Art Buchwald Defies the Odds, Says He May Leave Hospice

By: E&P Staff For those of you wondering about Art Buchwald, he's doing unexpectedly well months after declining dialysis and entering a hospice to die.

In a Tuesday column syndicated by Tribune Media Services, Buchwald wrote: "In February I was warned that if I didn't take dialysis I wouldn't survive more than two or three weeks. Since I didn't want dialysis, I decided to move into a hospice and go quietly into the night. For reasons that even the doctors can't explain, my kidneys kept working, and what started out as a three-week deathwatch has turned into nearly four months."

He continued: "When word got out that I was in a hospice, I became a celebrity. I was on all the TV shows and the notice of my intentions was in all the papers. ... The more publicity I got, the more attention my kidneys got, and instead of going quietly into the night, I was holding news conferences every day."

Buchwald also received thousands of e-mails and letters, and numerous visitors. One was National Society of Newspaper Columnists President Suzette Martinez Standring, who presented Buchwald with the NSNC lifetime achievement award he had been slated to receive at the organization's June 30-July 2 conference in Boston.

"I never realized dying was so much fun," Buchwald wrote in today's column. "Then a few weeks ago, my doctor said I had to change course. He advised me to go to Martha's Vineyard. Things I didn't care about because I was going to die, I now had to care about. This included shaving in the morning, buying a new cellphone that works, rewriting my living will, and scrapping all the plans for my funeral. I also had to start worrying about Bush again.

"Alas, the people who come to visit me now look at me with great suspicion. They want to know if the whole thing was a scam. They can't believe, after I said goodbye, I'm going to Martha's Vineyard instead of Paradise. I called up the TV stations and the newspapers and asked them if they would make a correction and retract the original story. They said they never correct stories about people who claimed they were dying and didn't."

Buchwald concluded: "So, dear reader, I hope you don't feel you were duped. The moral of this column is: Never trust your kidneys."