As a blogger, I love to pepper my posts with personal anecdotes, reality being the sharpest rhetorical bolt in any writer’s quiver. But while I usually try to stay as close to the facts as possible, this post’s story has been generously fictionalized, the names and details altered to protect the participants of the real life anecdote I would prefer to tell.
For to do otherwise could get a loved one convicted of murder.
At the center of the story is a family matriarch, let’s just call her Aunt Sarah, a spry old lady, decades a widow, who seemed to cherish her independence almost as much as she did her grand kids, and who one day in her early eighties was suddenly and unexpectedly diagnosed with end-stage cancer. Her doctor thought it started in her lungs, but we’ll never know for sure, for despite the fact that she had shown few symptoms, it had already metastasized throughout her body, the doctors giving her little more than six months to live. She would be dead in three.
The rapid progress of her illness was quite stunning, even to a family that had been ravaged by cancer. My father, his only sibling, three out of four grandparents (the fourth having died young of a bum heart), and a plurality of great aunts and uncles have fought the disease, some successfully, some not. But never have I seen such a precipitous decline, from diagnosis to death, as that of Aunt Sarah.
Only three weeks after stubbornly driving herself to the doctor’s office to receive her own death sentence, Aunt Sarah was mostly bedridden, the pain of the advancing tumors almost unbearable, and by six weeks the cancer had clearly started to eat away at her brain. Aunt Sarah, in her fashion, defiantly insisted that she wanted to die in her own home, and her children dutifully obliged. Home hospice care was arranged, round the clock aides hired, and a rotating vigil of sorts informally organized, family members coming to sit by her side and pay their last respects to the living, while Aunt Sarah’s body and mind withered away before our eyes.
By the third month Aunt Sarah appeared gone, although her body continued to linger on. For days she had lay there, mouth ajar, eyes slightly open but apparently unseeing, her body motionless but for her long, labored breaths and an occasional, wracking shudder that seemed to start at her toes and exit through her mouth in a low, pleading groan.
I was there that afternoon when a doctor (or perhaps a hospice nurse) came by on a routine visit, and pronounced that Aunt Sarah would soon pass on—maybe a few days, or a week at most. Aunt Sarah’s daughter, who by this point was staying with her around the clock, was concerned that she appeared to be in pain, and so the doctor carefully instructed her in the use of a morphine drip, providing ample medication to last the week.
On the recommended dosage he was quite specific. “This much,” he instructed, “should ease any suffering, but if you notice any changes in her breathing, please feel free to give me a call.” Clear enough. “But this much,” he warned, indicating a significantly larger dosage, “Well, you have to be careful not give her too much, or else her breathing will gradually slow and eventually stop, as she peacefully drifts off into a gentle, quiet and painless death.” There was a brief pause, the silence broken only by Aunt Sarah’s gasps for air. Nobody said anything, nor needed to. We thanked the doctor, and gave our goodbyes.
That night, Aunt Sarah died in her sleep.
No, that story did not actually happen, at least not exactly in that way, but something like this did occur in my family, as it does in many other families every day, and throughout the nation. Some doctors choose to provide the information and the medication necessary to humanely terminate the life of a dying patient, and some families choose to act on it. If “Aunt Sarah’s” daughter did indeed up the dosage, easing her mother off into a peaceful death, it was an act of love and compassion. And it was most certainly illegal.
And it would still be illegal under the terms of I-1000, the controversial Death with Dignity initiative on Washington’s ballot this fall, despite the dire exhortations of its opponents.
I-1000 does not authorize euthanasia or physician assisted suicide; it merely allows physicians, under certain narrow circumstances, to prescribe a lethal dose of medication to terminally ill patients for self-administration. And it is not, as Oregon’s decade old measure has proven, a slippery slope toward legalizing the very common practice that shortened “Aunt Sarah’s” suffering, let alone a path toward Soylent Green style suicide centers.
