My Carbon Footprint Grows Ever Larger

This is how I would reword Shakespeare:

Nothing offends me about my life so much as the manner of my leaving it.

It’s not the disease, or the timing that makes me feel that way. It’s the staggering amount of energy that is consumed as part of cancer care - energy in the form of miles driven and plastic tossed into a biowaste disposal canister.

I haven’t lived an exemplary life when it comes to the amount I have contributed to landfills. I’m not even good about composting my food waste. Still, getting sick has enlarged my carbon footprint, and I’m not done yet. There’s the matter of how to dispose of my mortal remains, for one thing, plus I’m not done with blood draws and treatments.

Take the simple matter of a blood draw. Initially they were all taken from a vein. Waste generated: an alcohol wipe, a rubber tourniquet, a pair of gloves, a butterfly needle with attached plastic tube, a few glass vials, and a couple of pieces of gauze topped with a bandaid. Now, however, I have only one good arm plus a port, so most of the time I drive to the cancer center and use the port. I was shocked when I realized how many more supplies are now needed, and how much more waste I am generating with each blood draw. 

Now needed: a mask, two pairs of glove, a special doohicky to stick into the port, and at least 4 syringes to flush the port, draw blood, and inject an anti-clotting drug at the end of the procedure, plus the usual wipes, bandages, and glass vials.

As far as I can tell, nothing that is used to care for a patient can be reused or recycled 
except for gowns and bedding. It’s all medical waste. When I go to the hospital cafeteria for a meal, all that is offered is “disposable” plastic dishes and cutlery. Usually they are foam plates and bowls, which are non-recyclable.

I’ve driven a lot of miles as well, especially since I decided about three years ago to enroll in a clinical trial. My community cancer center does not offer trials, so I had to travel to Buffalo, NY, by car, about 550 miles round trip. I liked having a thoracic oncologist on my team, so I continued to travel to Roswell Park Cancer Institute for scans and consultations after I left the trial. In August 2017, I switched to going to Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City for my specialized care, which involves 420 miles of driving plus a train trip. All through this I continue to go to my local cancer center quite regularly, a trip of 65-75 miles round trip depending on route. I come up with a rough estimate of 30,000 total miles driven to date, which has added about 8 tons of carbon to the atmosphere.

Lord knows what the local cancer center does about its waste. Both Roswell Park and Sloan Kettering say on their websites that they recycle everything they can. Roswell Park says that what it can’t recycle, it burns to produce electricity. I kind of flinch, though, wondering what toxins are produced when you burn plastic IV bags.

Much of this is outside of my control. I could decide to only pursue care close to home, and I could decide to forego treatment. That second choice has a very particular consequence, one I’m not quite ready to face. To be alive is a precious and transient gift, and I’m still holding that gift close.

The final choice is what to do with my body. We could bury me in a plain wooden box here on our property; we have 100 acres of forest so there’s plenty of space. New York law permits this, but you have to delineate an official cemetery space on your property, and that’s something a future owner is not likely to be thrilled about. Cremation offends me, however. It apparently takes at least 25 gallons of fuel to cremate a body. One’s last act is going out in a *poof* of carbon. I have chosen instead to donate my body to a medical school. There will still be cremation at the very end of my body’s usefulness, but at least I will have helped someone become a doctor.

Curing or controlling cancer would be a boon to humanity. It’s not the only medical puzzle that we need to solve. We need to figure out how to give people excellent medical care without generating a mountain of waste and a cloud of carbon. That might be a technological challenge almost as difficult as taming errant cancer cells.