That was my thought about this when I read it, too. Even Homer couldn’t claim “It’s funny ’cause it’s true!”
I think the extent of the message here is, you’ve got two choices, and neither of them is very good. Ha ha!
Maybe it’s “funny” to suppose they would pose the issue to him so clearly and directly. (And cruelly.) But there are surely many times they do expect a patient or family to make pretty much that decision. :(
I think this comic relates to the conflict in the Greek legend about a man who wished for (and actually got) enternal life, but had forgotten to specify enternal youth in the conditions, so he ended up in the hellish situation of being a miserable, unkillable derelict.
P.S. Legends are supposed to be instructive, the lesson I’ve learned from this comic is “don’t read ‘Close to Home‘”.
P.P.S. Another lesson: proofread before posting, not afterwards. Please ignore the extra ‘n’s in “eternal”.
Okay, Kilby, now I have to hunt down that Greek myth. I’m more familiar with the similar section in Gulliver’s Not-Just-About-Little-People Travels.
(I only just looked it up minutes ago, still had the page open. :) )
P.P.P.S. @ Bill – After you read WW’s link (thanks for that, I had no idea how to dig up the name), could you please zap those two N’s in the 11:04 post, then (please!) kill both the P.P.S. and this P.P.P.S.?
“there are surely many times they do expect a patient or family to make pretty much that decision.”
Well, the usual “say, here’s a tough one for you…” from the medical field is this one:
OK, we think maybe you should have this procedure/try this drug. If it works, it’ll fix you right up and let you go home and enjoy the rest of your normal lifespan. If it doesn’t work, you get a couple of weeks, during which you’ll never leave the hospital. We aren’t really sure if it’ll work or not. Which do you want?
How about the P.P.P.P.S.?
Thanks, W.W.
chemgal writes: Even Homer couldn’t claim “It’s funny ’cause it’s true!”
If only it were a different strip, then Mr. Burns could chuckle, and wistfully ask, “Ah Ziggy, will you ever win?” (Though Homer would find the strip too preachy.)
Sigh…. There are days I envy the people who never actually think things out. Such people wouldn’t have thought about these options and and would find such thoughts surprising and startling. Such people would find this funny and respond “what an odd way of putting it!”.
Of course, the rest of us think “uh, so….”.
I’m with Mitch4 on this. Except that I think that the joke fails because it’s too depressing. Not depressing because that’s what the choices are, but because putting them that clearly would be a huge improvement over the system as it currently works. (And because I’m pretending that, in this strip, if you chose living for a short time, you actually get to feel fantastic, because the doctors have the time/energy/forethought to notice that your chart says palliative, and don’t need to be individually told that you are looking for treatments that improve quality of life, rather than ones that prolong life.)
I am reminded of the old joke about the woman who only has six months to live. Her doctor advises her to marry an accountant and move to North Dakota. It won’t result in extending her life, but those will be six looooooooong months.
Isn’t this a real sort of choice people make with chemotherapy? Not that it’s especially funny, except in a dark humour kind of way. Chemo knocks the stuffing out of you, apparently. Many people prefer to avoid that and have a clearer head, even if they live a shorter time. The cartoon docs, mind you, seem to be offering an even shorter life, presumably involving morphine, alcohol, rock and roll and the like.
narmitaj: Yeah, it seems like the sort of real choice that happens often, why it why it need the “U…ITSTBAAJH” tag.
Perhaps this will be part of a long-running series of gags in the strip: We can decrease your risk of breast cancer. . . but we’d have to cut off a breast! Ha, ha! You don’t have health insurance, so to get treated you’d have to pay out of pocket. . . but then you couldn’t afford food! Ha, ha!
Ha ha! It’s funny because he never wrote a living will, so is going to end up in a horrible situation because he hadn’t thought about it beforehand, when he had a chance to really weigh the consequences without the immediate pressure!
… yeah, I got nothing.
“Chemo knocks the stuffing out of you, apparently.”
How chemotherapy works:
Cancer cells are a tiny bit less hardy than are normal cells. So, what we’ll do is ALMOST, but NOT QUITE, poison you to death. The cancer cells get poisoned enough to die and are gone, while the rest of the cells are ONLY poisoned MOSTLY to death. Now, the catch is, that not all people are the same, so almost-but-not-quite-poisoned-to-death-but-killed-all-the-cancer-cells isn’t something they can be sure of hitting on the first try. We don’t want to give you the oops-too-much-now-all-your-cells-are-dead side, so there’s a non-trivial chance you’ll get the “look on the bright side, we ALMOST killed the cancer cells, and we’ll do better NEXT TIME we almost poison you to death.
In comparison, I had an emergency room visit in which the doctors thought the proper treatment was to make my heart stop beating. So, they had to explain the problem I was having, then why they thought stopping my heartbeat was the proper approach to solving that problem. Of course, one of the possible side effects of stopping the heart from beating is that it might STAY stopped, which causes a number of other serious side effects.
Arthur: Ah, Ziggy, will you never win?
Most chemotherapy works by poisoning cells that are rapidly dividing. Malignant cancers by definition are dividing really fast, but the chemo also affects other cells that divide fast, like the ones in hair follicles and the gut lining, causing the side effects.
However: these side effects are not nearly as bad as they used to be. The new drugs are better and more specific, and the palliative drugs to help with the side effects are better.
Comics I Don't Understand 
That was my thought about this when I read it, too. Even Homer couldn’t claim “It’s funny ’cause it’s true!”
