spent a good deal of his life working on programs and legislation for poor and working class people. Do you think there may have been some compassion in his motivation to do so?
Rogue medic, Sorry, but I don’t buy into the idea that it is OK to call someone a nasty name then use the excuse of it being done in the name of empathy. If I were to respond to Nurse K. with something on the order of “OK Bitch” (meant with total affection and full of sweetness)I cannot see how this could be acceptable. It is vulgar and so is her comment. Nasty names are still nasty names no matter what spin you put on them. I don’t have the right to call anyone those names and just because you are in the medical profession neither do you.
Just to let you know mca, many things are said in the health care industry that those who do not work in it would find offensive. That being said, many of these things like “poor bastard” are certainly not meant with malice. Some of this has evolved out of a natural defence mechanism to working in a morbid atmosphere. Of course, patients are never called something like that to their face (or to their family’s faces) just in case the patient/family DOES find it offensive.
Hey—I linked mca’s comment in my sidebar!
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I’ve had two neighbors/friends, both women in their early 60’s, diagnosed with Glioma, both in stage 4 when found and their only symptom was weakness on one side of their body. These women had nothing in common with the other, one overweight, one pencil thin, one wealthy and never worked, one taught school for 35 yrs, one had a loving family, the other no one but friends and neighbors. The only similarity we saw was they were both very heavy drinkers. Not going on binges but an every evening occurence, some evenings a little more than others. Can alcohol affect brain cells to where they’d divide and start on their cancer path?
I am not familiar with an alcohol connection to GBM. My understanding is that is just plain old bad luck.
thank you, ERP, for your speedy response.
(one of these ladies told me just this morning that she’s now smoking pot instead of drinking, so I guess that’s good? lol
well the constant alcohol bath isnt great for the brain in general =it does kill brain cells everytime you consume it
and to the anti poor bastard lady
GROW UP already by modern standards bastard doent even quality as a nasty word anymore
it was obviously used in a connotation by someone who has working knowledge of the reality of having a brain tumor -any let alone the nasty kind being discussed
Im old enough to rem when ANY cancer victim was a poor bastard and folks lived in mortal fear of the C word. One of the few things I agreed with my dad as a teen was if I gotta die let me go quickly.
I have know a few family’s deal with various brain cancers poor bastard sums it up well. You have all the nastiness of cancer and it can go from normal to dead in the blink of an eye or you can catch it early and have a slow moving kind caught late and watch them suffer like you wouldnt believe.
Rem they got all the bad of cancer but its in their brain which means anything that can go wrong with the running of their bodies can and will go wrong. The mental breakdown of functionality means all the issues of dementia too.
TRUST me I come down with it the nicest expression of my condition I will say will be I AM a poor bastard.
My sweet sister is dealing with this; we don’t know if she’ll see Christmas. She was diagnosed 90 days ago and her only symptom was she fell on her left side a few times, enough for her to go to the doctor, MRI, then the worst news we could imagine, stage 4, glioma.
When we told the surgeon we were sure praying for stage one, he responded that she wouldn’t have had any symptoms in stages 1,2,or possibly 3. The tumor they estimated 90 days ago was about 3 months old when she sought help.
After 90 days of radiation & chemo, the MRI showed the ‘tumor has exploded’, doctors words.. He also said,
what we’ve done just pissed off the tumor! We are in shock and my sister who taught 2nd graders for 35 years is quickly approaching death’s door.
Now they’re trying a different chemo, “throwing a bomb at it” is what he told us, but she is very despondent, wants to quit taking fluids and food so she’ll die. The only ‘good’ thing about the whole awful mess is brain cancer doesn’t leave the brain so she won’t waste away, he said ‘it’s mercifully quick’.