Since the death of Christopher Hitchens, I have spent some time watching his final interviews. His appearance on Charlie Rose in August of 2010 particularly interested me. In the course of the interview, Rose asked Hitchens if he regretted his excessive consumption of alcohol and tobacco.
Hitchens answered:
“No, I think all the time I’ve felt that life is a wager, and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence, as a writer, than I would have if I didn’t…writing is what’s important to me, and anything that helps me do that, or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation is worth it to me. “
His response annoyed me intensely. There is nothing “bohemian” about alcohol and tobacco; they are the drugs of the establishment. Additionally, I can only imagine how much better the writings of an abstemious Hitchens would have been.
Hitchens killed himself with alcohol and tobacco. Because some questions about the end result of those addictions still lingered in my own mind, I had another conversation with my oncologist friend about esophageal cancer.
The journalist received his diagnosis in June of 2010, so I was curious when his cancer had begun to develop. “It is not possible to estimate,” the oncologist replied. “Generally, the cancer grows over a year before it spreads somewhere.” In some cases, it can begin to spread after six months.
Despite the fact that esophageal cancer remains an incurable disease, I asked the oncologist how long Hitchens would have lived without treatment. “It’s so variable,” he said. “Generally, if you don’t have any treatment, you don’t survive more than six months.”
According to The New York Times, Hitchens died of pneumonia. My friend explained that “any cancer patient will be susceptible to pneumonia,” but that sufferers of esophageal cancer are particularly so. “Their swallowing mechanism is disrupted, and they can sometimes aspirate their food during their sleep,” the oncologist said. Furthermore, a hole can form between the esophagus and the trachea if the cancer is in an advanced stage.
In his very last article for Vanity Fair magazine, Hitchens reported that “a vivid red radiation rash” extended from his chest to his abdomen. “This was the product of a month-long bombardment with protons which had burned away all of the cancer in my clavicular and paratracheal nodes, as well as the original tumor in the esophagus,” the journalist wrote.
Did the proton treatment really eliminate his cancer? “No,” the oncologist answered. Even though proton treatment is more effective than either electron treatment or the more conventional radiation therapy, it can only eliminate cancer that has not spread from local areas. Unfortunately for Hitchens, his cancer was in Stage 4, which meant that it had already metastasized. “Stage 4 is not curable,” my friend said. If the proton treatment eliminates the cancer in one area, “it will show up somewhere else.” The oncologist went on to say that the proton therapy was only meant for “local control” to alleviate symptoms. “It was not curative treatment,” the oncologist stated.
When I had first interviewed the oncologist in March of 2011, he predicted that Hitchens had less than six months to live. As it turns out, he almost lasted nine. Of course, the oncologist had never met Hitchens, and had only engaged in speculation. Still, I sought the oncologist’s retrospective reaction. Why did Hitchens last longer than expected? “It was his mental strength,” my friend reflected. “That’s all. He fought to stay alive.”
At the same time, the oncologist was not entirely uncritical.
“He was too optimistic about his own outcome and survival,” my friend concluded. “I am sure that his oncologist did not counsel him from the way he described things.”
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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