To argue that one inevitably leads to the other ignores two realities, the first, a political reality in which I-1000, as limited as it is, will barely pass if it passes at all, a context within even the thought of a successful euthanasia initiative is a political fantasy. The second reality is that individuals, families and physicians already make these difficult and painful decisions everyday—as was made in the case of “Aunt Sarah”—unregulated, un-talked about, and totally outside the law.
We cannot prevent terminally ill patients from choosing to end their own lives, we can merely make this option more difficult and more painful for them and their families. Likewise, while our current legal prohibition on mercy saves no lives, it does promote suffering, discouraging some doctors from prescribing adequate pain relief out of fear of legal consequences should the patient or family choose to administer a lethal dose. It is a prohibition that simply does not work, and as such, if the goal is to protect the vulnerable, it is a goal that would be better served by pragmatic regulations than by moral platitudes.
Initiative opponents scoff at a “right to die,” but what they’re really telling us is that there is only one right way to die: apparently, of natural causes, no matter how long or how painful the death. Personally, having watched close family members suffer through exactly that, I know what decision I would make in a similar situation, with or without my government’s blessing.
A terminally ill patient, under current law, can legally buy themselves a handgun and ammunition, but not a lethal dose of medication. Go figure. And then go out and vote Yes on I-1000.
Babies, old people, cops, Christians… Liberals don’t care who they kill because they operate by an equal opportunity morality.
And by equal opportunity, I mean they think they’re better than everyone else…equally.
kirkregard at 1:
Have you always had such trouble paying attention? When have liberals advocated the killing of babies, old people, cops and Christians?
You want to spin this how? That liberals are willy nilly murderers? That we seek out those groups you named for sport?
How fucking stupid are you? How the fuck did you manage to type such crap? With your gene pool, do you wonder, as the rest of us do, just how your parents figured out what goes where to conceive you?
What will it take for you to take your self-righteous bullshit, that you want to force on the rest of us, and post elsewhere?
1
Just what, exactly, is an “equal opportunity morality”?
Is that where we are free to believe as we wish?
re 1: I repeat that in the mirror every morning.
Goldy,
This story is all too familiar. My wife went through a similar story with her mother who suffered from lung cancer.
It is time for America to allow adults who are in dire circumstances to dictate the terms of their exit from this life.
What could possibly be more humane, more empathetic, more kind, more understanding?
We treat our animals better and with more dignity.
Title of post: Is there a right way to die?
Answer:
ON MY TERMS.
Geez, Goldy, with that much cancer in your family I’d better wear a handkerchief over my snout when I’m in the same room with you! Was the Goldstein family farm on top of a toxic waste dump?
I can think of bad ways to die. Rows of infantry walking into machine guns or being blown to bits by shellfire in World War I’s no man’s land. Millions of naked Jews being paraded into Nazi gas chambers. Young healthy people dying from drugs that should never have approved for the market. Terminally ill patients locked into lingering agonized deaths because ignorant people insist on imposing their own fairytale notions of “morality” on everyone else. This is why politics is important. This is why I have devoted my entire life to political activism. Nothing in our lives is more important than politics, because politics shapes everything else in our lives. And that’s why I’m here.
@1 Stuff it, asshole. Until you warmongers stop bombing and invading other people’s countries, you’ve got no moral authority to preach about killing. None whatsoever.
Very similar thing happened in my family, not so many years ago. No matter what she did in the circumstances described, Aunt Sarah’s daughter did not commit murder or even homicide. At the most, she adjusted the time of her passing, by a few hours or days. Period.
It was the cancer that killed Aunt Sarah, and nothing else. The death certificate will identify the cause of death as one or more types of cancer, and that will be completely accurate in any moral sense.
I put my cat to sleep at the vet’s last year when the tongue cancer grew large enough that my dearest cat could no longer close his mouth or eat on his own. I didn’t want him to suffer any longer, or die choking on his tumor. The vet gave him an overdose of anesthesia which put him first to sleep and then to a peaceful death. People do this everyday for their pets. Why not allow us humans to do this too? Why can’t I decide to pass away peacefully instead of dying a horrible, painful and undignified death?
