Change has side-affects, like any medicine. Usually those side-affects are not palatable, and sometimes the medicine does not work.
However, not taking the medicine never works as a cure.
I am 65, so have had a few friends ‘pop off’ from various ailments over the years. In particular I remember two because of their amazingly different responses to the very similar conditions that eventually beat them.
Colin was diagnosed with a virulent form of cancer, and did undergo some pretty mild palliative treatment, but essentially accepted his fate with grace, and went quietly.
Kevin did not go quietly. He fought the disease with everything he had, going from a big, robust, outgoing, exuberant character, to a tiny defiant shell with a huge smile on his face. He accommodated the numerous and challenging side effects of the aggressive treatments he was receiving as a human guinea pig in several clinical trials with a brand of black humour that made visiting him a joy. I saw him a few days before the end, which I think we both knew was close. He was consoling me over his coming demise, (unbelievable) reflecting on his gratitude for the life he had been given, and hoping that his role in the trials would help others.
Much of what I do involves commercial medicine that is not always easy to take, there are side-affects, which are often very unwelcome to some, but there is little about the medicine that is experimental. Taken in the right doses at the right time, and most often the patient will survive and thrive. However, it usually gets worse before it gets better in the early stages of treatment, which is where many give up and go quietly.
No silver bullets, no gain without pain, and several other such cliches all apply, but the real trick is not to give in too early, and not to accept the seemingly obvious as the inevitable.
