Posted on 11/25/2020 8:25:06 AM PST by Kaslin
In a tragic irony, the prospect of another 'life-saving' lockdown has drained some senior citizens of their will to live. Assisted suicides and depression are up.
An elderly woman who had experienced strict confinement and isolation in a Toronto nursing home under a previous COVID lockdown has narrowly avoided reliving that experience, although at a horrible cost. Toronto went into Ontario’s most restrictive “grey” tier on Monday, including a near-complete ban on social gatherings. Unlike many others in North America who have packed up their belongings and relocated to less restrictive areas during the COVID-19 outbreak, however, her “escape” from lockdown came tragically at the cost of her own life.
Canada’s “Medical Aid in Dying,” or MAiD, law allows people without a terminal illness to achieve assisted suicide, provided they have a “grievous and irremediable medical condition,” which includes being in “an advanced state of decline that cannot be reversed.” Ninety-year-old Nancy Russell had already been planning to use the MAiD law “at some point,” according to her daughter, Tory. But having experienced full lockdown of her nursing home, including a two-week confinement of residents to their rooms, followed by bans or tight restrictions on visitors that made socialization impersonal, she knew what was coming with this second round of lockdowns and didn’t want to live through it.
Russell’s family told CTV News that even though she was communicating with them by phone and quickly got up to speed on how to use Zoom, they saw the otherwise “sharp” woman begin to “droop.”
“Contact with people … was like food to her, it was like oxygen,” Tory told the outlet, saying her mother was tired around the clock due to a lack of stimulation. According to the family, Russell had predicted these harsh restrictions would “continue into 2021.” She didn’t want “to endure winter and lockdowns,” particularly an additional “two-week confinement into her room.” So she had a state-authorized technician help her kill herself instead.
Russell’s death comes at a time of increased loneliness and isolation for residents of senior care homes amid repeated lockdowns and isolation in the name of protecting them. As Dr. Samir Sinha, a geriatric specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital, told CTV News, social restrictions can be “an incredibly isolating, lonely, depressing experience.”
Sinha went on to explain what everybody knows instinctively yet many government officials have been complicit in allowing:
When you can’t look forward to getting out of your room, to having meals or doing activities with others, to even seeing your own families and loved ones, you can imagine for a person in the last few years of their life where these are the basic things that actually bring them joy and really defined what they would call their own quality of life, when you actually deprive a human being of these things … that can have significant psychological consequences that can really give people no real will to live anymore.
The first doctor Russell applied to under the MAiD law turned down her request, saying, Tory reports, that she had “too much to live for.” Her condition continued to worsen, however, even as she braced herself for the winter. The second doctor granted her request for suicide after “more concrete medical health” issues developed.
Russell isn’t the first elderly person to choose to end her own life in the shadow of loneliness and despondence, nor, in all likelihood, will she be the last. Several weeks ago, a 95-year-old woman in Florida decided to stop eating and die because she didn’t want “to live this way anymore.”
As this woman’s daughter, Nan Thomas, told the Miami Herald, “Sometimes she’d say something like: ‘I just don’t understand. Why are they doing this to us?’” Thomas said the family kept hoping “they were going to open the doors and I would be able to bring her to my house again, and we’d go out to eat, get her strong.”
Thomas blames Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for her mother’s “quick decline” and death, since he let nursing homes continue to isolate their residents even as the rest of the state began opening up. “My mother died from long-term isolation,” she wrote in a letter to the Herald.
Shirley Turton, a 78-year-old Canadian woman in a similar situation, asked to have an assisted suicide in August. Turton’s daughter, Jennifer Turton-Molgat, said her wheelchair-bound mother used to be “so confident about her life. But that’s gone now. That has been snuffed. She’s lost all hope. She’s going downhill.”
Turton-Molgat said visiting her care home felt like visiting a prison, as visitation occurred through a window or wrought iron fence and 20 feet away. Video calls with an iPad were difficult because her mother couldn’t hold it up. Turton-Molgat didn’t feel these kinds of visits were “appropriate or helpful,” she told InfoNews.ca. Residents like her mother “just need to be close to people and have the proximity of their family members.”
Dr. Susan Woolhouse, a member of the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers, told CTV News that the lockdowns are “accelerating” requests for assisted suicide. Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Alex Schadenberg reports that more than 6,000 assisted deaths were reported in Ontario from mid-June 2016 through October 2020, and nearly a third of those deaths (1,948) were in 2020 alone, “representing 1,127 in the first six months of 2020 and 821 in the last four months.” That puts the average at more than 200 assisted suicide deaths a month in Ontario alone.