I am voting yes on I-1000, death with dignity . That says it all.
@9 “Until you warmongers stop bombing and invading…”
They’d also have to stop abusing children and fucking goats.
http://www.republicanoffenders.com/Pedophiles.html
Don’t like the title. “Death with Dignity.” It suggests the people who don’t kill themselves and who choose a natural death aren’t dying with dignity.
‘Nice thoughtful post, free of the anti-religious bigotry and boredom of the house anarchist. Of course I disagree, and wonder of HA will ever permit the opposition to voice its views.
@14 Our SeattleJew isn’t exactly lined up with me on this issue.
Let’s see, wait for the chariot to descend from the heavens or responsible choice?
Responsible choice.
Yes on I-1000.
@14 “Of course I disagree”
The first question I come up with is, why should people not be free to choose?
Since Roger Rodent already has one foot in the grave, I guess for once his delusional mouth spewings are in this case legitimate.
still concerned – pressure to die, changes at the last minute, doctors who decide queers with AIDS are an immoral class that need to die, the state’s interest in this intimate and personal place … still thinking
and if it so rational, how about a jumping place off the Space Needle … rational approach, jumpers choice, I have never liked being drugged on anything … a place to drown at the end of the Ivar’s pier …
it has failed once, what is different this time?
Joel @14,
Thanks for the compliment, but as for permitting opposing views, I do in my comment threads, and my co-bloggers are free to post whatever they want, without fear of censorship. And, as I’ve long maintained, it is not my responsibility to provide balance within HA; HA is here to provide balance to what one might find elsewhere in the blogosphere and the traditional media.
All that said, I would be happy to provide you the space for a guest post here on HA, if you can secure me space for a guest column in the P-I.
Goldy:
I was appealing to you as owner/proprietor/conscience/inspiration of Horses Ass. Alas, yours truly is an employee of the Hearst Corp., and can make no promises with respect to the P-I.
We have, however, run 15 letters-to-the-editor on assisted suicide during recent months. The missive in tomorrow’s web letters section is the first to oppose the initiative.
You don’t have to convince me that I-1000 is the way to go. I’m all over it and will support it in November.
Joel Connelly, with all due respect (which is a fair amount), it takes a certain attitude to claim anti-religious bigotry in a comment to this post, when the entire point is having a choice.
No one who supports this initiative is trying to force religious people to die under any other circumstances other than the ones they choose.
Reverse situation…not so much. You think that your idea of what death is and should be should legally trump my own.
That, certainly, is not bigotry (just as your accusation is not bigotry). It is rather presumptuous, authoritarian, and lacking in a belief of families and loved ones to figure this issue out on their own without fear of legal reprisal.
On a final note, the idea that murders, forced suicides, etc. is an argument is deeply insulting. It’s a distraction in the face of compelling, detailed, and documented facts.
The only right way to die is while you’re having sex.
The wrong way to die is in the streets of america in a city controlled by democrats.
Like the fact more people were killed in chicago over the summer than troops in iraq. Strange, you never hear democrats complaining about those deaths.
http://cbs2chicago.com/local/c.....10166.html
@23: And more people were killed by car accidents than in Iraq. Your point?
Stupid arguments like yours are the products of small minds – grow up and learn how to advocate for what you beleive in – right now you are an embarassment to republicans – one might assume that all republicans are idiots like you, if one did not know better.
Voting no – life is not cheap
If you wish, suicide is easy
No need to legislate this
18 Holy crap, Paul…if you jump into Elliott Bay by the waterfront, you won’t have a peaceful death from drowning, you’ll have an agonizing death from poisoning!
The majority of mumbo jumbo from the so called right to life (that seems to only exist for fetus scale life entities), seems on its face, to outright reject the core principle of US Constitution and Bill of Rights: the right to cognitive liberty. We must continue to demand our right to be free cognitively, and assisted suicide is yet one more choice that the pseudo-lifer fascists would love to keep us from having. They reject cognitive liberty, and in its place stick garbled religious crap.
