... alas this didn't SEEM to have been the case with those of my late first wife, Iris, who - throughout virtually all the twenty-four years of our marriage - suffered from a severe form of Rheumatoid Arthritis (Originally Posted by Doc Alan
... not ArtHUritis, I hasten to add!) and had, several times, made it plain [to me] that, in the eventuality of her death, her body should be donated to Medical Research as part of a relentless bid to offer a possible cure to others "plagued" by this painful and debilitating disease in the future.
As it happened, during the final 9 months of her life, she developed terminal Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma... which, the oncologists treating her claimed, was caused mainly by the steroid drugs she'd been prescribed to combat her arthritis, playing havoc with her auto-immune system.
Shortly before she died, I spoke to a senior consultant at Ninewells Medical School & Teaching Hospital in Dundee - with a view to having her last wishes fulfilled - only to be informed that, in accordance with medical legislation, the bodies of deceased cancer patients could NOT, in any circumstances, be bequeathed for research.And, to this day, I've never fully understood the reasons for such an [apparently]
ruling
... because I knew of one lady whose family had successfully arranged for it to be done - shortly after she'd succumbed to a breast malignancy. But, of course, that had been back in 1973 ... nearly 20 years earlier.
My apologies for the morbid nature of this post ... but I wondered, Alan, if - as an eminent pathologist - you could, perhaps, enlighten me?
