Ignorance, emotion still dominate American way of death
I never thought I'd be quoting Kenny Rogers, but:

"... the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep."
— From "The Gambler"

These surprisingly wise words came to mind while I had a stressful chat, rap, conversation or whatever you want to call it, with my old friend James Wasserman.
You may remember Wasserman took a nasty fall in late November while cleaning gutters for friends. He underwent surgery at Spectrum Butterworth in Grand Rapids and has been struggling to get his health insurer to pick up the costs.
But there was more than money on the mind of the now wheelchair-bound Wass when he spoke with great solemnity about the future. The Wass, realizing his mortality, asked if there was some way he could avoid a lingering and painful death prolonged by the wonders of modern medicine.
No, he's not suicidal, but he's very worried about perhaps 25 years from now merely existing in some kind of nursing center, having no control over his own life and virtually nothing to look forward to. He told me he doesn't want to be in a wheelchair again, this time pooping and peeing in his diapers, being fed like an infant, being so old and feeble that he can't do anything that he used to take for granted, things like going for a walk, attending a jazz or classical music concert of fixing your own pot roast.
The profit-driven health care industry, backed by marvelous new life-sustaining drugs and procedures, can keep people alive far beyond what used to be possible a quarter of a century ago. But at what cost?
If you go to a nursing home these days, you'll see a lot of hard-working aides and health care givers doing their best to smile while trying to make their clients comfortable, yet they know most of these people will never get any better. They'll die in the controlled, sterile atmosphere of a nursing center loaded with employees bravely putting on their daily game faces, trying to be cheerful while so many that surround them are at the end of life's journey and don't know what to do while waiting for the grim reaper's visit.
Our modern society doesn't publicly deal very well with death and the process of dying. So many waste a lot of time in denial of what's approaching by exhibiting phony optimism instead of figuring out ways to maximize the time that's left.
The only time President Bush called an emergency session of Congress in the last seven years was to have its members vote in haste to keep alive the blind and brain dead Terry Schaivo in Florida a couple of years ago. It was Bush's way to genuflect at the altar of the pro-life movement, but it ultimately did nothing except delay the inevitable, the death of an unfortunate woman who was truly in a vegetative state, which her autopsy confirmed. Incidentally, Vern Ehlers of Grand Rapids, despite his claims of being a learned scientist, was one of those who dutifully followed his president and voted to keep poor Ms. Schaivo alive.
Closer to home was the 1987 tragedy of Mike Martin, who was left a vegetable by a car-train accident in northeast Allegan County. Though the evidence was overwhelming that Martin was physically present, but there was nobody home from the neck up, he was kept alive with a feeding tube in a nursing home for 13 years.
His wife attempted many times through the courts to have him humanely put down just like a beloved pet so she and the rest of her family could get on with their lives. She informed legal authorities her husband told her he never wanted to be kept alive in a helpless state with no change of getting better. However, Mike's mother and sister continued their state of denial and fought Mrs. Martin's requests in the legal system, thereby winning Mike his added 13 years of hell.
Our State Legislature in the 1990s passed laws carefully designed to stop Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the legendary retired pathologist who was tried, convicted and imprisoned for granting the wishes of people to die. Kervorkian has been demonized as a monster who kills people, yet what's left out of the controversy is the fact every one of the people who died by his hand begged for it to happen. They were people who simply did not wish to spend the rest of their days as financial burdens, as vegetables, as once productive human beings now reduced to pooping and peeing in their diapers and rarely getting outside of the walls of their institutions.
For me, it's very simple. We should do everything we can to save anyone who does not wish to die. However, those who ask to end their lives life before they deteriorate into the dark oblivion of just waiting for the inevitable should be granted their wishes. Many safeguards can be put into place so that Granny isn't talked into checking out early against her will or a temporarily depressed person can't find a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
My own mother and father privately have told me they have no desire to be vegetables in nursing homes for several years, just like my mother's mother was. But if I ever was to honor their wishes, I'd be arrested and charged with murder.
I was told back in the 1990s that mercy killing was done many years ago by physicians very privately. I learned of one incident in which a man came home after getting the news about inoperable liver cancer suddenly expiring the next night after receiving a house call from his personal friend, his doctor.
I've heard many stories from Hospice and friends that there are marvelous drugs that help with the pain associated with the dying process from cancer. I've also heard arguments that we must err on the side of life, which sounds amazingly strange from a society that patriotically supports the daily killing of innocent women and children in Iraq.
Furthermore, there are horrible fatal situations without pain, such as Lou Gehrig's Disease, in which the patient is aware of his or her surroundings, but is condemned to choking on his or her own saliva.
I suspect the health care industry really wants to keep old people alive beyond their usefulness because it's a great way to make a lot more money. If we allow Grandpa or Grandma to go humanely and peacefully before they really suffer, we'll save a heck of a lot of money. But that would hurt the health care providers' jobs and the drug companies' profits.
It's really very simple. Kevorkian offered us a way to gather around the soon to be deceased, cry together and say good-bye, but we still enable able-bodied terminally ill patients to blow their brains out or subject them to inhumane prolonging of life not worth living.
I already hear the objections — "How dare you decide whose life is not worth living!"
My response is that it's not my call. It's the patient's. And if that person, as a result of ending life earlier than God intended, must face a penalty at heaven's gate, that's for the patient to decide.
Dr. Kevorkian is not the monster a clueless group of legislators made him out to be. He was a pioneer.
When will we ever end this barbaric madness of artificially and ruthlessly keeping people alive against their will? We must know by now there are things worse than death. And when we insist our loved ones suffer through such things, we are no better than the scalawags we have beaten up over the years in our history books.

Posted by David T. Young
http://compulsorynews.blogspot.com/2...-dominate.html