Video: Each Day Like It’s My Last
October 19, 2009
The first installment in the continuing story of one man’s journey following a terminal diagnosis.
Quarrington Begins National Post Series
October 19, 2009
Paul Quarrington: Each day like it’s my last
Author Paul Quarrington on the diagnosis, the voyage and survival by song
I’ve often wondered why, in popular song and fiction, people dealing with The Diagnosis often choose to go mountain climbing. For example, in Tim McGraw’s popular song Live Like You Were Dying, the man who has received The Diagnosis lists as his recent activities, “I went sky diving, I went Rocky Mountain climbing, I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu.” The Diagnosis we’re discussing is, of course, the one wherein the doctor begins to speak, in a very good-natured manner, (“Well, the test results have given us some answers …”) and then goes on to say a lot of stuff that doesn’t really make any sense (“The tumor is what we call squamous or sessile …”), and somewhere in there announces that you are going to die. Way way sooner than you thought.
From the National Post, October 17, 2009. For the full article, go to http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2112733
