11 ms·

It's sad that when we find out something this devastating (you're dying), that we have to spend our last weeks/months/years worrying about, of all things, money

by bherms 13y ago

It's sad that when we find out something this devastating (you're dying), that we have to spend our last weeks/months/years worrying about, of all things, money. Nobody deserves this sort of thing happening to them, and when it does happen, it hurts me to think they can't spend their last months on earth focused on enjoying time with their loved ones and instead have to live in fear that their family is going to be able to survive without an extra paycheck. It should be a time of finding peace within the chaos that is life, but instead it's like adding insult to injury. :(

thaumasiotes 13y ago
Where's your sympathy for the people who don't have cancer but have to go in to work every day because they don't want their family to starve? Should they not enjoy any time with their loved ones? Your viewpoint seems incoherent to me; we can't just support everyone out of common brotherly love.
- bherms 13y ago
  I'm not saying there's a fix for it... Or that it's even a broken system. I just, out of the kindness of my heart, wish a guy down on his luck could at least have some worry lifted off of him when his life is literally ending. Do I feel for everyone else struggling in the world? In some cases, yes, in others, no. Circumstance dictates my feelings. Tell me another sob story and I'll likely feel for that person as well.
- darthclue 13y ago
  The same place it's always been. I can't count the number of times that I've wished I could just stay home with my kids and enjoy being with them. But I had to choose between providing for them or being with them. There was no other option. Given my current condition, I can't return to work. I don't know what tomorrow holds. I could wake up and need to be hospitalized yet again or I could be pain free and enjoying every moment I have with my children or I could be dead. It's no longer a choice as to what I do with my life because it is no longer mine. I am living on borrowed time and for every second I can borrow I will be spending it with my children trying to prepare them for my death to make that process easier. No child should have to lose their parent at such a young age and no spouse should find themselves a widow with young children either. Anyone who thinks this is just another sob story should try living it for just the first week and tell me how it feels. Trust me, your tune will quickly change, mine did.
perlgeek 13y ago
> It's sad that when we find out something this devastating (you're dying), that we have to spend our last weeks/months/years worrying about, of all things, money. I thought nearly the same. But my thought went more along the lines of "it's sad that this person's highest priorities are all about money". If it's not in the face of death that you set your priorities on your own accord, then when is it? That said, I can totally understand not leaving the family behind in debt.
- jaggederest 13y ago
  Debts are generally not something you can leave to your family. They're generally expunged, barring joint debts and things like that. So run it all onto credit cards, by all means.
  - pdpi 13y ago
    Not sure what the US reality on that is. In Portugal, you can and do inherit debt, though the monetary value of the inherited debt can never exceed that of the inherited assets.
    - adventured 13y ago
      In the US, debt is generally tied to an entity called your estate (your financial entity post death, basically). Debt - for example let's say you have a big credit card debt - will be paid by the assets of your estate. Different types of debt often have different priorities (when it comes time for the executor or court to decide what gets paid first or last). As your estate is settled, the debts usually get taken care of from the assets (basically a simple subtraction matter). If there aren't enough assets in the estate to pay the debts, then the creditor is almost always out of luck.
      - thaumasiotes 13y ago
        Just to be clear, this system is essentially identical to "debt is inherited, but never in an amount greater than the value of the inherited assets".
sneak 13y ago
We spend most of our lives, terminal or not, "worrying about" money. That's the beauty (or perhaps tragedy to some people) of a capitalist society. We are driven by our metric for value. It's not a bad thing.
- bigs204 13y ago
  damn. that's kind of beautifully brutal way of looking at it.
- stormbrew 13y ago
  > It's not a bad thing. ... if your 'metric for value' happens to be high enough.
- Ygg2 13y ago
  Essentially, all lives are terminal (some just sooner than others). Unless you are a jelly fish. Fucking jelly fishes. I'd say that worrying about money isn't completely bad thing.
- adventured 13y ago
  Has absolutely nothing to do with Capitalism. It's core to existence for any living thing. The need to create value, be productive, acquire food, trade for something, and so on, to sustain one's self. No matter what you are, if you're living, you have to do this, or someone else has to do it for you. If you live in a society where the government, or church, or ... whatever entity, provides everything for you, that still requires someone else to do work for your benefit so you can exist.
  - gress 13y ago
    'Creating value' is a capitalist concept, as is 'being productive.
- rosser 13y ago
  We are driven by our metric for value. A great many of us feel we're being driven by someone else's metric for value. I, for one, don't find that a good thing at all.
melling 13y ago
