Posted on 11/17/2005 10:52:03 PM PST by F14 Pilot
Proposals to allow doctors to help some terminally ill patients to die have been submitted for consideration by the House of Lords.
Lord Joffe's bill is modelled around Oregon's Death with Dignity Act. Since its introduction in 1994 over 200 people have used the law to hasten their death.
Nora Nicolaidas is settling up.
She has put her house on the market, the childcare she performed for her daughter for the last four years has now passed to a minder, and all her bills are paid.
But it is not her home town of Portland Oregon she is settling accounts with, it's life.
Nora has advanced breast cancer - she was first diagnosed 13 years ago.
She has run through the gamut of treatments but when it spread to her bones and then recently her liver she knew she was in the endgame with the disease.
External symptoms
Nora is 62; a still beautiful Greek woman with a lyrical turn of phrase, she has a delicate bird-like frame but the cancer is forcing itself outwards now.
She is jaundiced from her liver disease which has turned her skin and eyes yellow and her belly is swollen from the tumours.
"I have always been thin," she reflects, "but now I look like I am pregnant, I feel I am pregnant with my death."
In fact, her body is over run with the disease and she knows that she doesn't have much time left.
The cancer will steadily cause her liver to fail and as it does, she will struggle to eat, the pain she feels daily will increase, more and more of her bodily functions will shut down and in the end even her mind could start to fail.
Nora says that in life she has always been very active, an outdoors person enjoying hiking, camping, skiing.
"The thought of lying down in a bed helpless, losing my dignity, is my worst fear, I didn't know how to handle it."
Alternative option
So, she argues, she is grateful she lives in Oregon and has another option.
The state is the only location in the US which permits physician assisted dying.
This is the right for terminally ill patients with just six months to live to be prescribed and to self-administer a fatal dose of barbiturates.
In this way they can choose not to endure the pain, loss of control and loss of dignity that can sometimes accompany the end of life.
"I am not scared of dying," said Nora, "I am scared of how I am going to die."
Sitting in her Portland home with her two grandchildren, 15-month-old Melina and four-year-old Andoni, tearing around the room, Nora exudes an almost joyous serenity and strength that belie the grim inevitability of her situation.
Peace
She ascribes the peace she has achieved with her death to her decision to use Oregon's Death with Dignity Act.
It is not about committing suicide, she argues, but about allowing her to control the manner in which she dies.
"When I realised there was a solution, that I don't have to go through that in the last few weeks and I started the process, a weight was lifted and I felt freer from that day.
"I took extra energy in me and sleep better because the burden of how the last weeks of my life would be, is gone."
She says all her family and friends are supporting her in this choice and it allows her to die peacefully with those she loves around her.
"This is the option for my family not to see me suffer. This is something that is my wish. I want to have a celebration for life and I will do it when I am ready."
Nora's cancer is at such an advanced stage that she probably only has months, maybe just weeks to live.
Drugs ready
Her prescription for 200ml of liquid barbiturate now sits at the pharmacist, waiting for collection.
So how does she square her passion for life with her prescription for death?
"It goes very much together," she argues. "As you go close to death, life gets more precious regardless of how you are.
"The thinner the string of life gets for you the more you hang on to it.
"I choose to go happy and having this option took off the fear and the burden I had of the end coming, because that was pulling me down a lot.
"Now I am free - free to enjoy when my grandchildren come and both run on me, free to hug them.
"To see their smiles is beautiful, it's more beautiful than it was a year ago before I made this decision, its more precious now. I am for life - for good life. And good death."
Modern people are so vain today. There is nothing but their looks and their personal pleasures. The "death with dignity" acts show this. If they were interested in their loved ones, then there would be no reason to take their own lives. Instead they are self-absorbed and wanting to not face the world of self absorbed people who would judge them, not on their character of course, but on their outward image.
Since religious and family values have been taken out of these leftward leaning countries, the only thing left to value is mass-media approved looks and leftist approved activities.
If they are so self-absorbed as you describe - then what the [insert the expletive] would they care about facing "the world of self-absorbed people who would judge them,... on their outward image"? Sorry, but your statement is self-contradictory, and thus does not hold water. Self-absorbed person does not give a ******* about the others, or the others' opinions and judgments - for then that person would be absorbed not in oneself, but in others. She wants to face her world on her own terms, not as an invalid, but as a person in control - of her own bowels, among other things. Understandable - and may she get her wish.
Self-absorbed as in absorbed with how others view them. Shallow. "Death with dignity" is just offing yourself before having to face a life with which you're not comfortable. I think more than the potential pain is the potential non-support of the self-absorbed peers that don't want to deal with someone who has a terminal illness.
I disagree with your interpretation - in terminal cancer she does not have peers any longer, for while people may live side by side, together, they die alone. And her not having peers means there are no people whose "support" she would be able to use [and thus need] anyway.
why is it that we humans think everthing in life has to be pain free and trouble free.....life is one big TROUBLE after another, thrown in among the joy and peace and happiness and fun that life has to offer....
and I'll tell ya all.....if you wanted to die with barbituates, you could do it on your own, in your own home by just taking a few extra pills....but NOOOO.....we got to have this stinking little pity party and state sanctioned suicide pact.....
why do these weak people think the public needs to know or WANTS to know anything about their suicides.....so arrogant and vain.....so self-absorbed...
At the end of your life, I hope people have more compassion for you than you're showing for the person in the article.
Where did you get that?
The "death with dignity" acts show this. If they were interested in their loved ones, then there would be no reason to take their own lives.
How about pain like you've never felt before, unrelenting pain?
Bovine scatology. The last three months of my father's bout with cancer were spent tied spread-eagled to a bed and so doped-up he was unconscious most of the time. Mercifully (I think) his doctor finally ended his life. If I ever get that ill, I hope someone pulls the plug on me since I cannot do it myself.
I'm with you on this Cherry. When I die I will not die drugged up if I have any choice in the matter. I'll settle for my bodies own endorphins. Nothing is as important as the moment of death, nothing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.