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To: Ohioan from Florida
>> I used to have a designation on my driver's license to be an organ donor. I had it removed when I got my license renewed a few weeks ago.

Good! Same here. The incident was so frustrating that another member of the family ripped up her living will. It was on my in-law's side, so I had no input into the decisions. It was a bitter pill all around.

378 posted on 02/04/2006 3:30:32 PM PST by T'wit (As they say: If you like the law , sausage or Bill Clinton, don't watch them being made.)
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To: T'wit
Good! Same here. The incident was so frustrating that another member of the family ripped up her living will.

A few short years ago, I was in the hospital, in dire circumstances. I was waken up in the wee hours of the morning, my bed surrounded by doctors and "other medical professionals", and told that I would be dead within two hours unless I accepted a public anonymous blood trandfusion.

Aside:
I had steadfastly refused this demand -- to the point of leaving one hospital "AMA" and self-admitting to another a hundred miles away. I had even offered to accept known blood from friends or relatives. No-dice. I was told I was prohibited from accepting any transfusion other than public "anonymous" blood. So much for "my body, my choice", and "choice in medicine", eh?

Now, the punchline: I was presented with "the papers", and pressured to sign them. These people expected me to die, and they were intent on either coercing me to accept "public" blood, or, signing "the papers". I would do neither, and they were not pleased.

My attitude at this point boiled down to "Piss on 'em!" I hit that point when, upon being assured "for the nth time" that public anonymous blood was perfectly safe to inject into my veins, I interrupted and said can I ask you a question? I asked, what would you, Mr. Doctor, do, if, while in the process of injecting a pint of that 'perfectly safe' blood into MY arm, discover that the hose had a small leak, and a single DROP of it had fallen onto YOUR arm?

I caught him off guard. He replied as I expected. He said that he would immediately stop whatever it was that he was doing, and go scrub up, with strong disinfectant.

I said uh-huh, I see. It's "safe" enough to put INTO my arm, but it's too dangerous to even allow a drop to TOUCH your arm. I think I'll take a pass on that offer, doc.

But I digress.

When the "professionals" thought I was going to die, they were intensely coercive in their efforts to get me to "sign the papers", and it really pissed me off.

I imagine they are accustomed to getting their way. Most people are not stubborn Cossack sons of bitches like me. <g> MOST people will cave when cornered and pressured. Unfortunately. (Unfortunately NOT only for them -- it's unfortunate for all of us, because the more compliant "the masses" are, the more we all are placed in the utterly unreasonable situation of having to fight for our rights in a scenario where we should be able to trust "professionals" to look after our best interests. (Without "best interests" defined as "killing us".)

Postscript: I never "signed the papers". I never "took the public blood". I never died.

441 posted on 02/05/2006 12:27:17 PM PST by Don Joe (We've traded the Rule of Law for the Law of Rule.)
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To: T'wit
PPS:

Whenever I see someone engaged in what I perceive as a pathological defense of a pathological practice (i.e., a dug-in defense of the "medical" propriety of killing off the defenseless), I have to wonder if there's a bit of a "personal issue" at werk, similar to the way that the most strident defenders of the "right to abort" will often turn out to be women who have aborted their own children, and now have something of a vested interest in proving -- not so much to "the world", as to themselves, that they really did NOT "do something wrong, something evil."

I would not be surprised if a statistical study of those who stridently advocate for euthanasia (regardless of the nomenclature they use) to be persons who have actively participated in "the decision" for a family member -- and now are deeply vested on a very personal level in the "need" to validate the practice.

If, as I suspect, this is the case for many of these people, then I expect that no amount of reasoning with them will accomplish anything at all. For them, it is a matter of absolute necessity that they maintain their position at all costs. To abandon their position would be to face an unthinkable alternative, quite likely entailing a complete emotional breakdown.

443 posted on 02/05/2006 12:35:41 PM PST by Don Joe (We've traded the Rule of Law for the Law of Rule.)
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