I think the extent of the message here is, you’ve got two choices, and neither of them is very good. Ha ha!
Maybe it’s “funny” to suppose they would pose the issue to him so clearly and directly. (And cruelly.) But there are surely many times they do expect a patient or family to make pretty much that decision. :(
I think this comic relates to the conflict in the Greek legend about a man who wished for (and actually got) enternal life, but had forgotten to specify enternal youth in the conditions, so he ended up in the hellish situation of being a miserable, unkillable derelict.
P.S. Legends are supposed to be instructive, the lesson I’ve learned from this comic is “don’t read ‘Close to Home‘”.
P.P.S. Another lesson: proofread before posting, not afterwards. Please ignore the extra ‘n’s in “eternal”.
Okay, Kilby, now I have to hunt down that Greek myth. I’m more familiar with the similar section in Gulliver’s Not-Just-About-Little-People Travels.
Bill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithonus
(I only just looked it up minutes ago, still had the page open. :) )
P.P.P.S. @ Bill – After you read WW’s link (thanks for that, I had no idea how to dig up the name), could you please zap those two N’s in the 11:04 post, then (please!) kill both the P.P.S. and this P.P.P.S.?
“there are surely many times they do expect a patient or family to make pretty much that decision.”
Well, the usual “say, here’s a tough one for you…” from the medical field is this one:
OK, we think maybe you should have this procedure/try this drug. If it works, it’ll fix you right up and let you go home and enjoy the rest of your normal lifespan. If it doesn’t work, you get a couple of weeks, during which you’ll never leave the hospital. We aren’t really sure if it’ll work or not. Which do you want?
How about the P.P.P.P.S.?
Thanks, W.W.
chemgal writes: Even Homer couldn’t claim “It’s funny ’cause it’s true!”
If only it were a different strip, then Mr. Burns could chuckle, and wistfully ask, “Ah Ziggy, will you ever win?” (Though Homer would find the strip too preachy.)
Sigh…. There are days I envy the people who never actually think things out. Such people wouldn’t have thought about these options and and would find such thoughts surprising and startling. Such people would find this funny and respond “what an odd way of putting it!”.
Of course, the rest of us think “uh, so….”.
I’m with Mitch4 on this. Except that I think that the joke fails because it’s too depressing. Not depressing because that’s what the choices are, but because putting them that clearly would be a huge improvement over the system as it currently works. (And because I’m pretending that, in this strip, if you chose living for a short time, you actually get to feel fantastic, because the doctors have the time/energy/forethought to notice that your chart says palliative, and don’t need to be individually told that you are looking for treatments that improve quality of life, rather than ones that prolong life.)
In synchrony, we have today’s Ziggy:
http://assets.amuniversal.com/f561ffb0ecfb01351542005056a9545d
I am reminded of the old joke about the woman who only has six months to live. Her doctor advises her to marry an accountant and move to North Dakota. It won’t result in extending her life, but those will be six looooooooong months.
Isn’t this a real sort of choice people make with chemotherapy? Not that it’s especially funny, except in a dark humour kind of way. Chemo knocks the stuffing out of you, apparently. Many people prefer to avoid that and have a clearer head, even if they live a shorter time. The cartoon docs, mind you, seem to be offering an even shorter life, presumably involving morphine, alcohol, rock and roll and the like.
narmitaj: Yeah, it seems like the sort of real choice that happens often, why it why it need the “U…ITSTBAAJH” tag.
Perhaps this will be part of a long-running series of gags in the strip: We can decrease your risk of breast cancer. . . but we’d have to cut off a breast! Ha, ha! You don’t have health insurance, so to get treated you’d have to pay out of pocket. . . but then you couldn’t afford food! Ha, ha!
Ha ha! It’s funny because he never wrote a living will, so is going to end up in a horrible situation because he hadn’t thought about it beforehand, when he had a chance to really weigh the consequences without the immediate pressure!
… yeah, I got nothing.
“Chemo knocks the stuffing out of you, apparently.”
How chemotherapy works:
Cancer cells are a tiny bit less hardy than are normal cells. So, what we’ll do is ALMOST, but NOT QUITE, poison you to death. The cancer cells get poisoned enough to die and are gone, while the rest of the cells are ONLY poisoned MOSTLY to death. Now, the catch is, that not all people are the same, so almost-but-not-quite-poisoned-to-death-but-killed-all-the-cancer-cells isn’t something they can be sure of hitting on the first try. We don’t want to give you the oops-too-much-now-all-your-cells-are-dead side, so there’s a non-trivial chance you’ll get the “look on the bright side, we ALMOST killed the cancer cells, and we’ll do better NEXT TIME we almost poison you to death.
In comparison, I had an emergency room visit in which the doctors thought the proper treatment was to make my heart stop beating. So, they had to explain the problem I was having, then why they thought stopping my heartbeat was the proper approach to solving that problem. Of course, one of the possible side effects of stopping the heart from beating is that it might STAY stopped, which causes a number of other serious side effects.
Arthur: Ah, Ziggy, will you never win?
Most chemotherapy works by poisoning cells that are rapidly dividing. Malignant cancers by definition are dividing really fast, but the chemo also affects other cells that divide fast, like the ones in hair follicles and the gut lining, causing the side effects.
However: these side effects are not nearly as bad as they used to be. The new drugs are better and more specific, and the palliative drugs to help with the side effects are better.