24-year-old died suffering; her parents want New Yorkers to have the choice of life-ending medication
https://www.silive.com/news/2024/04/24-year-old-died-suffering-her-parents-want-new-yorkers-to-have-the-choice-of-life-ending-medication.html
24-year-old died suffering; her parents want New Yorkers to have the choice of life-ending medication
https://www.silive.com/news/2024/04/24-year-old-died-suffering-her-parents-want-new-yorkers-to-have-the-choice-of-life-ending-medication.html
45 comments
We need to get over this idea that there is honor in suffering. There isn’t. It’s unnecessary and cruel.
Choice around end of life should be one of our basic rights as humans and we should be able to do it in a way that doesn’t cause a hassle/danger/mess for others.
If I had to choose on new constitutional amendment, it would be the right of bodily autonomy. You would get to choose what you do with your own body.
It would end so many stupid debates. Abortion. Vaccines. Drug laws. Euthanasia.
Just keep the government out of all of it.
Let’s stop making a graceful end so criminally offensive.
Devastating story. It does seem cruel to prolong the suffering of people who are in that state out of some misplaced sense of honor or morals or whatever. Morals that the person themselves may not share at all. I think the guardrails suggested by the proponents of this bill are totally fair too. As long as a person’s medical condition has been confirmed by doctors to be severe and untreatable and as long as the person is in a relatively stable state of mind when asking for the end, I don’t see how it’s the govt’s business to tell them no.
I can’t imagine being in that position, but if I ever was, I’d do it myself if that’s what she wanted. Consequences be damned.
The religious will never let this happen. We have to actively push for it and make it happen.
Like abortion, it shows that man actually has control over life and death. They fundamentally cannot grasp that, nor find Justice in it. It is pure satanic power to them. Anything else they claim is an excuse and distraction.
>“She did everything possible to make herself better, including just being in massive pain so she didn’t have opioid addiction later,”
That shouldn’t have had to be a concern for her. But we’ve made drug addiction an issue of morality, not health care.
I’m sure she was told not to feel bad about needing pain management, but the idea was already firmly planted in her head that needing opioids was a bad thing that bad people want.
Pretty shifty when religious zealots and politicians looking for power decide someone has to needlessly suffer, along with their families because the prior believe a great space ghost would be mad if they were allowed to die peacefully of their own accord
Watched my first wife suffer for 6 weeks in hospice at 32 years old after a 10 month fight against cancer. Horrible and no reason for hospice to be the only option.
Absolutely heartbreaking.
My cousin died of bowel cancer that metastasized after her doctors repeatedly dismissed her symptoms. She was very heavily on morphine for a week or so before she passed. Her mother who cared for her stopped believing in God afterward and believes very strongly in the need for euthanasia. We need it and it’s long past time.
But one consideration we seriously need to address if we enact it is support for disabled and elderly people. Many people in Canada where it is legal have had social workers or healthcare providers suggest euthanasia in response to their pleas for better support or care (medical in some cases, social in others). Others have pursued it because they suffer from terribly debilitating illnesses that have been stigmatized and underresearched. It should be an option for those who need it, but if we don’t do a better job making our society more equitable, we are to some extent creating a chute to push the most vulnerable down.
As a dad, I’m in tears. That poor girl.
I’m so glad we have MAiD here in Canada.
My husband begged to be allowed to die. Instead, he had two last, painful weeks with hospice.
I’d call the whole tale barbaric, but I’m pretty sure most primitive people would end your suffering way before the point she went to. Sub-barbaric? Is that a thing?
“How would you like to die?”
99% of people: “peacefully in my sleep surrounded by family and friends.”
So what about euthanasia (and all the variants of nomenclature)?
US: absolutely not.
Just follow the money. There are entire industries created around prolonging suffering while billing the insurance companies and families for the “care” they provide during this time. Then, after they die a whole new set of leeches swoop in to try and extract more cash.
Hospice care is a $37 Billion dollar industry 😂, imagine the pushback you’ll get to try and end people’s suffering quickly with a cheap drug?
https://hospicenews.com/2022/09/29/hospice-market-to-nearly-double-by-2030-palliative-care-to-see-large-gains/
Ya know. I can help a family pet pass peacefully as to not be cruel to them. Can we do the same for fellow humans??
My brother died last year with a terminal illness. He chose euthanasia.
He got to leave this life on his own terms. Friends and family got to say their goodbyes. And his partner got to be there with him when he died. It was all a very beautiful experience.
The culture around dying needs to change. For some reason, we favor traumatizing everyone by dragging out the pain.
