As a human it makes me so sad to read this post. I hope the rest of his life is meaningful, comfortable and pain-free.<p>As a doctor it makes me so mad. We talk about winning and losing against cancer like its some game or some foe personified. Just because there aren't any more chemo therapy options doesn't mean there aren't treatment options. Just because he'll be home and not in the hospital doesn't mean his doctors will stop caring for him. He and they will have different goals. Cure seems like a goal that isn't realistic anymore. But there are goals that are realistic. So I hope his doctors are trying to help him live a meaningful, comfortable and pain-free life, like they would for any other patient. And we need to make sure he doesn't think he lost anything. Its not fair and its incorrect. We need to change our language around cancer.<p>Read a more articulate explanation of the problem with language around cancer here: <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaoncology/fullarticle/2108855" rel="nofollow">https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaoncology/fullarticle/21...</a>
From someone who's been dealing with cancer for the last 6 years, I hate when people compare it to a fight/war/battle with winners and losers. What exactly am I fighting? My cells? How exactly am I going to war? by sitting in a chair eating a sandwich while getting a chemo infusion?<p>In my mind, this was always just a disease to manage. Being diagnosed at 33 with no family history or no genetic markers the only thing I could point to was some random mutation that reprogrammed my cells. Modern medicine as this point is serving it's purpose -> buying me more time. I personally don't have any illusions of grandeur that I'll be "cured" but I'm thankful the extra time that I've been blessed with and just try to make the most of it everyday. That's all you can really do with or without cancer.
Jeeeesus. I'm incapable of understanding the mindset the man is in - total awareness of impending death. It must take tremendous courage - I think I would have been reduced to a quaking pile of jelly faced with the fact of mortality. What a person, what a reality.
There is something you can do to help people with leukemia: register as a stem cell donor. Germany has a very strong system with 71.000 stem cell or bone marrow donations per year while there are only 11.000 cases of leukemia in Germany - most go to the rest of the world. There are 5.7 million registered donors[1] (total population is around 80 million).<p>[1] <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/DKMS" rel="nofollow">https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/DKMS</a>
Godspeed. Thank you for sharing your stories.<p>For anyone reading here, one way to donate in general is The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society: <a href="https://www.lls.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.lls.org/</a><p>LLS funds blood cancer research, education and patient services. You may know of LLS because of its annual fundraiser event known as “Light the Night” and its fitness initiatives “Team in Training“.
It's 2:40 AM, I open Hacker News because I couldn't sleep and notice this is on top of the page. I have no words.<p>I didn't really know Alex from his work at Automattic, I knew him as the guy who ran the fan website for "Top Gear". I don't have any numbers how many people he helped to get access to the episodes, but I'm absolutely certain the show would have never gotten as popular without his contribution.<p>Thanks and sorry.
My dad had one month and one day from diagnosis ("surprise, you have stage 4 lung cancer") to death.<p>Fuck cancer.<p>Thank you, Alex, for trying to make the world a better place. Open source is a wonderful legacy.
Incredible sad read and I wish you the best of luck if any journey is ahead of you. We will all come pretty soon after you! Wordpress is an awesome tool and project. I don't know you or your work but I'm sure it's just awesome. Thanks for improving the open source world for us with your skills!<p>Whenever faced with death in my life, I have always found comfort in Richard Dawkins wonderful speech.<p>I hope you'll do the same.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOXMjCnKwb4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOXMjCnKwb4</a>
This man is living my worst fear. Also 34, watching my 6 year-old play a video game.<p>Good luck, Alex. All I can say is, I don't know how you stand, but I know a man who can.
Mortality is one of those things that I grow more accustomed to the older I get. I hate it. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about death or things that cause death. Death is everywhere — the news, social media — two things I try to avoid. However, we cannot avoid death. We are all just living to die.
Timely, re plugins:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19199647" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19199647</a><p><a href="https://www.codeshelter.co/" rel="nofollow">https://www.codeshelter.co/</a><p>> Code Shelter is a collective of volunteer software developers that aims to help with maintaining popular open source projects whose authors need a hand or don't have the time to maintain them any more.
Reading through some of the past posts, he seems to have quite a stoic view of his situation (saying he's 'along for the ride'). Indeed, there's nothing he can do about it, it makes no sense to stress about it. I hope I'm able to feel similarly when it comes time for me.
