Really great!
Lawmakers would kill right to die with dignity
MORGAN
By LUCY MORGAN, Times Tallahassee Bureau Chief
Published March 12, 2005
Our Legislature has stopped passing laws to keep Terri Schiavo alive and turned to meddling in a right the rest of us have.
The right to die with dignity did not come easily. Republican Sen. Jim King of Jacksonville fought for several years to give Floridians the right after watching his parents die.
Now lawmakers want to upend that law and replace it with a law that presumes anyone without a living will wants to have a feeding tube installed to prolong life. Current law lets a health care surrogate, who is often a family member, make that decision.
Count me out. We've had a little experience with this around our house. I would not want my life prolonged by a feeding tube if I were incapacitated with no hope of recovery.
Some of you may recall the articles I wrote about my own mother's fight to die with dignity.
She had a living will that specifically forbade a feeding tube or heroic efforts to prolong her life. But that didn't stop nursing home officials from trying to do it anyway.
A stroke victim who had been bedridden for several years without recognizing family members, Mother could not have been clearer about what she wanted. She quit eating and spat the food back at anyone who tried to feed her. I don't know how much mind she had left, but I do know how many times she told me and everyone else who would listen that we had to do something to keep her from getting that way.
She always emphasized it when we visited an old friend who stared vacantly into space each time we visited her nursing home.
"Don't let me live like that," she would say as she stopped in Willery Jackson's doorway. Even with a living will we had trouble stopping it.
We finally hired a lawyer to enforce her wishes and keep caregivers from adding a feeding tube to her body.
Unfortunately, living wills get lost as family members age and move, and the most vociferous opponent of feeding tubes could well wind up with no piece of paper to explain those wishes.
Fortunately, my sister and I agreed. When family members disagree, we get situations like the Terri Schiavo case.
After Mother died, the bills indicated that the nursing home collected more than $30,000 from Medicare and Medicaid for giving her occupational, physical and speech therapy in those final two months.
Pardon our suspicious minds, but it occurred to us that she had become a cash crop, tended like a vegetable by a health care industry that was making a lot of money by keeping her just barely alive.
She was 91, could not speak or recognize anyone and was besieged by skin rashes and blisters that merely added to her misery.
Having a living will helped us deal with the situation, but I hate to think of how long she might have lingered in misery if the proposals now being considered in our Legislature were in place, or if she lacked family members dedicated to fighting for her wishes.
Allowing the state to step in and make decisions for us in end-of-life situations would strip family members of any control over the destiny of a hopelessly ill parent.
In rushing to save the life of Terri Schiavo, lawmakers imperil the rights of families to decide these things.
The stories about my own fight to enforce Mother's instructions generated a lot of mail, much of it from family members who faced very similar situations.
Some of it came from Floridians who had given up their lives to care for elderly parents at home so they, not a nursing home, could control those final decisions.
Some mail came from families appalled at the money being spent on health care that could not have benefited anyone. One letter came from the daughter of a hospitalized woman who was comatose and could not speak. Medicare was paying a psychiatrist to regularly visit because she was depressed.
Will those Floridians who want control over how their own lives end sit silently by and watch state government strip them of those rights?
Whatever the Legislature does, all of this should be reason enough for everyone to rush out and make a living will.
Don't leave this decision up to government.
[Last modified March 12, 2005, 00:48:09]
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/12/Columns/Lawmakers_would_kill_.shtml