White House spokesman faces new battle with cancer - International Herald Tribune
Tony Snow, the Fox News host who moved to the White House as the press secretary not so long ago, now has liver cancer too.
I wonder why liver cancer is so difficult (or impossible?) to treat.
As you might expect, there are some on the left who see this as fitting example of karma. There's a column at Huffington Post
which seems to run the line "I really don't wish him ill, but part of me still feels he deserves it." That's left wing compassion for you.
It's impossible to treat.
ReplyDeleteYou can't live without a liver, it's a vital organ, not unlike trying to live without a heart.
Okay, not entirely impossible to treat. They can reduce size of tumors in the liver with chemo and radio; thereby extending the persons life. They might even be able to remove tumors from the liver, but very often may not be able to. Again, it's buying time, extending time. Precious little, but it's all that the doctors would be able to offer.
Liver cancer is the end of the line, other than the extent to which the doctors can maintain and prolong the life.
Yes, but I am curious as to what it is about the liver that makes it impossible to treat. I mean, they can cut an adult liver down to size and put it in a kid, I believe, which indicates it's a pretty robust organ. So it surprises me that you can't do much about cancer there. No doubt the answer is in the way it is structured or works. (Come to think of it, of all out organs, the liver is probably the one that people have the vaguest idea about what it does. I know I don't understand it.)
ReplyDeleteThis all reminds me, when I was a kid I used to read the "I am Joe's ....." (fill in with appropriate organ) in the Readers Digest. I think that is what the series was called anyway. I can distinctly reading about Joe's testicles, and at that time I didn't even realise that's what they were called.
I either didn't read, or can't recall, the RD version of what a liver does.