Ted Kennedy, the Lessons of Being Human and the “Life Curve”

by Carey Kriz

I saw a picture of Senator Ted Kennedy recently that defined honesty for me in a single frame. I guess everyone knows that he has a brain tumor—and that brain tumors are often fatal. We are also aware that his life has been one of unfair family tragedies.

But in this one picture of Ted Kennedy, I saw an expression that reminded me how innocent each of us is at the core. Forget what you think of his politics, morality, or other individual and subjective metrics, Senator Kennedy is facing death, and his eyes reflected a quiet blend of fear and resolve—and what looked like a big measure of peace.

Just as the first cells in our embryos have a blueprint for what they are going to build, the ultimate experiences of this miraculous collection of life also has its own hidden trajectory. What determines whether this outcome is an early death or a long life?

We enter the world through a feat of choreographed engineering and complex evolutions to make choices (good and bad) that have an impact on the fate of our biological machine. I like to call this collection of outcomes and actions our unique “Life Curve.” The “Life Curve” houses the paths we can take as we move through the birth to death cycle with the ability to speed up and slow down based on factors we often do not understand.

Unfortunately given the scary nature of the unknown, almost none of us think about the hard-hitting impacts of these milestones. And none of the big institutions that surround us provide much guidance. Our health care system, which is the one place we turn to for help when things go wrong with our bodies, was not designed to provide it. If you are broken, it can fix you; and it can help you fight a variety of illnesses with near miraculous results. Our media outlets definitely do not provide it. Watch any show or commercial and you will be bombarded with misleading statements—with the blending of fact and fiction at near epidemic proportions.

When was the last time someone told you that your actions had the potential to shave 10 years from your life? The answer is probably never. If we did hear it we would probably not eat the foods we eat or expose our bodies to an untold number of social and chemical experiments to test how much abuse the cells of our bodies can take.

Superman may have been made of steel, but you and I are a mixture of carbon-based life that is organic and fragile. Heat our bodies to 110 degrees Fahrenheit long enough, for example, and it will die. Stop giving it water for a few days and it will die. Our bodies have a balance based on hundreds of millions of years of evolution, with a definition of what is acceptable and not that we barely understand.

In the end we are not physically immortal, or even Irish, Jewish or Black. Each of us is a very special human outcome of the forces of nature and contains a programmed quality to how long we will (or could) be around. As Ted Kennedy recently discovered, having a brain tumor is simply a harsh way of discovering just how fast things can change and that we are governed by basic rules of biology.

Want a wakeup call? Try having your doctor tell you the cancer you have is inoperable and without options. Cancer does not particularly care that you are one race or the other, rich or poor. And cancer does not discriminate based on age and does not wait for your permission to attack. It is perfectly comfortable setting its own calendar and agenda, which it has been doing for as long as we have had organized medicine.
A friend of mine told me once that the best time to plant a tree is today and twenty years ago. Like planting trees, today is the best possible time to start thinking about what it means to be alive, to be human, and to listen to one another. I bet Ted Kennedy could teach you a lesson on that timing. But I also bet that he knew a lot more than you and me about the mystery and beauty of living long before he got the news of his brain tumor.

Luckily, it is not too late for most of us to start getting our trees out and digging a few holes in the yard. Unfortunately, most of us seem to have forgotten that the question is not if, but when.

Carey Kriz is the author of The Patient Will See You Now: How Advances in Science, Medicine, and Technology Will Lead to a Personalized Health Care System (Rowman & Littlefield).