There are over 7 billion people on the planet. A day doesn't go by without a story like this. We just don't hear about most of them. Someday a person like this will simply go to his doctor, get a prescription, and go on to live a normal life. Rather than dwelling on sadness, maybe we should ask if there isn't something we can do, as a group, to make that day arrive sooner. What would it take to cure, or at least treat, cancer(s)?
- Blahah 13y ago
  Really quite a huge number of people are asking that question already. And a massively disproportionate amount of science funding goes towards cancer research. Far more people in the world die of communicable and vector-borne diseases or illness related to malnourishment. These issues get much less research attention and funding because so many people in the western world are focussed on cancer. So while my heart goes out to the OP, and I hope his treatment is successful and his family are well provided for, I really don't think what we need is more people to focus on cancer. Lets focus on saving as many lives as possible.
  - melling 13y ago
    Can you provide any data or any additional clarity? There's enough food produced in the world, for example, but it just doesn't get to the people who need it. I'd like to add that I wasn't saying that money is necessarily the answer. The power of crowd-sourcing, for instance, can help in other ways.
    - Blahah 13y ago
      Sure. The WHO produces a report on causes of death wordwide[0]. Heart disease and stroke are the biggest killers, but these are, like cancer, really quite complex. Diarrhoeal diseases and respiratory infections kill a ridiculous number of people, but these are largely solved problems in the western world. Organisations like the Gates Foundation are doing great work exporting what we know about these diseases to the developing world, but governments do a pitiful amount. A number of chronic lifestyle diseases are rising: lung/throat cancer (due to smoking) and diabetes (due to eating sugar). My suggestion is that we should prioritise disease research and treatment based on how many people are dying and how easily those problems could be solved. But because funding bodies are all human, and all in the developed world, the disease they most fear is cancer. Regarding food security, there is technically enough food produced in the world to feed everyone, if we could solve the distribution and storage problems and prevent rich governments' protectionist interference in agricultural markets and corruption in developing nations' governments. But a large amount of that wastage is also not really suitable for human nutrition. Probably the fastest way to alleviate hunger is to enable each part of the world to feed itself with food produced nearby. Because we've reached the limits of arable land in much of the world, this means making more land suitable for food production, finding new ways to provide water, and making crops be able to grow better in different conditions. The FAO's State of Food Insecurity report[1] is a good summary. 0. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/. 1. http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/en/ http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/en/
not_paul_graham 13y ago
No one deserves this, especially not at 35. That is far too young. I've had more than a couple of people close to me pass away from cancer and other causes and it all seems very depressing that in some cases you can't really do anything at all. Forgive me for asking but doesn't health insurance cover costs of cancer treatment even in the USA? I really don't want to sound like a narcissist and I'm not trying to judge in the least, but I'm curious why the OP wasn't more diligent about planning ahead in terms of health insurance given he made a decision to have/raise four children. Do people really not take into account stuff like children's education, cost of living expenses per additional member of family, emergencies, black swan events? I know my parents decided to have only X number of kids because they knew that they wouldn't be able to provide well for more than X children. This was a conscious decision given that my father grew up with 7 siblings and my mom says she would have had more children if they would have been able to provide for them. Also I'm genuinely curious whether $20,000 for a final resting place seems like a good amount to put on a list of priorities given all the other costs involved? Mortgage and transportation seem like good goals, but minus the cancer, if some one else decided to raise money from the internet to spend it on traveling, I'm not sure a lot of the comments would be so positive? I'm really sorry for being so negative, but these are general questions that I have and they are in no way directed towards the OP. Cancer sucks. Period.
- timr 13y ago
  If you're insured in the US (sadly, this is still a fairly big "if"...) the costs of cancer treatment will be covered, but unlike most of the rest of the developed world there are still a lot of caveats: depending on the quality of your coverage, you could end up paying very little, or quite a bit of money. It's not a simple question, unfortunately. That said, it sounds like he's not looking for money for treatment, but for things like paying down the mortgage and car before his income is lost. This is what life insurance is meant to cover, but again, there's a wide range of coverage options and many people don't think about how much to buy, especially when they're young. If you've just bought a house and a car and had a kid you're probably in a lot of recent debt, with the assumption that you'll have a lifetime to pay it down. All it takes is one bad accident to turn that assumption upside down. Get life insurance, folks.
bananas 13y ago
Perhaps we should look more towards the Marxism thread yesterday for inspiration on how to resolve this utterly horrible issue. If you have to spend the last of your days worrying about money, society is broken.

