Guest Post: One Person's Experience Concerning Assisted Suicide

**Note from the Scribbler: I've opened up this blog for this week to discuss assisted suicide and invited anyone who had any thoughts they wanted to share, to write up a piece and I'd post it. I think doing pieces like this allow for discussion, healing  and community to happen. I've had a lot of messages about this topic, and if you have any thoughts, please let me know. I'm interested in your opinion. Opening up and sharing is the only way for us to grow, and to relate to one another wholly. As always, I believe everyone has a right to their own opinion, and any comments/ responses I deem to be disrespectful, rude or unkind will be deleted. Share your opinion, but do it with grace and an open heart.**

My views on this issue are simple & colored by experience. I believe simply in honoring a person's wishes & to not allow further suffering.

The 1^st line of the Hippocratic Oath in that mentions healing reads:

“With regard to healing the sick, I will devise and order for them the best diet, according to my judgment and means; and I will take care that they suffer no hurt or damage.”

I will take care that they suffer no hurt or damage.

To me, this means that when the learned physician knows that death is imminent that they take the responsibility of ensuring that the patient suffers no unnecessary hurt during the process of death. Hospice care tries to satisfy this edict.

A week prior to entering hospice care, my loved one had attempted to commit suicide for he feared what was ahead of him. He was already too weak at that point & he failed. He was admitted to hospital & they released him home to enter hospice a week later. Had he succeeded, I would have never had my final conversations with my loved one. The last words I would have spoken to him would have been me telling him that he was a dick.

Hospice is not perfect! But it allowed me to make some peace; to gain some understanding of my loved one. Hospice gave me the final opportunity to tell him that I loved him & to hear that he loved me. That has to be enough. Hospice gives you what you put into it. Ask for pain to be eased & your loved one to be comfortable & that request will be answered with compassion.

My loved one had a rare & incurable cancer. He entered hospice care 2 weeks before he passed. He stopped the cancer treatments & his medical care focused on making him comfortable. I repeat: Hospice is not perfect. He developed bedsores within the 1^st week. His body was wasting away faster than than we could feed him calories despite the high calorie foods we prepared. His cancer spread, using the energy we were trying to give to him. & so he finally stopped eating. He quite simply didn't have an appetite anymore. He suffered personality changes and became physically & verbally combative, perhaps it was stroke induced but we'll never know what caused that. He was sedated as a result for his own safety. He had already began to drink less and less. After his sedation, he no longer drank at all.

Slowly, he sank into a coma. Slower still, his lungs began to collapse from the cancer caused pneumonia he suffered from. At a snails pace, his body shut down.

Through it all, pain was evident on his face. A line appeared between his eyebrows that never quite went away, despite alternating doses of Morphine & Xanax. Every hour I watched his caregiver & wife dose him with one or the other. There was a pact between them, for him to receive help in finally crossing over when the time came. As I watched him slip further away, I watched his wife slip into shock over his imminent passing. I knew his final wishes and so I suggested that we try harder to make him comfortable and a decision was made together to call hospice & request a higher dose of pain medications because I, no, we knew he still suffered.

I knew when that call was made that he could not survive the dose that was going to be required to make him comfortable: His lungs were collapsing. His breathing was a death-rattle. He was not responsive & he had ceased to return the squeezes of his hand. But his last wishes were to not suffer any more than was necessary & to not allow this slow, terrifying process to be prolonged.

So the call was made & the dosages adjusted according to hospice instructions.

Finally, that line that had plagued his brow smoothed out. His face relaxed and he looked peaceful.

10 hours after that call to hospice care, he passed quietly to the sounds of his wife laughing as she relived memories of his favorite place..

The entire process lasted almost a week. 5 days to be exact. I sat with him & his wife throughout all of it.

No last minute miracle cure was going to save him. After a point, the damage done to his body by the very process of dying became irreversible. A body starts to not want food as it feels death coming closer. It starts to not want to drink. This is a biological process that will has little to no effect on. And it has a point of no return.

Did making that call kill my loved one? No. The side effects of a terrible cancer did. Did I kill my loved one with the decision to call hospice? Hell No. I helped to ease his suffering in the final hours of his life & set him free. And I do believe that he is in a better place now. That he has indeed gone on to meet whatever amazing thing that awaits us after this life.

Let me state this: Death is not pretty nor perfect, no matter how it happens! Most of us will shit our pants when we die. Death is not dignified nor graceful & we can't make it so, no matter how many pretty words we try to use to describe it! Death can, however, be compassionate and perhaps that is the best we can strive for in this life. I do feel hospice, despite not being perfect, delivered compassion for us all in the end of my loved one's life & it may be the best we can strive for.

And yet there is not a single day that goes by that I do not think of him. That I do not think of the decisions I have made. I did what I still think was the right thing to do. I still stand by my decision.

And while I know I will one day be whole again, I know I will never be the same nor do I want to be.

~Anonymous Commenter