His legs had been removed, his penis and most of the tissue surrounding it (think lymph nodes, scrotum, and then think more), but the cancer was eating him inside out (part 2) at a faster rate, and more refined methods were needed to keep him alive.
So they sliced his body, 1/5th of an inch at a time. Every single day.
At some point — near his stomach, when most everything of what a normal life could still have defined had declined opposition — the MDs decided that the salami method had to be stopped. Almost nothing of this kind man was left, and enough was enough.
He had not been cut in half by a truck — this truck had been very patient — and although he was now half the man he used to be, he asked the doctors to stop, and to let him go as the tiny (but still so very tall) man he had become.
And his urologist — who had been with him all the way — cried tears while holding this tiny man in her arms, as his final seconds ticked away.
Even without his legs, he was taller than most of us.