by bherms 13y ago

thaumasiotes 13y ago

Where's your sympathy for the people who don't have cancer but have to go in to work every day because they don't want their family to starve? Should they not enjoy any time with their loved ones? Your viewpoint seems incoherent to me; we can't just support everyone out of common brotherly love.

bherms 13y ago
I'm not saying there's a fix for it... Or that it's even a broken system. I just, out of the kindness of my heart, wish a guy down on his luck could at least have some worry lifted off of him when his life is literally ending. Do I feel for everyone else struggling in the world? In some cases, yes, in others, no. Circumstance dictates my feelings. Tell me another sob story and I'll likely feel for that person as well.
darthclue 13y ago
The same place it's always been. I can't count the number of times that I've wished I could just stay home with my kids and enjoy being with them. But I had to choose between providing for them or being with them. There was no other option. Given my current condition, I can't return to work. I don't know what tomorrow holds. I could wake up and need to be hospitalized yet again or I could be pain free and enjoying every moment I have with my children or I could be dead. It's no longer a choice as to what I do with my life because it is no longer mine. I am living on borrowed time and for every second I can borrow I will be spending it with my children trying to prepare them for my death to make that process easier. No child should have to lose their parent at such a young age and no spouse should find themselves a widow with young children either. Anyone who thinks this is just another sob story should try living it for just the first week and tell me how it feels. Trust me, your tune will quickly change, mine did.

perlgeek 13y ago

> It's sad that when we find out something this devastating (you're dying), that we have to spend our last weeks/months/years worrying about, of all things, money. I thought nearly the same. But my thought went more along the lines of "it's sad that this person's highest priorities are all about money". If it's not in the face of death that you set your priorities on your own accord, then when is it? That said, I can totally understand not leaving the family behind in debt.

jaggederest 13y ago
Debts are generally not something you can leave to your family. They're generally expunged, barring joint debts and things like that. So run it all onto credit cards, by all means.
- pdpi 13y ago
  Not sure what the US reality on that is. In Portugal, you can and do inherit debt, though the monetary value of the inherited debt can never exceed that of the inherited assets.
  - adventured 13y ago
    In the US, debt is generally tied to an entity called your estate (your financial entity post death, basically). Debt - for example let's say you have a big credit card debt - will be paid by the assets of your estate. Different types of debt often have different priorities (when it comes time for the executor or court to decide what gets paid first or last). As your estate is settled, the debts usually get taken care of from the assets (basically a simple subtraction matter). If there aren't enough assets in the estate to pay the debts, then the creditor is almost always out of luck.
    - thaumasiotes 13y ago
      Just to be clear, this system is essentially identical to "debt is inherited, but never in an amount greater than the value of the inherited assets".

sneak 13y ago

We spend most of our lives, terminal or not, "worrying about" money. That's the beauty (or perhaps tragedy to some people) of a capitalist society. We are driven by our metric for value. It's not a bad thing.

bigs204 13y ago
damn. that's kind of beautifully brutal way of looking at it.
stormbrew 13y ago
> It's not a bad thing. ... if your 'metric for value' happens to be high enough.
Ygg2 13y ago
Essentially, all lives are terminal (some just sooner than others). Unless you are a jelly fish. Fucking jelly fishes. I'd say that worrying about money isn't completely bad thing.
adventured 13y ago
Has absolutely nothing to do with Capitalism. It's core to existence for any living thing. The need to create value, be productive, acquire food, trade for something, and so on, to sustain one's self. No matter what you are, if you're living, you have to do this, or someone else has to do it for you. If you live in a society where the government, or church, or ... whatever entity, provides everything for you, that still requires someone else to do work for your benefit so you can exist.
- gress 13y ago
  'Creating value' is a capitalist concept, as is 'being productive.
rosser 13y ago
We are driven by our metric for value. A great many of us feel we're being driven by someone else's metric for value. I, for one, don't find that a good thing at all.

melling 13y ago

There are over 7 billion people on the planet. A day doesn't go by without a story like this. We just don't hear about most of them. Someday a person like this will simply go to his doctor, get a prescription, and go on to live a normal life. Rather than dwelling on sadness, maybe we should ask if there isn't something we can do, as a group, to make that day arrive sooner. What would it take to cure, or at least treat, cancer(s)?

