8 Big Surprises About Being Terminally Ill

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[00:00:02]Hi.

[00:00:03]This is your friend David Mills speaking to you again from Huntington, West Virginia.

[00:00:09]And my topic for today is eight big surprises about being terminally ill.

[00:00:17]>> [laughter] >> Now, this may sound like an odd topic of discussion. But let me first present my credentials.

[00:00:26]I am terminally ill, unfortunately. I was diagnosed in early January of having metastatic prostate cancer, which has spread to my spinal cord and throughout uh the bones of my pelvis and probably elsewhere. Once they discovered all that, I told them, you know, I get the message.

[00:00:50]Don't look anymore. And since that time, I've been on hospice.

[00:00:55]But this video is is going to be a little bit more upbeat than you might imagine.

[00:01:00]Cuz I want to go over eight surprising things about being terminally ill.

[00:01:07]The first thing is that you don't have to be thinking about it all the time. You don't have to be obsessed with death.

[00:01:18]In fact, I am extremely surprised myself in how little I think about my condition. Even in the hospital a couple of days after I was diagnosed, I remember thinking, "Well, the Cincinnati Reds, they'll never have another catcher like Johnny Bench." By the way, I'm a big Reds fan. If you can't see my shirt, it says Cincinnati [laughter] Reds.

[00:01:45]Big Reds fan, and I was thinking about the Reds and their season.

[00:01:49]And I thought, "Well, am I not supposed to be thinking about my illness, about what's going to happen to me?" And I do think about it. But the first big surprise is that you don't think about it nearly as much as you might foreshadow.

[00:02:08]You don't think about it as much as you might anticipate.

[00:02:15]The second big surprise about being terminally ill is that you're not in constant pain.

[00:02:22]Now, I know that every condition is different and every person is different, but with modern hospice care, which I'm on, in almost every case, the patient can live fairly comfortably.

[00:02:38]So, that's not really that much of a concern if if you have good hospice care.

[00:02:45]So, that's the second big surprise.

[00:02:47]You're not going to be in constant pain, even toward the end. And I've talked to many uh doctors and nurses at hospice who see to me and they they will confirm this because they do a wonderful job.

[00:03:03]The third big surprise about being terminally ill is that you don't necessarily become devoutly religious.

[00:03:14]I am not a religious man, as many of you know. And people often think that well, once you're told that you're you're told that you're dying, you're going to have this sudden splurge of religion.

[00:03:27]Well, I can imagine some people would, particularly if their religion is based mostly on emotion. It is an emotional thing to to be told you're terminally ill, but not everybody turns to religion.

[00:03:44]And as I said in my last video, there are indeed atheists in foxholes.

[00:03:51]So, the big surprise number three is that you don't necessarily become any more religious than you were.

[00:04:01]The fourth big surprise about being terminally ill is that not everyone is thinking about you all the time.

[00:04:10]You know, I I myself am not thinking about dying all the time. And so, for me to believe that other people are thinking about me all the time is kind of paranoid.

[00:04:26]I remember Dale Carnegie used to use this example of um suppose you you are in a group photo and the photo has a hundred people in it and you you were one of the people in the photo.

[00:04:39]Whose picture do you look at first?

[00:04:43]Of course, you look at your own.

[00:04:45]Another example.

[00:04:47]You just heard on the news that 10 million people just died in China.

[00:04:53]But, you yourself have a toothache.

[00:04:57]Which is more important to you? Your toothache or the millions of people who just died?

[00:05:02]The answer is, if you're honest, your toothache.

[00:05:06]Again, as Dale Carnegie said, people are not interested in me. They're not interested in you. They are interested in themselves.

[00:05:17]So, the idea that if you're terminally ill, everybody is constantly thinking about you is not true.

[00:05:25]Not true.

[00:05:28]The fifth biggest surprise about being terminally ill is that you're not going to be in great amounts of debt, medical debt, if you accept the fact that you are going to die, that you accept that you're terminally ill and you go on hospice.

[00:05:50]Hospice is entirely paid for by Medicaid or Medicare, depending on your age and your circumstance. And so, it costs you essentially nothing.

[00:06:04]Now, if you continue to chase one boondoggle theoretical cure after another, you might die bankrupt.

[00:06:16]Of course, you might not care if you're bankrupt. Your family might, but the main surprise is that if if you are on hospice care, you're not going to go deeply in debt as a result of your terminal illness.

[00:06:33]The sixth surprise about being terminally ill is that there are advantages to it.

[00:06:41]>> [laughter] >> What's What's that saying? Nothing focuses the mind like the thought of an imminent hanging.

[00:06:50]You're forced to get your legal papers in order.

[00:06:55]Uh course, I've had my will and my living will made out for years and years.

[00:07:00]And I I've always kept a really tight budget.

[00:07:05]Dave Ramsey would be proud of me.

[00:07:08]>> [laughter] >> Though I don't have his money, unfortunately, but my budget would always extend out for about 25 years.

[00:07:16]Well, I don't have to worry about that now.

[00:07:19]The most I'm going to live is just 2 or 3 years.

[00:07:23]So, that kind of limits how much work I have to do planning for my financial future.

[00:07:31]>> [laughter] >> And there are other advantages. You um I remember my father passed away in hospice and he died at at the Imogene Dolan Jones facility here in Huntington, West Virginia.

[00:07:47]And I remember thinking at the time, well, he is there in that beautiful, beautiful facility.

[00:07:55]He's surrounded by beautiful women and he's being pumped full of the best drugs in town and he has no worries about paying any bills.

[00:08:09]You know, it It almost makes you look forward to developing a terminal illness.

[00:08:15]>> [laughter] >> Not really.

[00:08:18]Not really.

[00:08:21]The I've lost count. Where am I? The seventh The seventh big surprise about being terminally ill is that the patient is not the one who does most of the the suffering.

[00:08:35]My own personal hospice nurse and I've talked about this quite a lot.

[00:08:40]And it's almost always the family that suffers more than the patient. The patient is giving given medication and is kept comfortable and and the ones who really suffer are the loved ones. They suffer emotionally. They're often tired.

[00:09:00]Uh taking care of of the sick person is is difficult.

[00:09:04]But the the family suffers at least at least as much as the patient and in many cases more so.

[00:09:16]The eighth and final biggest surprise is that you can be very happy even if you're terminally ill.

[00:09:24]Now, this year, since the first week in January, I have known that I'm going to die pretty soon.

[00:09:31]And in spite of that, I've had a pretty good year.

[00:09:35]I don't think about it often. I've still feel good. I get out. I'm in the parking lot right now of the of an abandoned bowling alley where I spent a lot of my youth and kind of reminiscing about the days when I was a good bowler.

[00:09:52]And um you know, I'm anticipating maybe going to a Reds game in a week or so and I've got other things little things planned.

[00:10:00]And so the idea that if you're terminally ill, you can't be upbeat, you can't be happy, it's just nonsense.

[00:10:08]You you're as happy Abraham Lincoln said, you are as happy as you make up your mind to be.

[00:10:16]I'd like to close here with a little thought. It's about the cycle of life and what success means.

[00:10:26]Says, "When you're little, success means not wetting the bed.

[00:10:35]When you're a teenager, success means going all the way.

[00:10:40]When you're middle-aged, success means being happy.

[00:10:46]When you're old, success means going all the way.

[00:10:53]And when you're very old, success means not wetting the bed."

[00:11:00]The cycle of life.