I am buddha_david’s brother, and I have sad news to share. He passed away two weeks ago, less than one month before his 51st birthday. He had been sharing his ordeal with you in this thread.
The side effects to his breathing that he described in his last post to this thread unfortunately got worse, to the point that he couldn’t sit up in his bed without taking several minutes to catch his breath. When he had his appointment with his oncologist on June 20, his blood oxygen level was so low that he was immediately sent to the emergency room.
In spite of all their efforts, his condition worsened and was moved to ICU on June 29, where he was put on a respirator, and while that managed to keep him alive, his lungs essentially stopped working on their own. His condition was bad enough that even if a miracle happened and they could get him to be able to breathe on his own again, they wouldn’t be able to continue with the chemotherapy, and the cancer would come back. His mother, father and I were with him on July 11 when he was taken off the respirator and passed away peacefully.
Throughout this ordeal we had been optimistic that he would pull though, and even when he went to the ICU we were given updates from the nursing staff rather than the doctors, so we were told of positive effects of their efforts and told about small signs of improvement, so the full gravity of his situation didn’t hit until July 9 when we learned from his doctor that they didn’t expect him to survive. When my mother and I were there on his last day, his pulmonologist told us that he has seen others with his condition several times before, and every one of them had met the same end.
He and I shared a love of music and gaming, and in many ways was my best friend. He had turned me on to The Straight Dope over 15 years ago, so this message board will always remind me of him. Many thanks to all of you for making this a place where he had enjoyed for so many years.
