Art Buchwald is dying from permanent kidney failure. He’s refused dialysis, and contrary to the Western medical model, by all accounts he’s doing just fine; just fine for someone who’s dying.
In the old days—the 1970s—before dialysis patients qualified for Medicare, end-stage renal disease patients who didn’t meet the criteria assigned by the hospital death squads (mostly being white, young, and working) were sent home with a handful of morphine to die.
Buchwald, after having his right leg amputated below the knee, decided that facing dialysis several times a week for the rest of his life was just too much and decided to “fade away naturally,” according to Suzette Martinez Standring’s account in Editor & Publisher. Buchwald made no bones about his options and his choice: “I had two decisions. Continue dialysis, and that’s boring to do three times a week, and I don’t know where that’s going, or I can just enjoy life and see where it takes me.”
And apparently, he’s enjoying life fully. Living in a Washington, DC hospice, Buchwald fills his days with visits from friends, napping, and eating whatever he likes (including “sending out for McDonald’s milkshakes and hamburgers”), according to a column he wrote for the Washington Post.
By all accounts, Buchwald should have died five or six weeks ago (Medicare will only pay for a few weeks of hospice care) and he’s earned something of a reputation as The Man Who Wouldn’t Die.
A revealing National Public Radio interview with Diane Rehm is available in streaming format. In the interview, Buchwald discloses that he was previously on dialysis for two months before making the decision to opt-out of all medical care.
I admire his resolve to meet his death head-on and hope I can muster the same when the time comes. As Buchwald told Diane Rehm, “when you have to go, how you go is a big deal.”
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