No time today to make this into a formal diary entry, so this is simply a copy of an informal, unedited response I wrote on a politcal emial list on what to me, is a very important topic. (I don’t have the patience anymore, to wait till I can do evrything “perfectly” I guess 🙂
A member there shared this quote: (from an unidentified media source)
“The Bush administration has challenged to Oregon’s
Death with Dignity Act, passed in 1994, allowing terminally ill patients to receive prescriptions for lethal drugs if doctors certify the patients are rational and within six months of death.
My response:
Whew. A topic near and personal for me.
As a nurse, I have seen many many people die over a half century plus of working with the sick and old, literally hundreds and hundreds of them. I know what death looks like in nearly all of it’s forms. I’ve been asked more times than I care to remember, during long nights sitting beside suffering, dying patients, in hospitals and nursing homes, to help them die. I never had the courage to comply. I will forever be grateful to that one couragous nurse , who, 35 years ago, WAS brave enough to help me help my husband ease on out, when no one else would and when he was begging for his certain end now, not later, and it was still weeks off suffering away from happening naturally.
I no longer am as well prepared to exercise own choice to decide the time of my death, as I was once: the right medications I had collected in my nursing days are now expired in usefullness, and I have no way to get more of them. that I know of, (yet. I am still searching) I have other alternatives as well. If I should ever get some condition that means I will decline and die in excruciating pain, or in some irreversible state of cognitive deterioration, I promise all that I WILL leave on my own terms, with or without help form anyone else. This is MY body, MY mind, MY choice, MY death, and no one else has any goddamned right to decide this for me, as long as I am lucid. ( As far as I know, the law and the government have not yet discovered a way to procecute people after they are dead, so to hell with my actions (regarding my own body) being ‘illegal” in the eyes of the law.
In order to insure this right to decide the time and means of my own death, means (to me and for me only: I will only speak for myself and my own wishes and plans and will not offer any advice to others).. staying the hell out of hospitals, nursing homes, and the direct control of the medical profession, who quickly assumes the right to take choice away, more often that you can possibly imagine, in ways that are not nearly as dramatic as CPR or intubation. The heart and lungs can keep on working just fine after the thinking brain is all but gone, as long as the vital survival centers remain intact.)
Witness, as I have, unit after in nursing homes after nursing home, filled with Teri Shiavos of all ages who are no longer “here” in any way but physcially, kept alive (for many many years, if they are young and otherwise healthy) , via tube feedings and antibiotic treatment and nursing care.
Multiple that by nursing homes across the country. Try to convince me that, if they could sit up and talk to us, the majority would choose to exist like this: abjectly dependent 24/7 on whoever is on duty among the low paid front line nurses aids that turn over faster that leaves in autumn, and draw all too often, the least among us, as well as the best among us, into that line of work.
This is how it is because of a) fear of legal liability issues involved in discontinuing nutritional support and antibiotic treatment ) b) no involved or informed family,b) no living wills or health care directives, c) no one who dares to step forward and advocate for them d) power mongering politicians who believe goverment should have control of what we do or don’t do with our own bodies. and e) cointinued medical advances in the prolongation of life.
This is my own private life/death choice. I would not ask any relative to do this for me because if I’m brain dead I won’t know what is happens to my body anyway. I would not ever presume to make this decision for anyone else no matter how close we are, so have made sure I DO know the wishes of my loved ones, and hopefully, they all have tended to their own health care directives also, and whatever they wish, I would advocate for, for them, if I am next of kin.
I am grateful to be retired from nursing now, where I am no longer struggling with this issue every day and having to witness so much unnecessary suffering.
I can suggest, strongly, that everyone make sure to have a legal Health Care Directive (**one that is considered legal in your state, because requirements vary ) that addresses not only the typical emergency lifesaving measures like cardiopulmonary resustation, but also what you wishes are, in the case of irreversible brain damage in an otherwise finctioning body. Basic area’s it’s wise to be very specific about are
1) Respiratory supports (breathing machines / tubes to help you keep breathing if you are having trouble breathing or are already intubated)
2 Nutritional support. (tube feedings)
3) Antibiotic treatment (to treat infections)
Note: a typical DNR order..(Do Not Resusitate)..ONLY covers you when you heart or lungs stop suddenly, and ONLY means they can’t do CPR then, or stick tubes down your breathing passages to bring you back from that particular cardiac or respiratory arrest incident.
If you should get resusitated anyway, (as paramedics often do in the home, or in emergency situations, because they are legally required to (here at least,) and if there is no clear, signed and legal health directive they can put their hands on at that very moment of arrest)….and if it has been more than six to ten minutes or so that your brain has gone without oxygen…you could very well end up like Shiavo did. So having a tight, legal, readily available Healh care Directive is a very smart idea for everyone, no matter how young and healthy they are.
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