For those that read my previous post, you know that I’ve worked 30 health care as a respiratory therapist and paramedic. My username reflects the motto of a paramedic and the job I dedicated to do.
During that time, I’ve seen many times where lives were not saved but extended. People uncomfortable in pain sad and miserable is there to variety of tubes and machines. Often times lying in their own feces or urine with open wounds draining the most terrible smelling fluids.
Often times these patients were getting good care but you can’t stand over a patient 24 hours a day 7 days a week and those times they were alone, you know they suffered.
And when they tried to die, we had to do everything that science created for us to “save” them. Burns on there chest from defibrillators. Bloating them with fluids until they were swollen beyond recognition. Slicing and dicing away at there body worse then if they had just died and had an autopsy. No we just could never let them die in peace.
Never mind the pain, and guilt for the family members who never realized that a month or more with a loved one on a ventilator, unable to speak, often unconscious,was not any “quality time”. But left with the choices of stop everything (the “I killed them” or “I let them die”) choice or do everything (“what have I done to them” or worse for the health care workers “What have THEY done to them”) choice, families are often more heart broken then is the loved one was allowed do die peacefully of natural causes.
That was never going to be me.
I had created my own Living Will that not only said no machines, no ventilators, but also no amputations and no dialysis. I even have a “wrongful life” clause that says that if anyone violates my living will that my attorney will file suit for extending my life artificially.
But in some kind of cruel joke I was struck with nerve damage that has left me with just enough ability to live without any artificial assistance but unable to function in any of the activities I did for years.
So I sit here, limited to doing nothing but feel the pain, but physical and mental, but nothing artificial that I can say “stop” that and allow passive palliative take place and have my life end in peace.
Passive death will take to long. I can’t just sit till I slowly rot away. Oh sure some day a disease like renal Failure may come along which I can say no to invasive treatment and alow death to come. but by then it may be years of immobility and feelings of uselessness that will cause my depression to go deeper and deeper. No that’s not for me.
So I must take an active role to end this, and do it while I still can have pride in the years I lived and not sorrow in the years I just existed. I have accepted that my role in this world has ended, and as such so should my life. I can say this with joy in my sole for I know some will remember my accomplishments over my end.
As to those that focus on the end, well they missed the point of my life and death. I just hope they find this blog and have it answer the “why” question they have.
So onto my exit strategy, where all my years and training in healthcare will be put to full use. But that’s for my next post
8 comments
Damn, I was always against machines and artificial life support so I know what you mean about all those people letting their loved ones suffer just so they can have ‘more time with them’. It’s selfish and cruel to do that to a human. Sorry to hear you are in so much pain. This is one of the reasons I hate this demented world and the things that happen in it.
Yeah I do not believe in useing machines and so forth to keep people alive when they are in a big mess and really its just time for them to go.
People have been brainwashed to think that we always have to do everything to save a person ]
I believe differently. There is a time to die and when that time comes for a person not to mess with it. its the natural course of a life cyce coming to an end.
Thanks for your post, it was very insightful and as discouraging as I expected for people who end up in such horrible situations. That is exactly the last thing I’d want for myself and my family members. You’ve just reinforced the idea that it’s better to end one’s life with one’s own hands than to end up in the torture chamber of hospitals.
Unfortunately our medical institutions have taken the notion of preserving life to the extreme and over and above the comfort of the patient. I’m not going to preach to the choir here, people who are suicidal are looking to end their suffering and regrettably our society which founded on the idiocy of Judeo-Christian morality, believes the greatest good is not to end suffering but to keep people alive at any cost. These are draconian and barbaric ideas will continue to make people live in agony until the rules are changed and society discards theocratic hogwash.
Sorry to hear about your nerve damage. I recently experience something similar but have largely recovered. With you being on the ‘front lines’ regarding people’s failing health would know even better than the rest of us how important it is to take charge of one’s life and decision to end it.
A minor suggestion though, it’d help if you proof-read your post and fixed grammatical errors, otherwise your post was very informative.
Dear reader,
I agree my proof reading skills suck. That being said, often I have relied upon others, family and friends, to help me proof read other post, blogs, and presentations I have done in a more public light.
Currently there is NO ONE that I can trust with these posts. Most of them, being healthcare worker’s themselves would “Drop a PEC ( Physicians Emergency Committal ) ” form on me, rather than help me make my posts grammarictly correct.
So for now please excuse me, but at least my point(s) are made.
Thatothersmightlive, do you have any general advice for people writing their ADs? I have the following in mine:
NO “life support”, ventilators/respirators, artificial nutrition, intubation, dnr, amputation, medically induced comas, blood transfusions, dialysis, medications without verbal/gestural assent, and allow natural death in case of dementia/severe brain damage. I also threaten to sue anyone who violates my wishes for punitive damages.
I’m also eager for your next post. I’d like to see how a “professional” does it.
by the way, I should note that the goal of my AD is to prevent doctors from trying to “save” me if/when I try to kill myself in the next few months. I realize that there is a serious drawback in that this might cause relatively minor accidents to damage me more than they should (the refusal of blood transfusions is the main one), but I am willing to accept that risk.
I plan to shoot myself in the brain stem in the wilderness if that matters.
And its horrible that people like us can’t talk to professionals about our problems without fearing involuntary commitment. Fuck, it would make feel a lot less lonely if I could freaking talk to someone in real life without having to worry about the police showing up at my door to take me to prison (“psychiatric ward”). Plus your grammar would be better :).
Dear Reader,
To help you with issues of your AD I have added a post with my living will on it and an explanation of it’s clauses.