Posted on 01/28/2009 9:53:19 AM PST by wagglebee
I used to be a tacit supporter of assisted suicide but after watching A Short Stay in Switzerland, I’ve changed my mind.
This harrowing drama starring Julie Walters was based on the true story of one woman who chose to end her life via the Zurich clinic Dignitas rather than die a lingering death from a progressive, degenerative condition. The woman in question was Doctor Anne Turner from Bath in England; by all accounts a wise and feisty (and wealthy) lady who knew her own mind.
But what she had to put her three grown-up children through was very painful to watch, even in drama form. And by the end, I was forced to agree with Doctor Turner’s best friend, who tearfully accused her simply of showing off. Is this the ultimate form of middle-class intellectual snobbery, I wondered? Or did Anne Turner do the right thing when she trailed her sobbing children off to a bleak and soulless flat in Switzerland and made them witness her swallowing an overdose of barbiturates, while a volunteer filmed the suicide on a hand-held video camera?
I’m not sure but surely dying at home in your own bed, or even in a warm and welcoming hospice suite, would be preferable to this? A shabby little white room with nothing in it but a single bed and a glass of lethal chemicals? Anne’s children were singing hymns outside the door as their mother said her goodbyes to the camera. And then they returned to the room and held her as she drank the bitter overdose. There were a few seconds of awful choking and spluttering before the final peace of death descended. The programme didn’t mention money but according to some reports there is a £7,000 fee involved (including the funeral). The founder and director of Dignitas, Ludwig Minelli (75) is a lawyer who knows his way around the complicated Swiss legal system.
Call me old-fashioned but there wasn’t anything remotely dignified about the death of Anne Turner. It was as empty, depressing and bland an experience as you could possibly imagine. She had recently lost her own beloved husband to the same degenerative illness and I wonder if she wasn’t suffering from an extreme and nihilistic form of depression? Whereby her own drama-laden suicide was the only method of rebellion and self-expression she had left. (I’m beginning to think the people of Gaza and Iraq have it too.)
The programme skimmed over what happens immediately after death, but apparently the bodies used to be taken downstairs in the lift. Until the other residents in the building complained and so the whole enterprise had to be re-located to an industrial estate. So now, those embarking on assisted suicide have to end their days next door to a garage.
It would seem there’s really no easy way to enter this world and there’s definitely no easy way to exit it either. Nobody of sound mind enjoys being a constant burden to their loving relatives.
And I daresay there are plenty of poor lonely souls out there who will have nobody to nurse them. The NHS is too big and too expensive, or so they tell us. Palliative care may be harder to come by in the years ahead. And what with so many women out working, well, who’s going to do all that business with the incontinence pads and the feeding tubes and the medicine, and the holding of hands and administering of TLC?
I worked in a nursing home for the terminally ill once. The mostly elderly residents were lying glassy-eyed and silent in their private bedrooms, or sitting in the Day Room muttering to friends long dead. I lasted for about three days until I buckled under the bleak reality of it all, whereby I fled the over-heated nursing home and began to write romantic fiction instead. But for the very ill and their worried families, there’s no getting away from a lingering demise. Tough decisions have to be made. And this is why I used to tell myself I’d surely pop off when it suited me rather than put my only child through years of caring.
However, after seeing A Short Stay in Switzerland, I think I can cross the Dignitas option off my list. The whole experience looked bleaker than a wet weekend talking about the banking crisis with Gordon Brown himself.
There’s got to be a better way of coping with a terminal illness. Or maybe Ludwig Minelli has designed it all to be as grim as possible, so the suicidal won’t change their minds at the last minute?
Oh dear, it’s bad enough already, what with Bankrupt Britain and everybody worried about losing their jobs. But reading the Sunday papers these days ought to carry a government health warning. And then those telly bigwigs go and screen a Sunday night drama about assisted suicide? God bless anyone who’s very ill, and indeed their loved ones. But I don’t want to think about assisted suicide any more for a good while yet, thank you very much.
And the culture of death used her as an unwitting pawn.
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When I was a kid, I thought that putting people out of their suffering was the humane thing to do. A trip to see a friend in a burn ward changed all that. His teeth were shattered, his ear burned off and 85% of his skin was burned. It was awful. The smell was horrific. Listening to him struggle through the morphine to tell me how incredibly painful the treatment was made me ill. But I stuck around and talked. Luckily for him, his wife and his small children he survived and did very well. That said, going through the process touched everyone around him. I still get a little teary when I remember all the crayon pictures that hung around his bed that were drawn by the kids that were patients in the burn center.
Later, I had a lot of time to think and I realized that there is nothing more human than struggling with pain, and that those thoughts of “putting people out of their misery” was more appropriately an urge to remove them so that I would not feel so uncomfortable.
Comforting those in pain should take precedence. I think most people are scared of dying alone, not in pain.
Great post overall, but in the above, you have hit it right on the humanistic bullseye.
