Death and Dying: Thoughts on Terri Schiavo - Page 3

I know the answer. But it isn't acceptable. The answer is that removing a feeding tube isn't proactive. Whereas injecting someone with lethal, but merciful drugs is. That's asinine

Yes, it is. I wish I could make a living will that says, please do not let me suffer, do not let me linger in some horrible half-living, half-dead state. Shoot me full of some drug that will allow me to die a peaceful, painless death. Just let me go. Would that we could do that for everyone. Have you ever watched someone die? I watched both my grandparents die long, lingering deaths. Painful, dragged out deaths that made me think at many points it would just be so much more humane to give them a nice drug that would put them into a deep sleep from which they would never wake. It would be over. The pain, the suffering, the agony - and yes, those things apply to both the patient and the patient's family - would be over.

I mention this to people and they say, only God has the right to say when a life is over. Let God do his work. So is it God's design that my grandmother was to spend months in a hospital, floating between consciousness and unconsciousness, breathing on her own and then not breathing on her own, unable to recognize her children, her family called to the hospital time and time again to say good-bye, only to have it stretched out again when she was brought back to life, just to spend another couple of weeks dying? What kind of life is that?

For fifteen years Terri Schiavo has been dying. And these politicians, who don't know Terri, who don't know her family, are clamoring to claim that she not be allowed to die? And our government overall wants to tell us that - all of us - when we are in a similar situation that involves us laying in a hospital in pain, in agony, inches away from death, our families tortured by their constant bedside vigil, our eyes unfocused, our brain not functioning, our limbs not moving on their own, our children watching us die a slow, terrible death, that our loved ones cannot gently put a needle into our arms and end it for us, even though that's what we would desire, that we have no right to honor the wishes of someone who knows that enough is enough, that doesn't want their family to go through this, that doesn't want to go through this themselves, they - our lawmakers, our leaders, have the audacity to determine that there should be no such thing as mercy killing, that we must suffer until some mysterious man in the sky lets our suffering ends, or until our bodies run out of steam and finally shut down, no matter how long it takes - I find that all abhorrent. I would hope that should I ever find myself in a situation like this, one of my family members would have enough guts and enough sense to come into my hospital room in the middle of the night and put a pillow over my face.

Article Author: Michele Catalano

Michele is from Long Island and writes about two of her favorite things - punk rock and fast cars -along with her better half at Faster Than the World.

Visit Michele Catalano's author page — Michele Catalano's Blog