Posted on 09/30/2007 10:01:27 AM PDT by wagglebee
Lovelle Svart woke up Friday knowing it was the day she would die.
There was much to do. Her family and closest friends would be gathering at 11 a.m. in her mother's apartment in the Southwest Portland assisted-living center where they both lived.
She directed trips to the grocery store and even called AAA to jump-start the dead battery of her 2006 Scion. She double-checked delivery of food platters from Fred Meyer: turkey sandwiches, strawberries and grapes, pretzels, almonds and sparkling water. There would be pink roses on the dining table and a boombox in the corner to play music, including the polka tunes she loved.
Lovelle made one last trip to "the bridge," a wooden footbridge in a nearby park where she had found quiet sanctuary the past few weeks as painful cancerous tumors spread from her lungs through her chest and her throat.
The consummate planner, she had choreographed the day. She wanted to leave time -- five or so hours -- for storytelling, polka dancing and private goodbyes. And at 4 p.m., she intended to drink a fatal dose of medication, allowed by Oregon law, that would end her life.
A smoker since age 19, Lovelle found out five years ago that she had inoperable lung cancer. Radiation and chemotherapy slowed the cancer's spread but could not stop it.
In June, Lovelle's doctor warned her that she was likely to die within six months, making her eligible for Oregon's unique, 10-year-old Death With Dignity Act.
What some call doctor-assisted suicide and others call physician aid-in-dying or hastened death is one of the most passionately argued issues in U.S. medicine and politics. Proponents frame the question in terms of personal choice, death with dignity and freedom from pain. Opponents say assisted suicide violates the Hippocratic tradition of "First, do no harm" and undermines the doctor-patient relationship by turning physicians from healers into accomplices of death.
Far more people ask for a lethal prescription than actually use the drug. Either their symptoms overwhelm them before they make a final decision, or they find other ways to control those symptoms, including pain.
Lovelle was determined to keep control, if possible, of when and how she died.
On July 1, she filled out and signed a one-page form titled, "REQUEST FOR MEDICATION TO END MY LIFE IN A HUMANE AND DIGNIFIED MANNER." By signing, she agreed that she knew the expected result -- death -- and was aware of alternatives, such as hospice care.
By law, she also had to make two oral requests at least 15 days apart. Her doctor wrote the prescription for a lethal dose of barbiturate in late July, and she had it filled Aug. 7. She kept the orange bottle of clear liquid in a plastic grocery bag on a stack of towels in her bedroom closet -- "hidden in plain sight," as she put it.
She was still unsure whether she would take the drug, but said she took comfort in knowing it was there.
Once she knew she had less than six months to live, Lovelle also decided to try to start a more open public discussion of dying. During the past three months, mostly through a series of online video diaries for The Oregonian, she shared publicly the experience of facing death.
Lovelle, 62, has "touched a chord" by chronicling her "deeply intimate struggle with mortality," said Dr. Susan Tolle, director of the Center for Ethics in Health Care at Oregon Health & Science University.
"People are following closely," Tolle said Friday. "They want to know what happens to her.
"Lovelle has become their friend."
Friday morning, Lovelle stuck a yellow note on the door of her mother's apartment: "Please Do NOT Disturb. Unless Urgent. Thank you."
She wore a blue sweat suit over a "Cancer Fighter" T-shirt.
Lovelle delighted in Friday's blustery weather and a forecast that included possible thunder and lightning about the time she planned to die. "Oh, the woo-woo crowd will have a blast with that," she said.
After AAA jump-started her car, she left the engine running to recharge the battery, returned to her apartment and set the kitchen timer for 10 minutes to remind her.
When a friend later expressed shock that Lovelle had spent part of the last morning of her life dealing with a dead car battery, Lovelle explained:
"The car goes to my sister. I didn't want it to be dead."
In the living room, her family and friends sat and told stories and jokes, sometimes with political references. Sometimes they laughed a bit too loudly, out of nervousness at the occasion. Twice, Lovelle came out of the bedroom where she was having private meetings to say, "No politics!"
A bit later, Lovelle and George Eighmey, head of Compassion & Choices of Oregon, an advocacy group that works with most of the Oregonians who end their lives under the Death With Dignity Act, danced a brief but rousing polka.
By midafternoon, the studiously punctual Lovelle was falling behind her schedule. No one complained.
But a little before 4 p.m., she decided it was time to make her final preparations. First, she had to take the two pre-medication pills -- to calm her stomach and control vomiting. They were hard to swallow, given the tumors in her neck, but she got them down with water.
"It" would be in about an hour, she told her family. Time now to sit alone with her mom, Vi Svart, in her bedroom for the last time. The rest of the group sat in the living room, debating whether they wanted -- and whether Lovelle wanted them -- to be in the room with her at the end.
Lovelle's three siblings and her mother, despite deep misgivings about her decision to end her life, supported Lovelle in her choice.
"I feel so at peace," she said. "I've had such a good time. . . . And today has been so wonderful.
"I'm really ready to go. I'm ready."
About 4:30, Lovelle announced she wanted "a hugging line" -- one last hug for everybody. "You'll be first and last," she said, turning to her mom.
Lovelle stood in the center of the living room and embraced them one by one -- long hugs with tears and laughter.
Then one last cigarette break on her favorite sitting stone next to the parking lot. Afterward, Lovelle took the elevator up to the third-floor apartment and hung up her coat and hat.
"OK," she said to no one in particular. "I'm going to get into bed now."
