![]() My copy had been dedicated to a man named, Fred with this inscription: “As my Father would say, ‘there are no bad experiences, even on the last lap of life.’” Despite the book being out of print, I was still able to obtain a copy. When I discovered that George Sheehan had written this book, I went looking for it. His children would compile those articles into a book called: “Going the Distance, One Man’s Journey to the End of his Life.” As he was dying from this inoperable disease, he wrote articles about his thoughts and experiences and became, in the process, a philosopher in death as he was in life. I Googled his name and found out that he had succumbed to cancer, like his sister, I guess. I was thinking about this event last year when I decided to see what had happened to good old George. George’s final line to me in this discussion was, “I want to see what comes next.” His words would become an aha moment for me. Even dying parents never give up teaching their children. She would use this example of her fighting to survive as her final act. She didn’t want her son, David, to ever give up too soon. He told me further that she had told him that she was only putting up a good fight so her son would see her fight and would draw the conclusion that he could never become a quitter. ![]() He told me about his sister who was dying of cancer. He said he wasn’t afraid of death and went on to tell me about a time when he almost died while swimming in the ocean and a giant wave took him under. I received a response that I have thought about all of my life. Sheehan himself would endure such pain for a chance at a longer life. It was essentially an inquiry as to whether or not Dr. The simple question – Could you ever be a Barney Clark? – brought about a complex response from Dr. He suffered through this entire experience for just a few extra days of life. Over the course of many operations, Barney Clark would subject himself to enormous torture having his chest opened up for doctors to insert, manipulate, adjust and tweak the innards of the artificial heart. People were skeptical as to how well such a thing would work and it made news headlines in Utah when this Mormon dentist agreed to be a heart recipient guinea pig. Robert Jarvik, had created the Jarvik Heart. The University of Utah had an artificial limbs program and a doctor who was part of the program, Dr. Barney Clark was a Seattle dentist whose heart was giving out when he was selected to be the first human recipient of an artificial heart.
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