I have no idea what the solution is:
1) I don't want to vegetate in a nursing home.
2) I oppose assisted suicide.
3) I don't want to be 93 years old and freeze to death in my home because someone cuts my power.
We all have to go some time, but there seem to be few good ways. In hindsight, my father was lucky -- pancreatic cancer. He had 6 months to put his affairs in order, do some things he wanted to do, and say goodbye to people. He was mostly healthy up until the last two weeks and then he dramatically went down hill and passed away in a hospice. Sad. But seems a lot better than what many people go through.
I don’t think there’s anything dignified about death. We will all face it, and I think the best we can do is make any pain as minimal as possible.
I wouldn't choose either, but I think you are right.
the pull away starts at some point and they sorta drift back and forth with an eye over where they are going and an eye to those still here.
i guess that's not really alone but removed...
it's odd but ask anyone that deals with dying....a detachment begins from worldliness
folks should damn sure they make certain they have pals, a lot of money or family that loves them when dying time comes.....preferably all 3
i can understand folks wishing to escape a horrid death or not wanting to burden family but this lady in this article was showboating...going out in ego
My Mom died a rather extended, and and unpleasant death from kidney cancer. What I remember most tho, is that she never gave up. She didn’t want to go, and she fought it. I know people will differ in how they deal with their own deaths (she was a Christian—she just wasn’t ready to go anywhere!). In fact, she refused Hospice because she would have had to give up all treatments except for pain management.
I can't explain it properly, but, having witnessed some suffering and dying of family members, I grew to understand that they became sort of larger than life and their suffering helped others become less self centered and more loving and giving - in other words, better people than they would have been without the suffering/dying loved one. So, our standards for ourselves were raised as you did things you didn't think you were capable of doing.
Death is a part of life and I think our society pretends that it is not the inevitable conclusion of each of our lives - we try to hide it or pretty it up or give ourselves power over it (like the woman in the story) but it all ends up the same way, regardless of how we try to engineer it.
My experience, as a paramedic, is that many doctors are way too reluctant to prescribe pain meds for those who are dying. Hospice is good at keeping patients comfortable through their last weeks and months, but I see far too many people spend their last days and weeks in excruciating pain.
It is awful to watch anyone struggle with intense and constant pain for weeks or sometimes months, before they finally pass away, especially a loved one. I see it all the time, and I think that is what fuels this assisted suicide movement. Appropriate end of life care can make the last few weeks of life, a positive experience for the patient and the family.
I blame the government, specifically the DEA. Many doctors are afraid of being noticed by the drug nazis.
My mother was bedridden for a month. It was hardest on the women of the family who did the majority of her care (for modesty reasons). When she was lucid she would rummage through the picture box and dictate stories from her life to me to record. My brother and I were taking the recordings and putting them on DVD with the pictures she had chosen for each story. It was to be her Christmas present for the children and grandchildren.
As the weeks went by she became less and less lucid. Sleeping mostly and often talking to people who had long passed when she was awake. I asked her once if we should celebrate Christmas sooner rather than on Christmas day. She simply replied "don't rush me."
Christmas day came and my mother was like her old self. She was alert and as chipper as she always is. She is a just big kid when it came to Christmas. The entire family was able to make it and with 52 of us, it made for quite a packed house. My mother made sure to talk and hold and kiss each and everyone of us that morning. It was like she had never been sick at all.
After all of the presents were passed around she presented hers last. We put it into the DVD player to watch as the children slipped off to other rooms to play with their new toys. We watched the TV as she told story after story while she slipped off to sleep. I think that she went to sleep on purpose so as not to see us crying. It was only after the DVD was over that I realized that she had included at least one favorite story for each relative and child.
The rest of the day was just a normal Christmas for us and my mother talked and laughed with all of us. It was a wonderful Christmas.
That night my mother passed quietly in her sleep. I think that she had saved everything she had for this one last Christmas with her entire family.
I have seen the film mentioned in the article and am horrified by the way the family was subjected to it all. And I have seen the way my mother chose to die and how all of us children still think it was the best Christmas ever. If I have a choice in the matter, I know which I would do.
Thank you for the touching story.
Two and a half years ago my grandfather was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. He was 86 at the time had been ill for about a year. By the time it was discovered, it was too late for surgery and he just wanted to leave the hospital.
He went home and the nuns who ran the local hospice were wonderful, they took care of everything. About a month before he died they had a big birthday party for him and he was like a little kid with ice cream and cake.
Two days before he died he slipped into a coma. He was given Last Rites and the nuns took turns saying the Rosary at his bed. Just as he was dying, he opened his eyes, looked at his whole family, smiled and left.
Either God has given us EVERYTHING we need from the moment of conception until the moment of natural death or He hasn’t and if He hasn’t, then He would have to be a liar. Almost nobody who dies a natural death looks “dignified” at the end, but dignity is about our character and not our appearance.
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