{"id":191392,"date":"2026-04-09T21:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T21:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/191392\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T21:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T21:36:07","slug":"opinion-what-dying-feels-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/191392\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | What Dying Feels Like"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-8hvvyd\">How do you feel? So I have a really good hospice doc. I\u2019m not dying right now, but I\u2019m well in the category that you can be in those end-of-life months. And she said to me early on: When you\u2019re dying of an abdominal disease, you\u2019re really \u2014 you\u2019ve got an algorithm that\u2019s managing four variables. You have tumor- driven pain. You have cancer- and treatment-driven nausea. You\u2019re managing a diarrhea- to-constipation continuum. And you\u2019ve got energy and fatigue. So I was in a ton of pain early on because I had some pancreatic tumors that were essentially pushing on my spinal column, and I was on 55 milligrams of morphine as soon as diagnosed. And that\u2019s \u2014 you\u2019re high as a kite. And we drove down my pain a lot. But since then, the drug has shrunk the tumors so much that I was willing to dial back up a little bit of pain to get a little bit of energy back and to be able to get a little more control over my nausea, etc. So I\u2019m down to only about 30 milligrams a day of morphine, and I\u2019d say my pain is 80 percent reduced from where I started. So I manage nausea a lot. There\u2019s strong waves of desire to puke. And when my face isn\u2019t bleeding, I\u2019m actually pretty good with the puking. I mean, I don\u2019t like it, but you can throw up, and you\u2019re through it. So anyway, enough whining. But that\u2019s \u2014 so the pain, let\u2019s say, on a 0 to 10 scale right now, sitting here talking to me? It\u2019s not bad. Four. OK. But it was up at, like, eight? Yeah. And how do your face and skin feel? Nuclear. [Laughs.] Burning, bubbling? Yeah. I was at a \u2014 I\u2019m in a pharmacy every day. I\u2019m keeping a lot of that industry employed right now. There\u2019s the drop-off part, and then there\u2019s the pickup part, but there\u2019s that little weird curtain in the corner that says, \u201cConsult.\u201d I always figured that was just a place to talk about S.T.D.s. Like, I didn\u2019t know what it was, but I just figured they called you over if there was some \u2014 \u2014 An unusual wart. Yeah, exactly. There\u2019s something growing here that I don\u2019t know how to make sense of. I had a pharmacist call me over there the other day, and she pulls the curtain. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on. I\u2019m like: Do I got another problem I don\u2019t even know about? And she leans in, and she said, \u201cDid they do something electrical to you?\u201d I don\u2019t even know what that is. But either acid or electric shocks produce a face that looks this hideous. Well, and you told her that you\u2019d gotten on the wrong side of six different mafias and they\u2019d all taken turns. I said, \u201cListen, I was at the local Walmart, and they\u2019re going to have to get a handle on all those kids with the bowls of acid running around in the aisles. I\u2019m a victim.\u201d So the tumors are smaller right now. Crazy smaller. My tumors this week are down 76 percent from Dec. 29. Tumor volume in my torso is down 76 percent. So if they can knock tumor volume down 76 percent, why can\u2019t they keep you alive for 20 years? Great question. And I have to keep answering this one for my mama. I can imagine that some people closer to you than I am have that question The way it\u2019s been explained to me \u2014 and I don\u2019t know squat about biology \u2014 but the way it\u2019s been explained to me, you could look out at your lawn and say: There are only six dandelions out there. I could weed those. And they say: Yes, but look at your neighbors to the north and to the south. Both of their yards are chock-full of dandelions. Two or three or four mornings from now, that\u2019s your yard. You\u2019ve already seeded everything. And so, even though my pancreas tumors look on the scans like \u201cLet\u2019s get these before and after images blown up and put them on the wall,\u201d they\u2019ve already seeded so many other kinds of cancer that it\u2019s probably just not something you can ever catch up on. There\u2019s too much Whac-a-Mole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How do you feel? So I have a really good hospice doc. I\u2019m not dying right now, but&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[76604,13483,9,11,10,76605],"class_list":{"0":"post-191392","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-benjamin-sasse","9":"tag-cancer","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-pancreatic-cancer"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}