This seems so American. A British man learns that he is, in fact, not dying and wants to sue the hospital. Of course if he was an American, it’d somehow be a class action suit.

Here’s the story.

John Brandrick, 62, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer two years ago and told that he would probably die within a year.

He quit his job, sold or gave away nearly all his possessions, stopped paying his mortgage and spent his savings dining out and going on holiday.

Brandrick was left with little more than the black suit, white shirt and red tie that he had planned to be buried in when it emerged a year later that his suspected “tumor” was no more than a non-life threatening inflammation of the pancreas.

His complaint is that he now has no money to live on. So much for the Hollywood “second lease on life” movie moment. It’s hard to feel too much sympathy for him. There are probably scores of people with pancreatic cancer who’d love to trade places with him. Furthermore, just because you are dying doesn’t mean you should just stop paying your mortgage or (presumably) other bills.

A more humorous yet unreported issue is whether thinking he was dying so it didn’t matter what he said, did he reveal anything that he now regrets to loved ones or others? Did he tell his boss to “shove it”? I remember a joke about a man admitting indiscretions to his wife as the plane they were on was plummeting and appearing to be headed toward a crash only to be pulled out of the dive at the last minute. Unfortunately I couldn’t find that joke but while searching “thinks he’s going to die” I did find this which might make you laugh.

A bunch of Indians capture a cowboy and bring him back to their camp to meet the chief. The chief says to the cowboy, “You are going to die. But we feel sorry for you, so we will give you one wish a day for three days. On sundown of the third day, you die. What is your first wish?”

The cowboy says, “I want to see my horse.”

The Indians get his horse. The cowboy grabs the horse’s ear and whispers something, then slaps the horse on the ass. The horse takes off. Two hours later, the horse comes back with a naked blonde.

She jumps off the horse and goes into the teepee with the cowboy. The Indians look at each other, figuring, “Typical white man – can only think of one thing.”

The second day, the chief says, “What is your wish today?”

The cowboy says, “I want to see my horse again.”

The Indians bring him his horse. The cowboy leans over to the horse and whispers something in the horse’s ear, then slaps it on the ass. Two hours later, the horse comes back with a naked redhead. She gets off and goes in the teepee with the cowboy.

The Indians shake their heads, figuring, “Typical white man – going to die and can only think of one thing.”

The last day comes, and the chief says, “This is your last wish, white man. What you want?”

The cowboy says, “I want to see my horse again.” The Indians bring him his horse. The cowboy grabs the horse by both ears, twists them hard and yells, “Read my lips! POSSE, damn it! P-O-S-S-E!”

This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 6:48 pm by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.