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"Too Soon to Say Goodbye"
Editors' Note: Celebrated newspaper columnist Art Buchwald, who was known for his sly wit, died on January 17, 2007, at age 81 from kidney failure. Last year, after Buchwald refused dialysis treatment, doctors predicted he would die within weeks. Something unexpected happened, though, after the Pulitzer Prize winner checked into a hospice to face his final days: He lived to return home and write Too Soon to Say Goodbye, a funny, frank account of his near-death experience. Below is an excerpt from that book, published in November 2006 by Random House, which appears in the February 2007 issue of Reader's Digest.By all rights, this book should never have been written. By all rights, I should be dead. And thereby hangs the tale. In early 2006, I was riding the elevator up to my room at an acute-care facility in Washington, D.C., when I saw a sign that said there was also a hospice. At that point, all I knew about hospices was that they cared for terminally ill patients. I arranged a tour, and everything looked very good. At that moment, I decided I wanted to live there. I had lost a leg at Georgetown University Hospital. I missed my leg, but when they told me I'd also have to take dialysis for the rest of my life, I decided -- too much.
My decision coincided with my appearance on Diane Rehm's radio talk show, which has over a million listeners. I talked to her from the hospice about my decision not to take dialysis. It is one thing to choose to go into a hospice; it's another thing to get on the air and tell people about it.
The listener response was very much in my favor. Later, I received over 150 letters, and most said I was doing the right thing. This, of course, made me feel good. I wrote back: "As Frank Sinatra would say, 'I did it my way.'"
I was under the impression that my stay at the hospice would be for two or three weeks. I was wrong. Every day I sit in a beautiful living room where I can have anything I want. I can even send out to McDonald's for hamburgers and milk shakes. (Most people have to watch their diets.)
A constant flow of people keep visiting me, many with famous names that impress my family. I suspect I would not be getting the same attention if I were on dialysis. We sit in the big living room for hours and talk about the past, and since it's my show, we talk about anything that comes to my mind. It's a wonderful place.
I keep checking with the nurses and doctors about when I'm supposed to take the big sleep. No one has an answer. One doctor says, "It's up to you." And I say, "That's a typical doctor's answer."
Everybody wants to please me. Food seems to be very important. One day, I told a friend I'd dreamed of a corned beef sandwich. The next day, I had ten. I've also received dozens of flower arrangements. People don't send roses when you are on dialysis.
So far, things seem to be going my way. I am known in the hospice as the Man Who Would Not Die. How long they allow me to stay here is another problem. But in case you're wondering, I'm having the best time of my life.
Dying isn't hard. Getting paid by Medicare is.
To explain how I landed here, I have to go back to September 28, 2005, when I was feeling fine and celebrating my 80th birthday at the French embassy in Washington, D.C. It was a gala affair attended by 400 people, and it was a fund-raiser for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. I remember saying at the time, "Being 80 is a matter of life or death. I chose life. It's a much better position to be in, and it's easier on your back."
I also said, "At a certain time in life -- actually, right now -- the two questions that become uppermost in my mind are: What am I doing here? and Where am I going? The first answer is a narcissistic one. I was put on this earth to make people laugh. The second one is much harder -- I have no idea where I'm going, and no one else knows either."
I didn't know how smart I was then.
All my life, I had assumed my kidneys would not give me problems. The kidney does its duty discreetly and without fanfare. Sonnets, love songs and masterpieces of fiction have been devoted to the heart. Yet if it were not for the kidneys working day and night to excrete poisons from our systems, the heart would not have a chance.
But I started paying attention to them when I attempted to pass a kidney stone some years ago in Evansville, Indiana. It was an experience I still haven't forgotten. The only way to describe it is to imagine trying to push the Rock of Gibraltar through the Suez Canal.
When someone is climbing the walls trying to eliminate the stone, he will promise anything to get relief. He would give all his worldly possessions for one shot of Demerol.
After I had my attack in Evansville, Indiana, the AP wire sent out four paragraphs on the stone. It became famous all over the world, so much so that I received a letter from the United States Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. These are the folks who study moon rocks.
When I returned to Washington, the geologists offered to study my kidney stone. They called it Project Buchwald Stone.
Dr. Michael Rubin scoffed at the size of the Buchwald Stone. He said he had passed stones ten times larger, and he wondered if I was just a professional whiner. Dr. Wornick, who also studied my stone, was more sympathetic. He proved that size was not the main factor in a kidney stone's pain. The amount of anguish and screaming was in direct proportion not to the size of the stone, but to the length of the path the stone had traveled.
This probably destroyed Dr. Rubin's chance of winning the Nobel Prize.
Once the report was in on the stone, people suggested constructing a building to house it. It would be an attraction, like the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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