Virginia Postrel Quotes

If you don't have dialysis, absolutely, you will die. Dialysis is actually keeping me alive.

Obviously I tell myself I'm more than happy for everything that's been given to me. But if I wake up one morning and my kidney decides 'I don't fancy it today', I'm back to square one.

I did not fully understand the dread term 'terminal illness' until I saw Heathrow for myself.

It was in 2003 that I realised there was no choice but to have dialysis treatment - by the time of the World Cup that year, I could barely walk. A year later, I finally had a kidney transplant.

In health care today, we spend most of the dollars - in terms of treating disease - in the last two years of a person's life.

A doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn't pay his bill, so he gave him another six months.

'Incurable' is a tough word. So is 'terminal.'

I've always been aware of mortality because I've always had ill health most of my life.

In medicine you go from dying to chronically ill. You don't go from dying to better than you ever knew you could be. That just doesn't happen.

My doctor gave me six months to live, but when I couldn't pay the bill he gave me six months more.

A patient healthy enough to undergo a kidney transplant might someday no longer need dialysis. That would free up a slot for a new patient.

In 1962 I was diagnosed with this incurable disease.

He had Parkinson's disease for about, I'd say diagnosed for about 11 of the last years of his life. And treatment was not as good as it is now, of course. We're still going along and he died in '85 and he was 77.

I mean some doctor told me I had six months to live and I went to their funeral.

My dad was in a wheelchair and on oxygen for the last few years of his life.

I think everyone's experience with a terminal disease is so deeply personal and unique to the person, the context in which they're living and the relationships that they have.

Americans of all ages deserve quality end-of-life medical care.

You don't have free will when you have lung cancer.

I don't want a few extra weeks of life at enormous cost, for example, when it comes to the end.

I realized not long ago that by the time I leave this Earth, no matter when it is I will have officially only spent approximately 14 years of my life where I did not have to deal with cancer.

One thing you have to realize is that cancer is not something you necessarily cure, but you want to just take care of yourself and extend your life as long as you can.

I was convinced that eventually I would die of heart disease, that we'd run out of time and out of treatment, the technology wouldn't keep ahead of my disease. And now all of the sudden, when you get the new heart, your life opens up before you again.

Death is not treatment, even if it's medically facilitated.

We have lost close friends and relatives to cancer and Parkinson's disease, and the level of personal suffering inflicted on patients and their families by these diseases is horrific.

We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.