If we think about death...and dying.

[Pollux]

We all don't know our own demise. It will/might come a day when you are "right in the middle of it"...which is a blessing. Who wouldnt wanna die right out the blue when you aren't prepared, or eve feel any pain. That is the "jackpot" of dying. The only thing striking that is dying in your sleep, when you aren't aware what is happening.

These 2 ways are considered the "jackpot of dying". It's to bad many have to suffer the real long-drawn pain of the enviable. My mother had that  sort of. She died slowly over a period of 13 years, and at the end 6 months of tortures pain, that no person should have to endure. I bet we have a few neuroscientific educated people here on the forum who can point out how fuckin painful this kind of dying is. When your whole brain is on constant full pain-alert, and the only thing keeping you is alive is a strong heart, but the rest of your existence is an odyssey in pain that isn't even marginally handled by the strongest morphine created by man - why should we keep a person like that alive?. They scream for death, on a good day...on a bad day they cant even scream.

Isn't it the sole right, of our own body and soul, to decide when we are done with this life, and not up to some retarded judge, or doctor, whom haven't endure this pain themselves?

I remember the day my Mom died. She had been in a coma for 3 weeks. But on that day, when me and my father (I was 10yo) sat by her side, and suddenly she woke up. rose her upper body, and looked in to the upper right corner of the room, and uttered her mothers name, and said; "Mother??....now??...should I come?""...then she turned to my father, and me - hugged my father, looked at me with loving eyes...and died.

A like doesn't seem appropriate because it is a sad account but appreciated nonetheless. Thanks.

Unfortunately, I can see both sides of the euthanasia debate and can't decide precisely where I stand. For myself, I'd like the opportunity to say "enough".

I’m very sorry to hear about your Mum, Pollux. What you’re mentioning is unfortunately not unheard of. We wouldn’t allow a pet to suffer in that way so I can understand that one would question why we allow a person to do so, especially where they have expressed a wish not to continue.

I guess up to a point, a person can decide for themselves whether or not to continue living. Perhaps the question applies more so when a person isn’t able to end their own life and is asking for someone else to do it for them. It seems to me a very difficult and personal decision. 

My own feeling is that taking life is to be avoided as far as possible  but that the decision about our own life, and the consequences of taking it, are personal. When it cannot be avoided in order to be merciful, then the motive for doing it is very important. Where a doctor intervenes, it seems to me that the process should be rigorously controlled to protect all parties, including the medical staff. It would not surprise me if doctors have always occasionally hastened death for suffering patients by overprescribing painkillers such as morphine. 

If a medical person is prepared to do it, and the patient’s situation is untenable and cannot be eased I’d say, aside from any moral or spiritual considerations/consequences, the medical professionals and patient ought to be able to make a decision themselves. I do not think there is  nobility in suffering where there is no hope of relief and especially as medical technology makes extending life, however miserable, increasingly possible. I don’t think it anybody else’s business when a person of sound mind decides they have suffered enough.

[Pollux]

I’m very sorry to hear about your Mum, Pollux. What you’re mentioning is unfortunately not unheard of. We wouldn’t allow a pet to suffer in that way so I can understand that one would question why we allow a person to do so, especially where they have expressed a wish not to continue.

I guess up to a point, a person can decide for themselves whether or not to continue living. Perhaps the question applies more so when a person isn’t able to end their own life and is asking for someone else to do it for them. It seems to me a very difficult and personal decision. 

My own feeling is that taking life is to be avoided as far as possible  but that the decision about our own life, and the consequences of taking it, are personal. When it cannot be avoided in order to be merciful, then the motive for doing it is very important. Where a doctor intervenes, it seems to me that the process should be rigorously controlled to protect all parties, including the medical staff. It would not surprise me if doctors have always occasionally hastened death for suffering patients by overprescribing painkillers such as morphine. 

If a medical person is prepared to do it, and the patient’s situation is untenable and cannot be eased I’d say, aside from any moral or spiritual considerations/consequences, the medical professionals and patient ought to be able to make a decision themselves. I do not think there is  nobility in suffering where there is no hope of relief and especially as medical technology makes extending life, however miserable, increasingly possible. I don’t think it anybody else’s business when a person of sound mind decides they have suffered enough.

Thank for your kind words - and I agree with you; there is a lot of doctors that'd do the right thing when it comes to handling patients at deaths doorstep.The thing is that the national/international stance on this is to keep a patient alive, no matter the cost (Hippocratic oath). But I have to say; when/if I'm in that situation , when a snotty nosed 25yo doctor says to me to; "tough it out", when cancer -pain is eating through my body, I will get on my feet and look for the first best street-dealer who can provide me with enough of "poppy tears" to end it. The rest of the world can, respectfully, at that point, go fuck them self!!!

[Pollux]

A like doesn't seem appropriate because it is a sad account but appreciated nonetheless. Thanks.

Unfortunately, I can see both sides of the euthanasia debate and can't decide precisely where I stand. For myself, I'd like the opportunity to say "enough".

Thank you
As I see it; it is up to you how you want it to end. No other bureaucratic asshole should have dominion over it.
Just ask yourself; would you like to live 4 more months in unendurable insufferable pain - just to make your fuckin doctor "happy & content" - or end it on your own terms?

[Laird]

What happened to your mother is awful, Pollux. I'm sorry she and your family had to go through that.

You might be interested to know that about a week ago, the Lower House of the Victorian Parliament here in Australia passed a euthanasia bill. It looks like it has in-principle support to pass the Upper House too, perhaps with amendments: Voluntary euthanasia laws face series of hurdles in State Parliament

My father went through 2 years of hell with lung cancer in the 1960's. If he wasn't in pain then he was in a morphine induced nightmare. I was a teenager but still too young for him to discuss dying with me. I was so naive that I was shocked when I was told he had died. My step mother died - also of cancer - two years later. I remember her telling the vicar that she was ready to go (they used to have the clergy visit the dying in hospitals in those days - I don't know whether that is still the case). So your point about the jackpot of sudden or painless death resonates with me very much.

[Pollux]

I definately think anyone who has a terminal illness and is suffering with pain and discomfort should be able to get help to end their life quickly, and without much bureaucracy. I think it's utter madness that people at the end of their life are not able to get help to die, the UK being one of the worst societies for this in my opinion. Personally, if I was in such a situation myself, I'd prefer death not to be drug induced, but something more natural that emulated cardiac arrest. One of my colleagues mothers has recently died of cancer, and they found the painful twisting and contortions of their bed ridden mothers physical body for hours and hours during the last 6 weeks of her life a deeply upsetting experience.

Yeah, I agree, it should be up to you. But I wonder why you don't want it to be any sort of drug-induced demise? I mean, does it matter?. Do you wanna die "clean" , and experience the last dying breath, when you are gasping for it, and feel it slip away, and you feel like you are drowning?....just for; "the sake of it"?