Blahah 13y ago
Really quite a huge number of people are asking that question already. And a massively disproportionate amount of science funding goes towards cancer research. Far more people in the world die of communicable and vector-borne diseases or illness related to malnourishment. These issues get much less research attention and funding because so many people in the western world are focussed on cancer. So while my heart goes out to the OP, and I hope his treatment is successful and his family are well provided for, I really don't think what we need is more people to focus on cancer. Lets focus on saving as many lives as possible.
- melling 13y ago
  Can you provide any data or any additional clarity? There's enough food produced in the world, for example, but it just doesn't get to the people who need it. I'd like to add that I wasn't saying that money is necessarily the answer. The power of crowd-sourcing, for instance, can help in other ways.
  - Blahah 13y ago
    Sure. The WHO produces a report on causes of death wordwide[0]. Heart disease and stroke are the biggest killers, but these are, like cancer, really quite complex. Diarrhoeal diseases and respiratory infections kill a ridiculous number of people, but these are largely solved problems in the western world. Organisations like the Gates Foundation are doing great work exporting what we know about these diseases to the developing world, but governments do a pitiful amount. A number of chronic lifestyle diseases are rising: lung/throat cancer (due to smoking) and diabetes (due to eating sugar). My suggestion is that we should prioritise disease research and treatment based on how many people are dying and how easily those problems could be solved. But because funding bodies are all human, and all in the developed world, the disease they most fear is cancer. Regarding food security, there is technically enough food produced in the world to feed everyone, if we could solve the distribution and storage problems and prevent rich governments' protectionist interference in agricultural markets and corruption in developing nations' governments. But a large amount of that wastage is also not really suitable for human nutrition. Probably the fastest way to alleviate hunger is to enable each part of the world to feed itself with food produced nearby. Because we've reached the limits of arable land in much of the world, this means making more land suitable for food production, finding new ways to provide water, and making crops be able to grow better in different conditions. The FAO's State of Food Insecurity report[1] is a good summary. 0. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/. 1. http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/en/ http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/en/

not_paul_graham 13y ago

No one deserves this, especially not at 35. That is far too young. I've had more than a couple of people close to me pass away from cancer and other causes and it all seems very depressing that in some cases you can't really do anything at all. Forgive me for asking but doesn't health insurance cover costs of cancer treatment even in the USA? I really don't want to sound like a narcissist and I'm not trying to judge in the least, but I'm curious why the OP wasn't more diligent about planning ahead in terms of health insurance given he made a decision to have/raise four children. Do people really not take into account stuff like children's education, cost of living expenses per additional member of family, emergencies, black swan events? I know my parents decided to have only X number of kids because they knew that they wouldn't be able to provide well for more than X children. This was a conscious decision given that my father grew up with 7 siblings and my mom says she would have had more children if they would have been able to provide for them. Also I'm genuinely curious whether $20,000 for a final resting place seems like a good amount to put on a list of priorities given all the other costs involved? Mortgage and transportation seem like good goals, but minus the cancer, if some one else decided to raise money from the internet to spend it on traveling, I'm not sure a lot of the comments would be so positive? I'm really sorry for being so negative, but these are general questions that I have and they are in no way directed towards the OP. Cancer sucks. Period.

timr 13y ago
If you're insured in the US (sadly, this is still a fairly big "if"...) the costs of cancer treatment will be covered, but unlike most of the rest of the developed world there are still a lot of caveats: depending on the quality of your coverage, you could end up paying very little, or quite a bit of money. It's not a simple question, unfortunately. That said, it sounds like he's not looking for money for treatment, but for things like paying down the mortgage and car before his income is lost. This is what life insurance is meant to cover, but again, there's a wide range of coverage options and many people don't think about how much to buy, especially when they're young. If you've just bought a house and a car and had a kid you're probably in a lot of recent debt, with the assumption that you'll have a lifetime to pay it down. All it takes is one bad accident to turn that assumption upside down. Get life insurance, folks.

bananas 13y ago

Perhaps we should look more towards the Marxism thread yesterday for inspiration on how to resolve this utterly horrible issue. If you have to spend the last of your days worrying about money, society is broken.