Brittany Maynard & Dying with Dignity

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Cancer patient Brittany Maynard, 29, has scheduled her death for Nov. 1

I agree.

However, if I was in her shoes I'd choose to go down fighting. I'd tell my doctors: Inoperable you say? Hah! TRY IT ANYWAY.

If I die, I die. 'Twas gonna happen anyway.
If it works, it works!

Either way the act itself would help medical science better understand and maybe find new ways to do these surgeries.

This is fom eHow, so I imagine it's a fairly generic description:

Last Stages of Glioblastoma

The disease will erase who and what she is, while I do not like what she is doing I think it is up to her. I might in the same situation do the same if I was going to die of the same condition.

_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

One needn't agree with her choice in order to agree that it's her choice to make - not a choice between living or dying, but between dying a peaceful death or a horrific one.

To me, choosing to check out early is NOT brave. To be sure, dying of brain cancer is horrible. If it was me, I'd tell a family member to hold the pills until I was in insufferable pain, and then tell me they are candy and leave them next to a glass of decent scotch.

Why does it matter whether it's brave or not? Is Brittany a Viking?

I don't know what I would do. Probably cling to one more day, and one more day, and one more day...

...until my ability to act was gone.

I don't know how to feel about assisted suicide.

It is a slippery slope, there is no denying that. The slippery slope is a logical fallacy, but human beings aren't logical. We have to come up with a way to make sure assisted suicide/mercy killing doesn't turn into killings of convenience or desperation. Because there are people who will do it.

I also know this: I watched my mother die of metastasized cancer. It ate her from the inside out over the course of about half a decade. She went through three or four major abdominal surgeries, chemo, radiation, and experimental therapies. From the time it was determined that the last available treatment had failed, it took most of a year for her to die.

Slowly, painfully, one inch at a time. When Grandma and I had to take over cooking and running the house?? Fine. No big. It's what mothers do, and it's how daughters grow up-- and most of all, Mom was still living. Enjoying food, reading books, looking at her flowers, seeing friends, writing her life lessons in a notebook for when I'd need her and she wouldn't be there.

When Grandpa had to start helping her to the shower, and she started throwing up more meals than she kept down?? Well, that sucks-- but no big. Life goes on. She still read books, watched movies, thought about her flowers. Sometimes she could still get out for a little while. Close friends and family could visit for a little while before she was too tired. Her life lesson entries got shorter, but she was still writing.

When Grandma had to start giving her sponge baths, and Grandpa had to help her to the toilet?? Aw, man, that's rough. But she enjoyed choosing stories for Grandma to read to us. She could get through part of a movie without getting loopy, and a nap would restore her ability to focus. She was getting awfully thin. We had to sort of help her turn herself so she wouldn't get bed sores. The last life lesson reads, "So much more, but I can't. I love you." There were only a few things she could get down, much less keep down. She liked to sit at the table and look out the window.

I found her there one day sucking on a bottle of morphine (liquid, for oral or sublingual dosing). She was completely exhausted from getting the lid off. She was sucking at the dropper like a baby at a bottle. I knew too much of it could kill her. I knew people who were as sick as she was could become delusional. I thought maybe she was delusional, and yelled for Grandma.

Grandma pried the bottle out of her hands. She was struggling to hang onto it. "Please, Mommy. Please, Mommy. Mommy, my baby..." This might be a good time to add that she was raped while receiving the experimental treatments. She had to abort the baby in order to continue treatment.

It was years later before I actually grasped what was going on in that kitchen that day. She knew she was on about the last of her strength, the last of her ability to assert her volition. She knew it was only going to get worse. She wanted her baby. She wanted an end.

She died, not so much of cancer as of starvation, a few months later. A skeleton, covered in skin, wracked with pain, in and out of her senses, wreathed in bed sores no amount of padding or turning would prevent.

Did those last few months hurt me?? Not really. It was sad, but I was an 11-year-old Aspie kid still under the delusion that someday she would get better. They damaged me not at all. I learned a lot-- I am a better person for watching my mother die. Thanks, Mom, for that one last life lesson.

Did those last few months hurt Grandma?? I don't know. I know she still cries over it, but if it harmed her she would never tell me.

Should Mom have had to suffer through them?? I guess "should" is a moral decision everyone has to make for themselves...

...but if I could go back to that day in that kitchen with the understanding I have now, I would have kept my mouth shut. I would hold the bottle to her lips, help her swallow, and put my arms around her and whisper "I love you" and other such sweet nothings until it was over. Because I loved my mother, and no one should be forced or required by law to endure what she did.

That's my opinion. Take it for what it's worth.

This is SPARTA!

double post

/\ /\ I ask you, would this bloke be scared of cancer ???