Imagine having your whole life ahead of you. You are 29 years old. You just got married and have plans to start a family. Trouble is you have been suffering from massive headaches the past few months. You see the doctor and literally feel as though you’ve been punched in the stomach upon hearing the diagnosis: stage IV glioblastoma multiforme; in short, terminal brain cancer.
At the suggestion of the doctors, you opt to have a couple surgeries in hopes of stopping the brain tumor, but the cancer comes back a few months later, this time more aggressive. Doctors give you a death sentence of six months to live or less. What do you do?
If you do what I’ve known so many have done over the course of my lifetime whether they are family members or acquaintances after exhausting every possible life saving option chances are, provided they are able, decide to spend their remaining weeks or months at home as opposed to being bedridden in a hospital.
Much like euthanasia activist Jack Kevorkian's public support of terminally ill patients’ right to die assisting with over 100 physician assisted suicides in the 1990s, Maynard’s death again ignited the moral debate about how, regardless of the extreme pain the person may be in, suicide is still a sin in the eyes of most, if not all religious denominations, in particular the Catholic Church.
What angered me most was how days after Maynard’s passing, an official with the Vatican, which condemns suicide, called her decision to end her life “reprehensible.”
"Dignity is something other than putting an end to one's own life," said Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life. "... Brittany Maynard's act is in itself reprehensible, but what happened in the consciousness we do not know."
This brings me to the question of who are they, or anyone for that matter, to decide what’s best for the dying regardless of what the Bible teaches about suicide being a sin. How do they know what God will decide when that person goes before the Almighty on Judgment Day? It amazes me how people and religious organizations are so quick to condemn a dying person’s decision to end their life as opposed to putting it in God’s hands and waiting for the Angel of Death to take them.
I don’t know what action I will take if/when the day comes whether it’s tomorrow, next week, next month, next year or ten, twenty years from now should some ailment I pay little to no attention to turn out to be something “terminal.”
Perhaps I’ll move to Hawaii, rent a house and spend my remaining days on the beach watching the waves creep up in hopes my time ends one day as the sun goes down. Perhaps when my time is at an end, more states besides Oregon will have adopted the Death With Dignity law and I can decide whether to take matters in my own hands. Personally, I don’t think I could bring myself to do it.
Considering the devastating side effects, however, that Maynard said she would have gone through had she chosen the radiation treatment which would have included her hair being singed off, first degree burns, morphine resistant pain, personality changes, and the combined loss of verbal, cognitive and motor skills as a result of her brain tumor, taking legally prescribed medication to end one’s life before the symptoms get worse seems the better more humane way to go than the excruciatingly painful alternative.
©1/14/15
At the suggestion of the doctors, you opt to have a couple surgeries in hopes of stopping the brain tumor, but the cancer comes back a few months later, this time more aggressive. Doctors give you a death sentence of six months to live or less. What do you do?
If you do what I’ve known so many have done over the course of my lifetime whether they are family members or acquaintances after exhausting every possible life saving option chances are, provided they are able, decide to spend their remaining weeks or months at home as opposed to being bedridden in a hospital.
I don’t know anyone, so far, who would do what Brittany Maynard, 29, did when she was diagnosed in January last year with terminal brain cancer. Upon hearing how long she had to live after two failed surgeries and after consulting with family and friends, the California resident uprooted her family and moved to Oregon where a physician can legally prescribe medication to the terminally ill so they can end their lives based on the state’s Death With Dignity law.On Nov. 1, 2014, Maynard took that medication “and died as she intended – peacefully in her bedroom, in the arms of her loved ones” according to Compassion & Choices, an end-of-life advocacy group Maynard worked with.
Much like euthanasia activist Jack Kevorkian's public support of terminally ill patients’ right to die assisting with over 100 physician assisted suicides in the 1990s, Maynard’s death again ignited the moral debate about how, regardless of the extreme pain the person may be in, suicide is still a sin in the eyes of most, if not all religious denominations, in particular the Catholic Church.
What angered me most was how days after Maynard’s passing, an official with the Vatican, which condemns suicide, called her decision to end her life “reprehensible.”
"Dignity is something other than putting an end to one's own life," said Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life. "... Brittany Maynard's act is in itself reprehensible, but what happened in the consciousness we do not know."
This brings me to the question of who are they, or anyone for that matter, to decide what’s best for the dying regardless of what the Bible teaches about suicide being a sin. How do they know what God will decide when that person goes before the Almighty on Judgment Day? It amazes me how people and religious organizations are so quick to condemn a dying person’s decision to end their life as opposed to putting it in God’s hands and waiting for the Angel of Death to take them.
Yet when Americans witnessed death up close on 9/11 watching the poor souls jump from the fiery smoke engulfed upper floors of the World Trade Center, I didn’t hear anyone condemn those individuals' heartbreaking decision who, like Maynard in realizing she had no chance of beating cancer, to take charge of their own destiny after realizing there was no hope of rescue.Unless you are a born masochist who enjoys pain, I don’t think any of us wants to watch someone, let alone go through the final ravaging stages of such diseases as AIDS, the Ebola virus or the many forms of cancer. If we weren’t so compassionate, why then do we pet owners when told by the veterinarian that our beloved dog or cat is dying, choose to put them to sleep? The answer is because we don’t want to watch them suffer.
I don’t know what action I will take if/when the day comes whether it’s tomorrow, next week, next month, next year or ten, twenty years from now should some ailment I pay little to no attention to turn out to be something “terminal.”
Perhaps I’ll move to Hawaii, rent a house and spend my remaining days on the beach watching the waves creep up in hopes my time ends one day as the sun goes down. Perhaps when my time is at an end, more states besides Oregon will have adopted the Death With Dignity law and I can decide whether to take matters in my own hands. Personally, I don’t think I could bring myself to do it.
Considering the devastating side effects, however, that Maynard said she would have gone through had she chosen the radiation treatment which would have included her hair being singed off, first degree burns, morphine resistant pain, personality changes, and the combined loss of verbal, cognitive and motor skills as a result of her brain tumor, taking legally prescribed medication to end one’s life before the symptoms get worse seems the better more humane way to go than the excruciatingly painful alternative.
©1/14/15
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