But it’s really important that 100% of acknowledge the limitations and constructs of a book many don’t believe in that was written 2000 years ago.
Just one of the many things forced on us by the extremely religious. God forbid you make your own choices.
As I grow older the more this stuff makes my blood boil.
As an atheist, I would never in a million years think of going to a Pastor or Church and telling them what they can or cannot do.
However religious people have directly impacted my life and decisions on how I live.
Religion is a disgusting racket.
When my Dad passed with ALS, he’d made a choice to refuse food and water rather than have a tube put in. This was also in NY.
We kept him as comfortable as possible, but I know if he’d had the option to take a lethal dose of the *very same drugs* we were already giving him to make the process tolerable, he would have taken it. The way things happened was painful for everyone.
It enrages me to no end that bossy religious folks think their precious beliefs matter so much more than everybody else’s suffering.
Edit for typo
I know this is a controversial view, but if someone wishes to end their life (healthy or sick), we should give them the opportunity to go out on their terms. I get a lot of people think that’s wrong, but if someone is suffering or is just done with living, why force them to live when it just makes it so much worse for them?
My understanding is California is opening up their rules, but in wa and or I believe the rules are terminal diagnosis, sound mind, less than 6 months, and I believe two doctors appointments a month apart to be sure. You have to self administer. I had a family friend with breast cancer who took this option when the pain got too bad as she did not want to live her final days in a haze of pain medication, and another person with Als who didn’t want to stick around until she choked to death when she lost the ability to use her lung muscles. In both cases, this was a personal choice in how they wanted to deal with their horrible diagnosis. I am not denying that there might be people encouraging those with terminal illness to do this, but there are a lot of safeguards and forcing people to die horribly because you want to protect them seems an overreach to me.
Too many humans lack basic humanity.
Bodily autonomy being up for debate is pure sociopathic DELUSION.. As a Mom and a human being I can’t comprehend watching my cancer-ridden skeletal child (or anyone for that matter) clawing at their throat in pain and begging to die in their final weeks.. This girls pain was so unmanageable she had to be taken out of her home hospice end of life care and returned to the hospital because the nurses couldn’t help her. So much cruelty and unnecessary suffering for all involved this broke my heart..
My MIL suffers daily with late-stage Alzheimer’s and was recently moved off solid foods. Life-ending medication is desperately needed.
We have pets we put down as it’s the humane thing to do…. we should certainly treat people as well as we do our pets.
I watched my aunt wear away into skin and bones with blackened fingertips from cancer. It was more traumatic watching her waste away than her actually dying.
Y’all check out Death With Dignity, it’s an activist group trying to push through legislation to give terminally ill patients the option to end their own lives
I have watched almost every adult family member slowly dwindle away from dementia, at great cost.
It’s horrible to watch and care for, I’m now watching my mom slowly decay even if the meds slowed it down just a bit. I still have five years to find a way to get a dignified ending for her.
We’ve talked about going to another country where it may be allowed.
It should 100% be legal to allow people with terminal illness to choose their path and not wither at great cost to their families in hospice and hospitals.
When my mom was dying of COPD (from smoking) she was drowning. She was at home and had hospice caregivers and her doctor gave me a bottle of Morphine and said to give her as much as “I” wanted to by dropper so she was not aware. I did and she passed peacefully. This was 35 years ago in So Cal
Lack of choice at end of life is one more example of religious dogma interfering with bodily autonomy.
There’s a saying in the ICU that some of what we do is performative. The medical team is aware of the prognosis, we all know the most likely outcome. But for the mental health of families and for families to process their grief we need to put patients through painful torturous situations. Families will start to question themselves “what if we didn’t do enough?” and “my loved one would have wanted us to do this”.
It’s hard to find the balance. Because the patient is most likely going to die anyways but the family members are going to keep living.
And most Americans just straight up do not talk about death. Or what they want their end of life to even look like. It turns into all these assumptions of what someone would want. But if you talk to someone and ask them if they would want to live unable to talk or eat, having to poop and pee on themselves, most likely in some amount of constant pain without any chance of recovery, they’re gonna say no.
There are worse things than being dead.
Fun fact about those who order the drugs in Colorado and Oregon: Only 30% of people choose to take them. Source: My mom had them, chose not to take them because she wasn’t in pain. They were so good to have, and everyone should have access when dying.
I’ve written this a few times on the subject of active euthanasia, but it’s always worth repeating.
My 78 year old grandpa was a fun-loving, energetic, joke-slinging larrikin. He was not one to let adversity set him back and even as a mid-60s widower he made the most of life and found love again.
