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The Newsletter >
That's So NICE
August 18, 2009
I don't need end of life counseling. I already have a plan that involves the Gulf Stream, a boat, and a superficial understanding of sailing.
According to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE – the United Kingdom’s Version of the Death Panel): . . . by taking the cost of treatment and dividing it by the years gained an overall cost benefit ratio can be determined as the ‘cost per quality – adjusted life year gained’ or CQG.
See those letters, you know what this is? I know what it is. It’s algebra. It’s the hated, evil creepiness of algebra as it pertains to the lump on my personal neck, my health care, and the fact that the women of my family live for absolutely ever and ever. My great-grandmother was climbing farm fences at the age of ninety-one, because she couldn’t see well enough to find the gates.
My DNA lives forever. It’s horrible. I have barnacles.
It’s a pure fact that if the boat sits in the water long enough, it’s going to get barnacles. I have barnacles.
So here’s how my CQG, if I lived in England, should go. My age (fifty) multiplied by my genetic propensity for eternal life, divided by the number of scars on my person from cancer (a bunch—also more than a pirate) over the coefficient of the number of barnacles found on the average rowboat bobbing off the coast of any Bahamian island equals—pull the plug already.
I told my doctor that if any future barnacles turn out to be a malignant anything, then I’m renting a sail boat, sailing into the Gulf Stream, and jumping off the back.
She said, “That’s kind of extreme; don’t you think? And why the Gulf Stream?”
“Because the Gulf Stream is warm. I don’t do cold, and besides I’d like to donate my share of the universal health care pie to someone with less barnacles—also I believe in life without barnacles after death.”
"I'll have the front desk schedule your surgery."
"Nice!"
So, if this country decides to be like all the other cool countries with death panels, I think we should call our death panel, SWELL—Seeing Ways to Eliminate Little Old Ladies or GULF—Giving Up on Leftover Folks.
Linda (NICE is as NICE does) Zern
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