Jolie and joie de vivre

 photo by jollypeople.com

Reading Angelina Jolie's editorial in the May 15, 2013 New York Times made me wonder how the future will turn out when doctors give you odds instead of answers.  Medicine is ironically unscientific. After repeated positive testing for the BRCA1 gene demonstrating a predisposition to breast and ovarian cancer,  Angelina Jolie's doctors gave her an 87% chance to contract the disease that was diagnosed in her mother at age 46. At age 37 Angelina Jolie jumped the gun by having double radical mastectomies and reconstructive surgery this year. Her chances are now 5%.  

I absolutely agree with Angelina Jolie that a partner in life is essential to making tough choices such as whether to have elective mastectomies.  We live in a symbiotic society, each depends on each other.  Was Brad Pitt stepping in for his wife when he did the Chanel commercials? 

It was a choice showing all the bravura, compassion, courage and practicality of her on-screen and real life persona as an action-hero, super-mom, scintillating seductress and ten-year UN Goodwill Ambassador.  She is the real "proactive" action hero of not only her own life but of many lives.   

I ask you, reader, would you make the same choice? Kierkegaard and Locke are having a wrestling match about faith and reason in my mind! 

More importantly, how would you? What do you do when you cannot either afford or want elective surgery or simply can't overcome a deep faith that you will miraculously avoid the outcome of inherited genes.  I personally would have serious trust issues with the medical staff. 

 I am a firm believer in Do Not Resuscitate (DNR)  orders and euthanasia.  I am NOT a firm believer in someone else deciding for me or doctors having more faith in the outcome of an operation than I would. Physician heal thyself. 

The editorial brought to light my obsession of late with medical shows like Grey's Anatomy written by Shonda Rhimes and novels like Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.  Once squeamish I now see poetry in that reality that we all make choices that affect not only our lives but the lives of others and these are most pronounced in medicine. 
  
Do you choose to fight for the remaining joie de vivre in what time you have left and leave evolution to its course or embrace science with all its odds? 

A light dinner to accompany heavy but important table talk.

Day Eleven - Recipe Eleven

Nigella's Masala Omelette