Epiphany

I feel so foolish for not realizing it before. It should have been clear, the evidence was in front of me all the time. But I always discounted it. I said, "Of course these people want to live. There is nothing more valuable than a human life, right?"

Maybe the cancer patients with horrible pain, they might not cling to life as tenaciously, but the big fat person with a perforated colon or something, surely they want to live. They want us to do everything we can to pull them through.

I used to get confused by the notion that some things were worth dying for. Surely anything worth dying for is worth living for, isn't it? But some people are willing to die for causes they believe in. Some people die for Truth, Justice, or the American Way. Some people die trying to pull others out of burning buildings. Some people die fighting in Iraq for one side or another. Many people die for their religion. We may not agree with it, but at least it seems to make some kind of sense.

But now I know that some people are willing to die for Freedom, and the Freedom for which they gladly lay down their lives isn't always freedom of speech, or freedom of religion, or even the right to bear arms. It is the right to eat bacon double cheeseburgers. It is the right to inhale the exhaust of burning tobacco leaves. The right to ride your jet ski drunk.

And now I realize that there is another right that Americans feel is more important than living a long healthy life. It is the right to cable TV. A cable bill might be $1000 a year, but who can afford health care?

It finally occurred to me that people are making the choice to live in an unhealthy way and to not carry health care, and it may be a rational choice. If people choose to spend their money on cigarettes, alcohol, motorcycles, or calories instead of healthcare, who am I to tell them they should do anything else?

Live free or die, right?

There are plenty of people who consider the options and make different choices. They get a little exercise now and then, they only eat when they are hungry. They buy health insurance. They are deciding they value somethings more than the right to ride a motorcycle without a helmet. In the rain. At night. While high.

And the others, well, autonomy id one of the doctor's guiding principles, right?