It is, of course, undeniable that the vast majority of COVID-19 deaths are among the elderly. In Ontario, 2,234 long-term care residents have died of COVID-19 to date, almost two-thirds of their total coronavirus deaths (3,519). While Toronto and other parts of North America go into lockdown this holiday season, however, we would do well to reflect on the toll isolation takes on the elderly.
For those who are old and frail, socialization with friends and family is one of the few joys that remain. They often can’t lead an active lifestyle, they usually don’t have a job, and there’s only so much TV and reading that can fill the hours in a relatively satisfying way. Even those who don’t consider assisted suicide are acutely suffering.
FaceTime and Zoom calls are far better than no communication at all, but they cannot replace rocking grandbabies, playing peekaboo with toddlers, or showing a son or daughter how to move a pie crust without breaking it. While COVID-19 can be dangerous to the old and frail, those who are so concerned about protecting the elderly shouldn’t reduce “protection” to a negative COVID-19 test and a pulse, lest they quash what makes life worth living.
Instead of viewing assisted suicide as a tragic but inevitable consequence of “protection” from a virus, we should heed the voices of those most deeply affected by lockdowns and restore their right to decide how they want to spend their few remaining years, despite the risk.
Ari Emanuel extends his condolences to the family.
My mother is in a care home in Virginia. El Chapo has more freedom than she does.
“Thomas blames Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for her mother’s “quick decline” and death, since he let nursing homes continue to isolate their residents even as the rest of the state began opening up. “”
In our county 50% of deaths are in long-term facilities. Neighboring counties are 60%.
It wasn’t sincere however, so he can stuff it where the sun doesn’t shine.
...By design
Proverbs 8:36
“Those who hate me love death.”
So, if you shove CV patients into nursing homes, kill 10K or so people therein, and ignore a Navy ship brought in to assist your people, you get an Emmy and a book advance to tout your leadership.
But if you protect elders in assisted living and they get bored, you’re to blame.
If someone is going to kill themselves over lock-downs, they should be sure to take one lock-down politician with them before they go.
Maybe they should give all asst living residents shots of Vit D...regularly. ..or HCQ...but, nah...just lock them down...
Chalk up another murder by liberalism.
There is an elderly couple across the street from us.
I heard sirens Monday and looked out the bedroom window upstairs.
There was a fire truck and Ambulance.
I watched as they took the wife away. She died.
Emotional event for me.
She was on an elevated gurney with a mask. Very peaceful looking but lifeless.
I was struck by how respectful the responders were.
There was no racing off to the ER though, so it was clear what was happening.
At 54, I’d never seen that.
First responders are the best. How do you clear your head of emotion and save what you can in some of the most heartbreaking situations.
God bless them.
Democrat policies NOT legally enforceable... are killing our elders (who know things important to our survival as a species) and; destroying family owned business, which support families, essential to our continuation as a species; and killing the unborn in the womb (it is also impossible to survive as a species without producing progeny).
Democrats are killers and murderers.
They worship death.
A substantial portion of false conservatives and RINOS... are actually on board with the democrats on every key issue. Republican governors, are killing as well... all in the name of Covid...
May the covid (force) be upon them all.
Socialists and Malthusians are pleased.
“If someone is going to kill themselves over lock-downs, they should be sure to take one lock-down politician with them before they go.”
BEST idea ever!
I’ve sometimes considered a “blaze of glory” exit once I know my end is very near . . .
Isn’t that what sort of happened to Teri Shiavo? When there were signs that she was beginning to recover, her loving husband (curse him to hell) ordered her TV be turned off and wouldn’t let anyone visit her, including her family? Her murder is still so vivid to me.
And people argue with me when I say these lockdowns, nursing home death zones, etc, are a way to kill off old people to reduce Social Security costs.
I believe lockdown is robbing everyone of life’s joys, not just old folks.
Senior prom/graduation?...gone.
Senior week(beach drunkenness)?...gone.
First day of N-grade?...gone.
Life savings?...gone.
Your dream small business?...gone.
Dating?...gone.
So people are more depressed, leading to alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and suicide. Thanks government...
I do fall asleep, but I do wake up, and don't need that. He does go outside to check the mail, (he loves junk mail)
I do not go outside either because I have a degenerative disc disease and hip joint disease and it's hard for me to walk, even with a cane
and for what?....we can't stop a virus...even after lockdowns and mask wearing, the virus continues, as is its natural way....
our entire country is on the verge of becoming totally leftist and I blame the panic demics for it....you didn't use wisdom nor common sense or even science to go along with the totalitarians....
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