Knowing your time

Recent news reports about the failing health of Cuban leader Fidel Castro are fairly predictable, I mean we are all going to die one day, and if you're famous, they write about it. However this article from CNN really shocked me into a new consciousness regarding the the not-new-at-all subjects of ego and modern medicine. In the article, describing Castro's intestinal ailment, it says doctors have tried to reconnect his large intestine to his anus and when that failed have made "an artificial anus". Now honestly, even if I have been the strongman ruler of a country for half a century, when I am in need of an artificial anus to go on living, put a bullet in me, honestly, the ego.