The decision to stop chemo

[Tab]

11. Thanks for your thoughts

I have discussed this with my family (mainly my wife, mother, and to a lesser degree my son, plus others). Obviously it affects them.

Generally they all take the position that it's my choice (of course) but they've been pretty consistent in saying they wouldn't blame me if I stopped up to saying they'd probably stop themselves, given the same situation. I think the difference is that I'm not in a curative state - meaning, giving it up isn't automatically a death sentence since I'm going there anyway (as we all are, if we think about it). So, really it's just to delay the result, if it does that at all, and everyone knows how poorly I've tolerated chemo (or at least recently, now that I've been subjecting my body to it for five or six years), and they all seem supportive of it. I know they'd like me to live forever, or at least not die for decades, but that may not be a choice, and probably wouldn't happen even if I stayed on chemo; if I was on enough chemo to last that long, I'm not sure how much fun I'd be to have around.

Overall, I want to live my life, not be running to the emergency room every few weeks and missing work for weeks on end in between. They agree; the rub is no one is happy with the choices anyway, but they are supportive of my choice - no one's trying to talk me out of it. They know I've been through a lot of different chemo, so it's not like I'm arbitrarily giving up to see if I cure myself with green tea or anything.