debodun
SF VIP
- Location
- way upstate in New York, USA
How disabled would you have to be to want someone to "pull the plug"?
I don't want to get to the point that I have to ask anyone to pull my plug.
I want to have the option to do it myself at any point in time. Just knowing that I have the option would give me the strength to go on for another day. If I do get to the point where I'm going to live another six months or so and the pain, hassle, cost, etc... mounts up and becomes unbearable I would take my pill and drift away.
I will be glad when the laws finally change and this becomes an option available to everyone. The whole business of the current MacGyver style assisted suicide scares me more than living. I would be afraid that I would botch the job and live for several years hooked to a machine. IMO it's time to bring the whole business out into the light and make it legal.
I don't want to get to the point that I have to ask anyone to pull my plug.
I want to have the option to do it myself at any point in time. Just knowing that I have the option would give me the strength to go on for another day. If I do get to the point where I'm going to live another six months or so and the pain, hassle, cost, etc... mounts up and becomes unbearable I would take my pill and drift away.
I will be glad when the laws finally change and this becomes an option available to everyone. The whole business of the current MacGyver style assisted suicide scares me more than living. I would be afraid that I would botch the job and live for several years hooked to a machine. IMO it's time to bring the whole business out into the light and make it legal.
Same here Bea, right to die is now legal where I live, so I'll have that option unless I don't want to go through all the red tape and decide to do it myself. My biggest fear is getting Alzheimer's and not being able to decide anything. I think I could live pretty long with a physical disability, of course if I was painfully suffering from cancer treatments and my prognosis was poor, I'd probably want to end it pretty quickly. A couple of close relatives died from cancer and probably would have loved to have the option to end it all sooner.https://www.deathwithdignity.org/take-action/
It's an atrocity to be more worried about terminal cancer patients becoming addicted than about elimination of their pain.
Yeah, my niece died of cancer at 40. Every time the did something to prolong her life they really weren't prolonging her life, but actually prolonging her long and painful death. It was absolutely horrific. When my mother died some 35 years ago, she knew she was terminal, as did my niece, but in my mother's case she tried chemotherapy and declared that if she was going to die soon she didn't want to spend her last days vomiting, so she opted out of treatment and received adequate pain meds and other supportive drugs and did very well until about her last week or so. Nowdays, with the FDA so worried about terminal cancer patients getting addicted to opioids, you can't really do that any more. We fought tooth and claw to get her anywhere near adequate pain control. It's an atrocity to be more worried about terminal cancer patients becoming addicted than about elimination of their pain.
It like the veterinarian said to me when I had to have my cat put down a few weeks ago, "It's not the quantity, it's the quality of life."
With a pet, it perfectly legal to have it euthanized, but for human, it looks like the policy is "life at any cost".
As a hospice volunteer (yet to have a patient, but have gone through all the training), my impression is that hospice intervention can pretty much control pain for most people, though certain forms (bone cancer comes to mind), it's tougher, but still quite possible. They and the doctors prescribing the meds have zero qualms about addiction and are quite aggressive in treating pain for those under their care. Given all I've learned thus far, I have little doubt that if hospice were an option for me, I'd choose that route if at all possible. I'd like knowing that I was being kept comfortable in my final days.
Hospice did not adequately control my niece's pain, nor her agitation, nor her terror. She died in a hospital hospice and it was one of the worst nights of my life. She died screaming and thrashing and painfully struggling for breath. We were begging the nurses for more meds, but they said she'd had all she could have. Hell, she was dying, what difference could it make, except to mercifully shorten her death throes.
Besides which, you have to be under hospice care. My mother just wanted to live her life, with adequate pain meds and other supportive drugs. She was pretty much able to do so, but she couldn't do that now -- they'd be too worried she'd become addicted or sell her drugs on the street, both of which are stupid. As someone said above, death does indeed cure addiction, and a woman in pain certainly does not sell her drugs.
Sorry if I seem angry, nothing against you or where you work, but I am still very angry about how my niece was treated, and I'm angry about how the FDA puts people who are really suffering through all their "addiction" rubbish. I'd slash my throat before I went through what she went through.
Butterfly, what a horrible experience for you and your niece. I can totally see why you feel the way you do. I'm new to the hospice experience as I said. How long ago was this? All I can do is relate to what I've been taught, which is that our hospice nurses are told that pain management is a top priority. Maybe things have changed over time. Sorry you had such a bad experience. That must have been awful and I can see why you'd be bitter.
Butterfly, I totally understand. My grandmother was at home dying of cancer. She badly needed a wheelchair because they still insisted that she go for radiation treatments. She could no longer walk. We had to carry her down the steps. They told us none were available and this went on for weeks. Two days before she died they brought one. After her death my mom called them to come and get the chair. That chair sat in the living room for 6 weeks! My grandfather had to look at that day in and day out. I doubt that was a coincidence that all of a sudden they didn't need any wheel chairs for other people. I have not given a red cent to the cancer society since and never will. I'm sure others will disagree just as they do about doctors,hospitals and all other services but a bad experience like that you don't forget easily..
We faced this decision with my late father-in-law in late 2015. He had mid stage Alzheimers, but was still functioning. Fell one night and fractured his pelvis. Internal bleeding caused complications that led to his heart stopping, but the hospital resuscitated him despite a DNR because the caregiver didn't send it with him to the hospital. Long story short, we were told his kidneys were failing, would need dialysis in addition to months of rehab for the fracture. My wife and her sister agreed he'd never want to live like that and withdrew the respirator he was on. He died peacefully in his sleep the next morning, in a hospice bed (down the hall from the ICU), free from machines and pain, and I like to think he knew we were there until a few hours before he passed.