She chose it all on the day she died (Euthanasia)

The Oregonian ^ | 9/30/07 | Dan Colburn

[mamelukesabre]

I don’t understand these people that keep saying they want to be “in control”. I can understand being afraid of the pain and misery. But the control thing leaves me confused. Do they really think they are in control? God is in control. We control nothing. It seems to me only a fool would be convinced he/she has control.

[LaineyDee]

I guess it depends on the State... and the Dr’s.

[Old Professer]

No one has the right to commit suicide, they just await opportunity.

[longtermmemmory]

This is about “duty to die” creeping in.

Eventually the government will say, society says you must die because you are a burden.

[Alouette]

control freak

Exactly my thoughts as I read this creepy obituary.

[LaineyDee]

Do you have any first hand experience with someone dying who’s body has been ravaged with tumors? This is not a tv or movie death where they simply close their eyes and are gone.

Watching your mother suffer must have been terribly hurtful to you. May I ask if she had any hospice care toward the end?

[MarkeyD]

I wasn’t talking about the “uncomfortable spectacle”. She was the most religious person I have ever met, but I knew her feelings and she would have taken the option had it been available to her.

[Old Professer]

The writer paints with a fine line, each brush lays its layer on a slowly built canvas; careful not to lose sight of his horizon, he draws his strokes toward the point where all lines lead, but in his haste to display his finished work, he loads his brush and leaves a smudge.

[MarkeyD]

No hospice, just a visiting nurse and my brother, sister, and I.

[Dianna]

Don’t say what you will do, or not do, until you get there.

Bless you, my FRiend. I hope you store up a lifetime of memories in the time you have left.

You never do really know how you will react in any given situation. As many FReepers know, I lost my 14 year old son not quite a year ago. If someone had asked me, prior to Derrick's death, how I would react, I'd have said, "Find me a padded room and a straight-jacket."

Well, I have found strength I never knew I had. Angels have walked by my side. Sure, I'd prefer to have my kid and the belief in myself as a weak person back in a second! But I didn't get a choice and I guess I have to take whatever "good" I can get.

I wish you strength, as much as you need, to do whatever you need to do.

[kcvl]

GEORGE EIGHMEY
Democrat

George Eighmey helps people kill themselves, from showing them how to fill out the paperwork required by Oregon’s assisted suicide law to handing them a final glass full of lethal “medication.” He has, by his own count, watched two dozen people kill themselves.

“That’s chilling,” says Dr. Kenneth Stevens, a cancer doctor for 38 years, who doesn’t share Mr. Eighmey’s enthusiasm for suicide. “I went into medicine to take care of patients, not to harm them,” Dr. Stevens told Catholic San Francisco. “Assisted suicide is the ultimate abandonment of the patient.”

Mr. Eighmey, a former state legislator, is executive director of Compassion in Dying of Oregon. His organization “handles roughly 80 to 85 percent” of the people who kill themselves under the terms of Oregon’s “Death With Dignity” law, he says. The law, an initiative known as Measure 16, took effect in late 1997.

Dr. Stevens, chair of radiation oncology at the Oregon Health and Sciences University, is president of Physicians for Compassionate Care, a group whose mission is to preserve the doctor’s traditional role as healer and to “speak out for the inherent value of human life.”

[Old Professer]

“the Red Shouldered Hawks will soon be hunting the hay fields”

I think you just wrote your tagline; such a powerful, certain, image-laden phrase.

[Old Professer]

My comment wasn’t personal - it was directed toward the notion that what one can’t control should present itself as an object of shame.

[figgers3036]

I watched my grandfather waste away due to lung cancer. But if anyone ever suggested he take something to stop the pain and commit suicide, he would have been appalled and immediately whip out his Bible and try to rationalize that person away from that line of thought.

It was tough. He was on oxygen and had hospice care. I remember the giant hospital bed taking up the entire family room. But he didn’t want to miss out on anything happening in his family. My grandmother has said that he loved watching all of us grandkids go through school, and was fighting so that he could see us all go through. He didn’t make it, but he still wouldn’t ever have thought of taking his own life. To him, it would have been selfish.

[JamesA]

We lost my beautiful daughter, Jennifer, Octover 22, 2004. She had been forced to drink Liquid drano by 2 men who raped her, beat her and tried their best to kill her. She had lost her stomac, her esophogus and all her teeth due to malnutrician. She was fed through a feeding tube and was with us eight hard, yet wonderful years after the incident. She hurt and suffered for sure, even shed a few tears but absolutely refused to give up, she loved the Lord and witnessed to many by telling her story. How proud her mother and I are of her, and how humbling an experiance it was to watch her share her experiance with others in similar circumstances. Today thinking back I remember asking God why he didn’t just take her home, remove her suffering. Jennifer taught us that Life has a purpose, we may not like it or even understand it but Gods will, be done in his time not ours. Is it right for someone to terminate their existance?, I just don’t know, I will leave that up to God and know he will be right every time. Our Jennifer was 32yrs old with two beautiful daughters and husband when the Lord called her home, she simply went to sleep one morning with no more pain, no more suffering and only glorious days ahead in a new body.

[LaineyDee]

I think she would have benefitted greatly with hospice care. It is such a blessing to patients such as your Mom. There are pallative measures such as pain and anxiety meds that relieve most of the suffering....giving the family and patient a better quality of life together .... even though the patient is actively dying.

I had a misconception of hospice because of what I read about Terri Schaivo... but since working with it the past few months....I have to say I've never been associated with such caring staff, Dr's and nurses. They do everything humanly possible to make the loved one's death a non-traumatic event.

I've sat in meetings to discuss care strategies for dying patients... and it is amazing to hear the compassion and concern coming from these professionals. It's been a real eye-opener for me.

[wagglebee]

Thank you so very much for telling us Jennifer’s story.

God Bless you and your family.

[stentorian conservative]

I think this is definite slippery-slope territory.

So a healthy twenty-year-old is involved in an accident and is now a quadriplegic. No pain and no dignity. Are the same options available to him? And who decides what is or is not “suicide worthy?”

I’m not judging anyone here. I was taught not to judge in Sunday School. I was also taught where suicide would get me.

[Nachoman]

Dang, this woman did more on her dying day than I do on my best days. I hope I don’t have a burst of energy like this when I kick the bucket.

[LaineyDee]

Jennifer taught us that Life has a purpose

And if that was her "purpose"......she fulfilled it graciously.

The Lord gave me a poem years ago...(now published) during a traumatic time in my life. I too asked why He just didn't take me and get it over with. He revealed to me "His Purpose". It's not just about us... what we want .....or who we think we should be.