Last November, a law passed in the state of Washington called the “Death With Dignity Act“. This past Thursday, Linda Fleming, 66, of Sequim, WA, became the first person to end her life under the new law. She was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and was already in pain. In a statement released by the organization Compassion & Choices of Washington, Fleming said, “The pain became unbearable, and it was only going to get worse.”
In Washington, any patient requesting fatal medication must be at least 18, declared competent and be a state resident.
Two doctors would have to certify that the patient has a terminal condition and six months or less to live. The patient must also make two oral requests, 15 days apart, and make a written request witnessed by two people.
As of Friday, the state Department of Health has received six forms from pharmacists saying they have dispensed the life-ending drugs.
I support this law, and I hope my own state, New York, will one day similar legislation. I do not believe in someone should be kept alive against their will, as long as they are still of sound enough mind to express that wish. The claims that this would be used to kill elderly people (for their estates, or maybe out of sadism) against their will is unfounded. Oregon became the first state in the nation to pass such a law, and since 1997 about 400 people have ended their lives under the law. The sky is still where it should be in Oregon, and I strongly suspect the same will remain true in Washington, and even Montana, where a judge has ruled that Montanans do have the right to end their own lives. It is the right thing to do.
I am not entirely without feeling, and I do have other, more personal, reasons for supporting this law. Losing someone you love is hard. Very hard. But do you want to have memories of your loved one wasting away in a fruitless effort to prolong the inevitable? If and when the day comes that I am diagnosed with a terminal illness (a very real possibility with my own family history of prostate cancer), with no realistic chance of survival no matter how many painful, debilitating treatments I undergo, I hope that I live somewhere that allows me to end my life with dignity. People could say goodbye while I am still able to have a coherent conversation with them, which is something I think they would appreciate more. Maybe I could even leave them laughing, which would make me happier.
Rest in peace, Linda.
So, tell us, what are your thoughts on physician-assisted suicide? Do you support it? Do you oppose it? I’d like to hear what you have to say.
I am not against physician-assisted suicide. Not everyone that has terminal cancer suffers pain. My mother died from stomach cancer and she never experienced any pain. She died peacefully without assistance at home in her bed.
I believe that people have the right to choose death. That doesn’t mean that it would be an option that I would choose because I don’t know how I would react if I were facing a terminal illness.
People should be medicated to control pain and in most cases, pain can be managed. Linda made her choice for her own reasons and I would not judge her decision.
There are too many variables to judge in this case. Removal of the pancreas would be an obvious option if that were the sole site of malignancy. On the other hand, we do not know from the evidence what else was involved. Since several physicians were on board, I suspect that pancreatic cancer was not the only driving compunction. Remember that Justice Ginsberg was operated on for pancreatic cancer just a while back. If Linda Fleming was in dire pain, in all likelihood, the cancer was not restricted to her pancreas, but had spread.
Some of you will know already know much of what follows, but it’s pertinent to the post:
When my mother was 20 she weighed 108 lbs, at 45 she weighed 115lbs, at 60 she “got fat”, weighing-in at 122 lbs, so she took-up regular tap-dancing classes to get back in-shape. She didn’t smoke and never got drunk and her diet was always balanced and healthy. .
As a consequence then my mother should have lived to be one hundred.
When I last saw her in 2004 when she was 83 it was on her deathbed in a tax-payer funded, government-controlled National Health Service hospital.
She was gaunt and withered, apparently weighing 60 lbs. When I moved her into a more comfortable position at her request I really felt no sensation of weight at all.
Half her teeth had gone and her fingers were distorted and rigored from severe arthritis. She could still manipulate things but without the normal dexterity.
She had one of those nifty little nose-clip devices for oxygen, a protein drip and a catheter for urination so the panoply of life preserving medical devices was actually very discreet and undramatic
But whilst she was a physical wreck her mental faculties were as sharp as ever. She’d be telling us an anecdote and then be reminded of some present relevant concern, discuss it with me and my brothers and then finish her story without missing a beat–and make jokes all along.
She was so obviously physically dying, but mentally she was as alive as she’d ever been.
This was the state of things for three weeks whilst her three sons were collected around her, four-thousand miles from their homes and jobs, knowing she was dying but still not knowing when it would all end or in what manner
Then one afternoon she told us she’d had enough of living and that she’d probably ask hospital staff to “unplug her” and just let her die.
The next morning we were notified she was dead. The nurses confirmed she’d instructed them and the doctor that she wouldn’t be needing their care anymore right after we’d left the previous day.
We did ask if she might have suffered any pain after being “unplugged” and the nurses told us they’d given her a ‘cocktail’.
We went in to see her slight, pallid corpse. The nurses had placed her hands over her breast and in them she held a bright-red freshly-cut rose.
It sounds horribly “schmaltzy” but mum was an avid and expert gardener and had been a member of the Royal Horticultural Society for forty years.
(The presence of a cat would have completed the vignette but you can’t have everything).
Now, what if all this had played-out in the US?
We’d have been spared the expenses of short-notice flights, a lousy exchange rate and the higher costs of living in the UK for a month (which bankrupted me and nearly bankrupted my two brothers).
BUT on the other hand we’d have faced the bill of a month’s worth of ER/ICU care with little or no health insurance for our mother.
Furthermore we might have been embroiled in an intrusive political fight over my mother’s marginal life a’ la Terry Schiavo et al, whilst being billed for the ‘privilege’ of being a non-consensual test-case regarding the nature of everything to do with health care, life and death.
My brothers and were fortunate that our mother was in complete charge of her mental faculties when she asked her doctor to “pull the plug”
But it is no accident that her care-givers could accede to her wishes with confidence and a sound conscience (over the three weeks of daily contact my brothers and I never discussed the mechanics of our mother’s mortal demise with the doctors or nurses).
My mother rationally asked to be helped to practical suicide, and her doctors and nurses complied with her wishes. Had she asked to be kept alive any longer, they would have complied with that wish too.
My mother lived her last few weeks under great care, and died with dignity.
The doctor and nurses who cared for her cared only for her, not for some any bureaucratic legal or financial regulation.
My brothers and I were spared a great deal of additional emotional and practical stress (as was my mother, as well) by the absence of the kind of regulations that are constants in the American system. .
5th, your Mom was obviously a great lady, and she was so fortunate to spend her final days on her own terms — with her sons by her side.
That was touching 5th. It is rewarding to know that there are systems that allow one to make life’s decisions.
I came back here to report that Linda Fleming was at a very late stage of pancreatic cancer. At best she would have had less then four weeks to live and for the entire period would have suffered extreme pain.
The mother of my spouse had cancer of her right cheek and jowl. In the end, she perished when the tumor closed her airway.
Up to that time, she was begging care providers to end her suffering. They merely continued to bill Medicare for radiation treatments.
Walt…
And there you have it.
It is simply cruel to delay the inevitable when the patient and the doctors are reconciled to the fact.
It puts the patient and family through hell, AND it doesn’t do the doctors and nurses any good either from being prevented from doing .the right thing for fear of being charged with murder instead of mercy. .