I was sent this yesterday via email and yes I wrote about Dr. Pausch awhile back, but I thought that the more exposure, or the more people that will see this “lecture”, the better off humanity will be because of it. It will only consume about 12 minutes of your time, but really, what is 12 minutes of your life when listening to a man who has but a few months to live?
Here also is an update on Randy’s current health:
April 2, 2008: Getting back into the fight
For those of you familiar with boxing, I would describe the weeks since my heart & kidney failure to be a “standing eight count.” I got knocked down pretty good and needed time to gather myself. Now I’m back on my feet; still a little wobbly, but ready to engage in the fight again.Yesterday’s CT and MRI scans showed that I’ve added a new, 11th tumor (small), and that a few of my original 10 tumors have grown, but only negligibly so. My biggest tumor is about 2.5cm in diameter. Given that I’ve been off chemo for six weeks, this was jumping-up-and-down good news, for two reasons:
1) It means the cancer has not grown like craxy, a big fear since stopping chemo.
2) Since all my tumors are in my liver, that means certain liver-specific treatments are possible.
I’m typing this from a recovery room; I just had a biopsy taken of my tumor tissue; that will be sent to TGEN in arizona, where they will run some tests to see if they can identify which chemotherapy drugs might be most effective on my particular tumors.
My next step will probably be embolization with theraspheres; a liver specific treatment that has a very low rate of side effects, and won’t make me feel crappy like systemic chemo does.
The fight is rejoined; I’ve got much more energy now — I hope to be back on the bike in a week or so.
I am glad to hear Randy Pausch’s cancer has not grown and that it’s localized enough to receive direct attention.
Randy, have you checked into Proton Treatment at Loma Linda? My father went through their radiation treatment for Prostate cancer and had a high Gleason score that they normally don’t accept, but due to a kidney transplant near the prostate, Loma Linda accepted him, and he’s been clean ever since and that was three years ago. The good news is that it doesn’t have the horrible side effects and you get better and better the more treatments given.
My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family. Humor is everything. You have the world going for you whether it’s in this plane or the next.
With regards,
Constance-Noelle
There have been a number of inconsistencies with Randy Pausch’s story that have caught my attention and make me wonder if he is really even dying. In his last lecture Randy said over and over “I will be gone in a few months”. Did he really believe that he would be dead in a few months? I absolutely did not. I have said since his appearance on Oprah that he would not be dead in the few months that he kep repeating. I thought that his repetitions served as the critical words to successfully market something which I later discovered was a $7M book deal. When he testified before congress he identified his wife as “my widow”. Am I the only person on earth that finds that to be overly and deliberately dramatic? He has said that his doctor told him that there was “no risk” for him to go scuba diving while on gemcitabine and tarceva. Would any licensed medical professional have actually said that? I know they would not have. Would any licensed medical professional have said “Mr. Pausch, your death in a few months is a certain event”? Even though he kept insisting he would be dead in a few months during his speech I know that no medical professional ever told him that. Lastly, and the thing that sticks out the most for me is that he has carelessly changed his health update on his website from “healthy” to “creeping tumor growth” FOR THE SAME PERIOD OF TIME. Am I to believe that was merely an innocent mistake? To me, something does not smell right about this story. Maybe I am wrong. Even though the evidence of fraud becomes more cogent to me with each passing day I actually hope that I am wrong about this. I want to believe that no one would ever stoop so low as to do the things he has done solely for money and fame.