Some of Them Are Effries!
Today, when I was leaving work, a woman who works in the division that my department supports signalled me over.
“How come you didn’t tell me that Sixty Five was ill?” she asked.
I mumbled some stupid answer. I had mulled over mentioning it to her and decided against it, because though she is supposed to be a friend, as time goes by, I find that she is more a botheration to the spirit than anything else…
Anyway, she, another gentleman and I began to talk about sickness, and death. You know the kind of conversation…
She said “I know another man who just died… I went to the funeral last weekend. I last saw him alive in January. He looked hale and hearty, then he collapsed two days later. The doctors told him he had about 8 months to live, but he took it to heart and just worried himself to death!”.
Theres more, if you want to read it…
The talk moved on in this fashion until the other gentleman in the room said “Have you ever noticed how people just get all sickly and die the instant they know that they have a terminal illness. If they didn’t know, they might have lasted a few more years.”.
The woman agreed, saying “Well, that is how I felt with that man whose funeral I went to last week. And then there is Suzette’s mother. Suzette was ill, bad. Her mom came in from the country to take care of her. She seemed to be in the pink of health, but one day she fell down unconsious. When they carried her to hospital, they found a tumour. When she woke up, they told her about it and she immediately started to exhibit much worse symptoms than she had been experiencing before and she was dead within the week!”.
The talk continued in this fashion. At least two more of these grim stories were told, stories of people who had seemingly succumbed more from fear of the illness and of their fate than anything else.
The gentleman then said “The best one though is my uncle! His wife called us one day to say that he had disappeared! He had been missing for about two days then. He never showed up again for about a year. We all thought he had been killed and his body dumped or buried in a shallow grave somewhere, but all the time, he was overseas being treated for A.I.D.S.”.
The gentleman continued “All this time, the wife was in good health, only worried as to his whereabouts. He returned at last, and told the wife what had happened to him. She went and had a test done and heard that she also had A.I.D.S. She was dead in three weeks! My uncle is still alive and well…”.
“Wow!” I said. “She died before him?”
“Yeah, and its because she was overwrought when she heard that she had the disease!” he replied. “And you know what the little bugger did! When she died, he used that as an opportunity to say that she was the one who had given it to him! He was really wild, living it up and sampling everything he could get out there. She didn’t know, but he was doing that all the time. Then when she died, he had the gall to tell everyone that.” 
The moral in this story is, if you hear that you have caught A.I.D.S. from your husband, try not to let it stress you to death! At least, don’t die before him! Some men will tell lies on you and destroy your name, my girl! Can you imagine? 
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Well, first of all, maybe your decision not to tell this woman that Sixty Five was ill was a good one. I wonder if she had gone to visit him in hospital if the nature of the conversation just outlined would have be the same???Regarding AIDS or any other illness be it terminal or not, one cannot use the odd case and generalize as to the outcome. It is wrong to do so. I know people who have had malignancies and others who have been HIV positive for years and are still around. And yes, there are others who pass on quickly.My approach to this type of question…”How long do I have to live Doc?”…is that “I don’t make those decisions. I leave that to God!” In many cases, those who you think may have 2 years, may go the following week and vice versa. It is really when I am pretty sure that the end is coming that I will level with patients or their relatives. The outcome from illness is very variable.There is also the “Sick Role” that all patients display, some more than others. And, there is a very serious psychological component to illness, so some patients do worry about it and it can result in a ‘hastening’ of their death, if you wish to look at it that way. The way I look at it is, do what needs to be done, as we really do not have all the answers. At least, if the ultimate complication in Medicine occurs (death) then at least it can’t be said that X or Y was not done, as a guilty conscience is very difficult to live with when it results in the loss of someones life. Anyway, enough of my long winded epistle. Hail up Sixty Five for me, I’m overdue to drop some jokes on him. BTW, maybe you can show him the pic of Bigboy! He may have a comment to add. Later my yute.