Death With Dignity?

Hello KB,

What a grim experience.  I have heard many experiences that are similar and all seem singularly fraught with a feeling of hopeless inevitability.  I imagine I would allow nature to take it's hideous course and be haunted by the lawful necessity of my decision.

I remember a 38 year old mother of 3 beautiful girls with a wonderful, caring husband, that I took care of as an RN on the medical floor of a small hospital.  She was dying of ovarian cancer and it had eaten up most of her abdomen.  She had an IV that delivered morphine but no amount seemed to make her comfortable.  She was lucid but in a whole lot of pain, even the sheet on her skin made her skin crawl she said.  Every time we moved her she would scream and beg us to put her out of her misery.  She knew she was dying, couldn't we give her something to help her along?  Her husband and teen daughters also repeatedly asked us to do the merciful thing and they got where they didn't want to see her because of the amount of pain she was enduring.  Each and every nurse and physician that saw her was asked to end her suffering.  She spent 3-4 weeks like that, each day unbearable, she said and was concious and aware until about an hour before she died.  She and her family felt that prolonging her agony was as tortuous as her pain and angry that she could not die a peaceful and painfree death.  That was about 25 years ago but not much has changed since then.  I have pondered upon this many times since then and have felt that there should be more options available to those facing similiar situations.  What would you have done?

Hello  Terrance Clarke here, thanks for all the opinions.  Tammy I am so sorry you had to go through that with your father.  I hope in the future you can find some solace in the fact that you were there to usher him from this life into the great whatever is next.

One of the big pros that I see for physician assisted suicide, I'm still on the fence , is the removal of the stigma.  The fact that termanilly ill patients can leave in their own time without voiding their insurance.  More so because it allows patients who have made this decision not to need to sneak and plan.  Or take dangerously painful methods when they can go peacefully surrounded by loved ones in their homes.   Suicides without thought can tear apart families and communities.

As I read this I am sitting watching my dad in likely his last hours of life. The only thing I can do to support him is keep him as comfortable as possible.  It is heartbreaking to watch a loved one slowly wither away while the cancer attacks. Our family would have been grateful for assisted suicide to ease some of his suffering. My 10 year old daughter asked why we can't give grandpa "a shot to put him to sleep like we did with our dog" instead of having him lay there suffering. It may sound horrible to some, but after watching my dad go from 245 lbs to 170 I would gladly take the assisted option!

"It allows terminally ill patients, with a prognosis of six months or less, to be administered medication that will end their lives."  This is a pain-stakingly crafted phrase for saying it allows their providers to kill them.  That's what they would be allowed to do, kill them.  

I was an oncology nurse for 4 years and have been taking care of people for almost 20 years.  I know horrible some people die and how horrible life can be.  Very, very rarely have I seen pain that could not be controlled.  Suffering is a horrible consequence of life. But life is still life.  We are here to protect it.

Once again Puritan, busybodies thrust their anti Liberterian values on the Ma. Population.  The "Death with dignity"  legislation was recently defeated here.  The first question I have about this ethical issue, deals with the mandated interventions by Physicians, in determining the " correctness " of the request.  As I recall," first do no harm " , is a medical Montra .  This issue is not, and should not be dumped onto medical providers.  Clearly ,this is  ,unfortunately, a legal one. The Courts are presently the best    Arbiters  of such issues! They decide in criminal cases.  My life, does not, should not, belong to any Government, especially  one that feels it has a legitiment   right to intervene on personal issues, not directly involving others.   If   depression is an issue, I believe medicine may have a role in treating, and preventing a death, its role in society!  A chronically disabled rational human being has a right to end their suffering , in a non violent manner, ie void of gun shot, car crash, CO toxicity , drug overdose, hanging... All presently sought as a method of ending suffering, that this Earthly Medical profession is unable to reduce.

I do not want to be part of killing people. Not by sanctioned actions of the Militart, Police, or other Government agencies.  But I do not want, even more, is intervention into my personal liberties by Religious, Political, or  Social entities !   My life, and what I choose to do with it is my decision .  When I choose to end it is also mine!  I would only ask the controlling powers to allow me to do it humanely!

Good points both on the reality of situation in ICU's everyday, as well as how a terminal diagnosis may rob someone such as your father of many quality years if assisted suicide there was readily available.  Might add that respite care essentially does what you described in the ICU, except parental hydration is stopped as well.

Soylent Green anyone?  Fascinating older movie where society facilitates suicide.  Not exactly what is being discussed here though the slippery slope of assisted suicide cannot be missed.  Topic is similar to abortion, distasteful though, at least if done in first trimester, acceptable to most.  Assisted suicide, for the most troubling cases is probably acceptable to most, the devil (no pun intended) is in the details of implementation.

We allow patients in the critical care unit to "die with dignity" every day, by extubating them and placing them on a morphine drip...but these are hemodynamically unstable patients, who are suffering and the family makes the decision to allow them to die a natural death. I support this type of "dying with dignity". When patients are given a poor prognosis and become depressed and decide they want to go ahead and die, I have a problem with that. The patient and their family need to have time to progress through the stages of grief to acceptance and it should be up to God and nature when they die. My father was given the "go home and prepare your family, you have 6 months to live" prognosis...HE LIVED 8 WONDERFUL YEARS!!! It helped to know that he had a poor prognosis, he lived each day like it was his last! This happens with many patients, if they sought physician assisted suicide, look at the wonderful lives they would miss out on with their families! My vote is NO!