So sad. Reminds of some promising research into fasting that applies specifically to his form of leukemia, ALL. <a href="https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/newsroom/articles/year-2016/leukemia-zhang.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/newsroom/articles/year-2016/l...</a> I'm sure he's had a ton of people suggesting all kinds of things, but I wonder if he has looked into fasting. There's not much downside to trying at this point.<p>“Strikingly, we found that in models of ALL, a regimen consisting of six cycles of one day of fasting followed by one day of feeding completely inhibited cancer development,” he said. At the end of seven weeks, the fasted mice had virtually no detectible cancerous cells compared to an average of nearly 68 percent of cells found to be cancerous in the test areas of the non-fasted mice."
Damn. I’ve been following Alex as a peer in the early WP scene since back in the day. Didn’t realize this was him until I saw his about page mention Viper007Bond.<p>If you’re reading this bud I hope you know your work has made a lasting impression on many.
Cancer is life, not death on the micro level. Okay, maybe a shortsighted and cellfish (my play of words) struggle for life, but aren't we as a civilization doing the same thing right now? Anyway, if we keep vilifying cancer without understanding it, we'll end up "losing". I'm saddened to hear that a good developer and an open-source contributor has been struck with this fate. As a civilization with bold claims to fame, we should really focus on these mass killers rather than building bigger bombs and walls. I mean, come on, we can't even treat the flu and thousands die every year!
Immensely saddening. I just read through some of his cancer tagged posts on his blog and it seemed like he was finally reclaiming his life back. So sad to read that it came back.<p>Hope that you find peace, my friend.
It's too early to bury Alex. Donor immune system may still rise up and kill leukemia cells while leaving some liver tissue for it to regenerate. Not so much of a chance but still...
Highly recommend Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilyich. One alternative sequence is you can start at part II, read to the end, then read part I. Edit: My guess is part I is there to show the reader what his/her own reaction to death is, before he begins his lesson. <a href="http://www.lonestar.edu/departments/english/Tolstoy_Ivan.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.lonestar.edu/departments/english/Tolstoy_Ivan.pdf</a>
Very sad to hear. You are a strong fellow for putting things out there in such a public way, I am sure you have helped many deal with their own struggles.
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/416702921703509/" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/groups/416702921703509/</a><p>Cannabis oil may help you. This group has loads of info. Just search / post for leukemia. Lots to read.
to friends and family of loved ones in similar situations -- dont hesitate to say anything you need to say to them. dont live with regrets. and to friends and family of their caregivers, dont underestimate how hard this is for them too. they will need your care just as much.
Thanks for the top notch torrents and the plugins that make my life easier. I've never known who you were, Alex, but it turns out you've been a part of my life for years.
working on a project in this space now. Definitely hits home - trying to solve problems in this space is important when you read things like this. At times it can be a very demotivating space to tackle because trying to do anything new in this domain is a real slog and for good reason. There are some smart founders and VCs out there, it would be great if more of them decided to spend their time working on more healthcare issues.
This put a lot in perspective when my grandmother passed from breast cancer: <a href="https://xkcd.com/931/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/931/</a>
Well the body will eventually "loose the battle" for us all. But Consciousness... since quantum information isn't lost, consciousness might be another story and not get lost with the body.
It seems fasting can potentially help starving cancer. <a href="https://gero.usc.edu/cll/" rel="nofollow">https://gero.usc.edu/cll/</a> It can help liver problems too, so maybe worth a shot as a last-resort attempt to stay alive.
Whenever I’m studying a given topic, I like to buy maybe 6 or 7 books on it to skim-read from someplace where that’s afforable like HPB or Thriftbooks. Gives you a good overview of field and also each of the books fills in the holes of the other books.<p>Recently did this on the topic of “cancer”. All recent books published in the last 15 years by Big 5 Publishers.<p>Every single book had intense criticism for the NIH. It seems they do a lot of good, but their singular focus on only funding “hypothesis based research” has driven and then kept extremely promising ideas on the sidelines for 25 years.<p>Very sad to read at times, and made me really appreciate how scientific progress comes in amazing bursts that are short lived but that everyone depends on for decades to come.<p>EDIT: Kind of astonished by the downvotes. This book goes into more detail: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374135606/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374135606/</a><p>Also something else I forgot to add is how the death rate from cancer really hasn’t budged in 20 years by being generously massaged via something known as “average death rate”. Adjustments are made to have the US population conform to a model, against which the amount of deaths per year are calculated. While intended to smooth variance YoY, this model helps to a great extent the system currently operating.