As human beings, we learn by observing the fates of other human beings. When we encounter a fate that is easily recognized, and assuredly an unenviable fate, t

As human beings, we learn by observing the fates of other human beings. When we encounter a fate that is easily recognized, and assuredly an unenviable fate, there is no ambient curiosity gifted to us by our ignorance. We've seen this movie before, and we know how it ends. The normal psychological response to this sort of thing most certainly is not: wash. rinse. repeat. You can't spend too much time on the frontlines in a pitched battle like cancer, and find yourself filled with a burning desire to experience the struggle first-hand. Jack Kevorkian's form of therapy isn't the greatest idea ever conceived, but for special circumstances, it might sometimes apply. One critical detail of supreme importance, to keep in mind: As a permanent decision, it should never be applied to temporary circumstances. Within the specific context of this anecdote, and the benefit of the author's recall serving us as hindsight, I think, the moment when he noticed the sclera icterus was late in the game, but a conscionable moment for non-theraputic intervention. Arguably, she had already passed her own threshold moment, when she started eating oxies like candy, and wryly deflating strangers attitudes with a malign gallows humor about the fact that her apparent pregnancy was actually a side-effect of terminal liver failure.