OK, here’s my “aunt” story, and this one isn’t made up.
Last year, an 80-some-odd year old aunt of mine developed a very sudden illness. She was actually on her way to her aerobics class when she noticed she was having a little trouble breathing and decided to go to the hospital ER instead. By the time she got there, they had to put her on high-flow oxygen as she gasped for breath. She had some rare disease similar to ARDS–basically all the tissue in her lungs turned to leather in a matter of a couple of hours. They were able to keep her going with lots and lots of oxygen, but for someone her age the prospects for recovery were slim to none, in a week or two the oxygen would make her go blind, and eventually she’d slowly die of sheer exhaustion. Had she been several decades younger, they might have intubated her and tried to find some drugs to soften her lungs back up, but under the circumstances that in and of itself would have merely been barbaric torture of an old lady.
She and her immediate family decided that they’d go on for a few days, to give everyone she knew time to come visit her and say goodbye. She was fully conscious, able to eat and converse, absolutely aware of what was going on. It was kind of like a wake, except the about-to-be-deceased was able to joke and laugh and swap old funky stories with everyone else.
After a few days, she figured she and everyone else had said all there was to say, and being a strong Christian was ready to go meet her Lord. She asked that the oxygen be turned off, and was gone in a very short time. I didn’t ask, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d been given some sort of sedative to make her last few breaths a little easier.
I’m not sure this story quite fits the discussion, except that here was a person who was fully in control of her faculties, who knew she didn’t have long at all, who was able to say, “OK, time to go.” The only real difference between her story and some of the other scenarios we’ve been talking about is that the time frame is days or hours instead of weeks or months, and that she was fully and indisputably “in charge” right until the end.
Yet you made a point more people die from auto accidents. Welcome to the small mind club.
OOPS.
You know I remember the old days on this site. You’d get 150-200 responses to every blog Goldy posted. Things sure have changed.
Is there such a law now? If so I have been unable to find an example of someone being prosecuted for the “offense” in question.
Why make a law if there is no demand?
As far as I know the offense does not exist. A physician currently may prescribe drugs to relieve pain and suffering EVEN if the drugs lead to death. But, under I-1000 this same difficult decision requires consent of a second physician and possibly a psychologist. Doesn’t this open the door for lawsuits an criminal presecution?
The claim that current practice is not talked about or rrgulated is not true. Every death is heavily reviewed today by death conferences.
So, under I-1000, the scenario Goldy describes would be illegal unless the procedure was followed.
In effect, !-1000 creates a kind of medical death court. Who would decide which physicians had rhw authority to write a death prescription?
What qualifies doctors to make that decision now?
Would current practice become illegal?
“If so I have been unable to find an example of someone being prosecuted for the “offense” in question.”
Stephen…are you joking, or have you somehow forgotten the entire United States Congress getting wrapped around the axle over whether or not to not do something–withold heroic measures to further prolong the life of a terminal patient in a vegetative state.
That one scared the hell out of me, because it occurred shortly after we let my mother slip away from Alzheimer’s. The etiology of her condition was completely different from that of Terri Schiaevo, but the end result was the same: her brain function was largely gone, to the extent that she was no longer able to swallow. If the fervor of the misguided zealots who were so vocal in the Schiaevo fiasco were raised again with respect to end-state Alzheimer’s patients, we could see the prospect of some opportunistic “providers” keeping all these people “alive” for weeks or months longer by plugging IV’s into them, marinating them in drugs to keep them from struggling, and soaking their insurance, their families and the government for the tab.
Roger rabbit hasn’t been feeling well. That alone explains the drop in the number of posts.
@33: What the heck are you talking about? How would the legislation of I-1000 have changed anything with respect to the Schiavo case?
Completely different, you must be either confused or dishonest. I’ll assume the former.
I don’t think the proposed law would have any application to your personal Alzheimer case either.