He died in absolute agony after a 12 month battle with throat cancer. Struggling to find a breath with a golf-ball sized tumour destroying every part of him. He couldn’t eat, drink, move around or even talk by the end. Once he exhausted his options he was done and wanted to celebrate his life with his friends and family and then in his words “take the magic pill and head off”.
Victoria didn’t pass Dying with Dignity Laws until a few years after he died but he would’ve definitely been a suitable candidate for them. He was in sound mind, had a terminal illness and wanted to bow out of life before the pain became excruciating for him and his family.
His cat had cancer a few years before he died and he knew the right thing to do was to put it down to avoid causing Jessie any pain. That same privilege being denied to a human of sound mind and clarity is inhumane.
The act of being alive is not the same as living. We need to give people who have terminal illnesses that right. It might not sit well with everyone, but the idea of allowing politicians/religious leaders the right to choose how someone lives, and by extension how they’re allowed to die, is wrong.
Active euthanasia has a rigorous level of hoops to jump through before a person is able to receive the medication. All naysayers to active euthanasia are arguing against a different kind of euthanasia completely.
Absolutely heartbreaking. Especially the photo of her waster away, cuddling her cat. As a mom of a daughter not much older, this has me in tears. Such senseless cruelty.
35 years old, stage 4 colon cancer patient here. I’m hopeful for a full cure, or at least remission, but this is by far my worst nightmare. I know my mother would just hold a pillow over my face or shoot me instead of watching me waste away like a forgotten piece of broccoli in the back of the fridge.
There is no dignity in pain like this. My heart breaks knowing her last days were in so much agony.
I have the same cancer. Hopefully a better prognosis (every reason to think so.) Caught early but incredibly painful prior to diagnosis, and through treatment. Treatment was life changing, and I don’t mean in a life-affirming way.
I don’t share that for pity points. I share it because most people have some weird fuckin’ ideas of “what I’d do in your shoes.” And flat out, there IS such a thing as a terminal prognosis that is accompanied by so much physical pain that you would opt to disembark early. No matter how tough you are or how resolute your “faith.”
It is stupid and barbaric that we don’t have an absolute right to determine when our time is up.
I watched my dad die at home in his hospice bed after a 2-years fight with cancer. The last week of his life was pretty much non-verbal moans and groans, he could barely move or keep his eyes opened or closed because he had no strength to even work the face muscles. His organs were failing. It was only misery for him. I came away from that swearing that if I’m ever in that situation, I’m going to take my life weather it’s legal or not. Making somebody die like that is inhumane.
Dying with dignity. This must be available.
My father died of cancer, in my arms. He’d have never requested medical assistance in death, because he was religious, but after watching what he went through…there is no way I’d want the same fate.
You know what you’re not told, about cancer-related deaths? How patients actually die? It’s pretty common that their organs shut down, that means they can’t ingest food or liquids, bc they’ll drown. If the thirst doesn’t kill them, the agony of living that path is still very present.
He was delirious and begging for water, and all I could do was put a moist medical sponge in his mouth, to keep his mouth from cracking. That man tried to suck any liquid he could off of that sponge, and there wasn’t enough to fully wet his tongue. Where the FUCK, is the dignity in that? Being reduced to a creature begging for water, and being given 50ml on a sponge? It’s torture.
There are three important facts around this whole issue:
1. Because terminal medical care has been moving in leaps and bounds, there are more and more cases of patients being kept artificialy alive with breathing machines, etc. Physicians understand that there is no recovery in the patient’s future, and that for all intents and purposes the patient will die once taken off life support. Unfortunately, family members think their loved one is still alive and might recover, so they refuse to allow anyone to pull the plug, because, “We don’t want to kill Daddy.”
2. If a dying person is given in-hospital palliative care, there is a good chance that they will not be given enough pain alleviating drugs because, somehow, the country’s drug problem has led medical centers to err on the side of not providing enough opiods for terminally ill patients. Terminal care is better given by Hospice. Also, there is some cancers that have so much pain involved that no drug will totally eliminate suffering.
3. The same religious groups that are trying to do away with abortion are now invested in eliminating Desth with Dignity laws (or Medical Aid in Dying – MAID) in the states that have these programs. The same contorted political rhetoric that demands women carry dead fetuses or babies with terminal deformities believe that terminally ill people should wring out every second of indignity, torture, suffering, and expense at the end of life too. Medical decisions should be made by doctors and patients – not by evangelicals and politicians who have little to no medical knowledge.