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.
You must stay busy on the net? I see your posts many times a day. They are some of the best Thank you!
Suicide is NEVER somebody else’s fault.
Never.
Oh Gail!, so sorry to hear about the tragedies in your life. I can’t imagine.
I’m conceal carry as well.
May God Bless you on your journey.
My mom passed away in 2002 after a long battle with Alzheimers at 67. That disease sucks by the way. A three year thief.
My dad passed away Aug. last year.
My sister suicided herself with opiods and alcohol, died in October this year at 63.
Be joyful and know there are people who love you.
We can’t change the past.
Like you said, “I want everyday God give me.”
Love,
Eddie
WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE!?!?
</sarc>
Only Trump’s second term can save US (that is, Canadians) and the world, as well as the U.S.!
You’re a good person... lots of kindness in your heart.
Democrat policies NOT legally enforceable...
Legality has nothing to do with in when we accepted it for nine months
My elderly neighbor was in a nursing home and kept tearing her mask off. The nursing home staff isolated her to a floor where she was by herself. Family could only visit through a sliding glass door and everyone had to wear masks which meant she could not hear or understand anything that was said by her family.
She stopped eating and died. Heartbreaking.
Any way I got a rash on my back and I sure was ticked of at that stupid Dr
The left hate the elderly, always have.
You need the pneumonia shot every 5 years.
I live in a facility for seniors, many with Alzheimers, because my husband wanted to put me in a place with nursing care after I got out of the hospital.
So I talk to people, which I love to do, and many people are wondering where their children are.
I tell them, “Ma’m / Sir. They aren’t allowed in the building because of Covid.”
It is heartbreaking.
There ought to be a way we can prove strong immunity and get off dumb restrictions.
So the family wouldn’t bring her home?
Fluzone High-Dose is a flu vaccine for people age 65 and
older that’s given by injection. Like other flu vaccines,
Fluzone High-Dose is made up of the three flu strains most
likely to cause the flu during the upcoming flu season.
It’s a guessing game to some extent
“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 would like to know if Cuomo gets any campaign contributions from Long-Term Care Insurance carriers.
None of my business how you arrange things, but my wife and I also like to fall asleep with the TV on too.
I use the sleep timer on the TV to turn it off after 30 minutes or and hour.
Not all TVs have the timer but it’s a very useful feature for us.
How long does a pneumonia shot last?
The pneumonia shot is a vaccine that helps protect you against pneumococcal disease, or diseases caused by bacteria known as Streptococcus pneumoniae. The vaccine can help protect you from pneumococcal disease for many years.
One of the most common causes of pneumonia is infection of the lungs with the bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae.
These bacteria mainly affect your lungs and can cause sometimes life-threatening infections in other parts of your body, too, including the bloodstream (bacteremia), or brain and spine (meningitis).
The pneumonia shot is especially recommended if you fall into one of these age groups:
* Younger than 2 years old: four shots (at 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, and then a booster between 12 and 15 months)
* 65 years old or older: two shots, which will last you the rest of your life
* Between 2 and 64 years old: between one and three shots if you have certain immune system disorders or if you’re a smoker
Our daughter came own with meningitis when she was seven month old. She had already been able to stand up and hold on the railing of her play pen before she got ill.
She was a very ill baby, but she had a good Physician. My husband thanked him when she was released.
She did have Nerve damage in her left ear. She is deaf, and she needs a hearing aid in her right ear, especially if she uses her cell phone or gets a phone call.
She was 18 month old when she walked by herself, because she had to learn everything over again from the time she was a new born.
She is married and she and her husband have a 14 Year old son. They live in Amarillo, TX
Yeah, I am hoocked
The democrats are OK with this. They are eager for the new people to start pouring into the country to replace the old folks.
They can’t get rid of the old ones fast enough! Just ask andrew cuuuuoomo.
He called the Nurses station but no one came. So he tore the IV out of his arm and went to the bathroom.
They found him in the morning laying on the floor bled to death.
He had turned 62 years old on December 4 and had planned to visit us with my mother after he retired later that year.
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