In many ways, Lovelle fits the pattern of Oregonians who choose to end their lives under the Death With Dignity Act.
Like most, she had cancer. She was in her 60s. Well educated and insured. Not formally religious. White. Enrolled in hospice care.
And fiercely independent.
"I could be very gregarious -- and very private," she said. "Very much the partygoer -- and very much want to stay home and read."
She was chosen Miss Cafeteria at Crater Lake Lodge in the summer of 1963, and she has the lemon-yellow rayon dress to prove it. She left it hanging in a plastic dry-cleaning bag on her bathroom door.
She loved surfboarding and polka-dancing and both her first and last names, "because they are different, and I like things that are different."
And she liked, as she was the first to admit, being in control.
Lovelle decided it was more important to die by taking the lethal drug while she had a degree of control over her body than to wait for nature to take its course. But how to decide when?
Her symptoms -- shortness of breath, stomach distress, weakness and pain -- were intensifying. If she waited too long, she would be unable to drink and swallow the lethal drug on her cupboard shelf.
Lovelle sought a shifty window between life-worth-living and incapacity, "this tiny bit of freedom" when, for her last act, she could swallow a fatal potion in the company of family and friends. "That's when I want to go."
Last Sunday, after a painful, restless night, Lovelle decided it was almost time.
Swallowing was more painful than ever, like choking on broken glass or razor blades, she said. She had barely eaten in two weeks. She started taking morphine to dull her pain.
She told family and friends to come Friday.
Lovelle sat on the foot of the bed, while 10 others gathered around. A photograph of Lovelle as a curly-haired 5-year-old stood on one bedside table; on the other were a glass tumbler containing the liquid medication, which looked like water, along with a container of morphine and Lovelle's ever-present mug of Gatorade. On the wall above the head of the bed were five more family photographs.
With some help, Lovelle yanked off her shoes and socks and slipped partway under the covers.
Eighmey stood by her bedside. He has attended more than three dozen deaths of this kind.
"Is this what you really want?"
"Actually, I'd like to go on partying," Lovelle replied, laughing before turning serious. "But yes."
"If you do take it, you will die."
"Yes."
Ever the detail person, she reminded him that she wanted her glasses and watch removed, "after I fall asleep."
Eighmey warned her that the clear liquid would taste bitter. She needn't gulp it. She would have about a minute and a half to get it down.
Lovelle dipped her right pinky into the glass and tasted.
"Yuck," she said. "That's why I need the Gatorade."
Holding the glass, Eighmey asked her again to affirm that this was her wish.
Yes, she replied.
Someone asked, "Can we have another hugging line?"
One by one, they came to head of the bed for hugs and teary whispers.
"Sweet dreams."
"It's all right."
"I know."
"Thank you for being my big sister."
"All the church is praying for you."
Lovelle was sitting up in bed, three pillows propping her up.
She held the glass tumbler in her right hand, raised it to her lips and drank. It was 8 minutes after 5.
"Most godawful stuff I ever tasted in my life," she said, making a face before taking a sip of Gatorade and plain water.
She laid back and scrunched down under the covers, glasses still on to see her loved ones.
She reached for her mother, who leaned closer, then laid down next to Lovelle, stroking her hand.
"Are you OK, honey?"
"I'm fine, Mom."
"You're not sick?"
"No. I'm peaceful. It stopped raining, the sun's out. And I've had a wonderful day.
Her eyes closed.
"It's starting to hit me now."
For a while, no one moved or spoke, as Lovelle drifted into a coma. Then Lovelle's mom asked for a prayer. Others spoke up with prayers and memories, which prompted other stories. Lovelle's brother Larry read part of William Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality."
Lovelle lay motionless but for the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Her heart slowed but didn't stop.
About an hour into the vigil, Lovelle's mom lit three white candles in cut-glass candlesticks in the living room. "She's still with us," she said.
Hours passed. Given what Lovelle's body had been through -- not only lung cancer but also open-heart surgery in 2004, Eighmey was surprised how long she was lingering. But not her family.
"I hate to say this," one said with a smile, "but this is just like her."
"A little spitfire," agreed another.
"Above average -- that's Lovelle."
"One last reminder that she's the one in control."
Jane O'Dell, a volunteer for Compassion & Choices, sat at Lovelle's bedside all evening, holding her right hand, monitoring her breathing and regularly checking the pulse in her wrist and neck.
About 10:30 p.m., more than five hours after she had taken the drug, O'Dell signaled that Lovelle's breathing had become shallower and more labored. Her pulse dropped, her skin turned pallid and her fingernails bluish. It was more than a minute between breaths.
Family and friends resumed their bedside vigil, and silence again fell over the dark room. Lovelle's chest stopped moving.
Eighmey leaned over at 10:42 p.m. and put his ear to her chest to listen for a heartbeat. He stepped back, shaking his head and spoke in a quiet voice.
"She's gone."
“Can we agree to label you a “secular humanist-moral relativist-Darwinist-quasi-atheist”?”
Nope. Admittedly, I am hard to quantify. I am an arch-conservative who lives by the moral standards of a devout Christian - with a few exceptions. One is that I believe people who are proven by medical science to be beyond hope should be able to choose to be euthanised when their suffering becomes too great to bear. My father was a devout Catholic, a Dr. and discovered his cancer himself. He had every treatment known to medical science at that time (1977-78) and even volunteered for the then-experimental-but-now-standard cis-platin chemotherapy drugs. He knew they would not save him - but did so in the hopes that the data would be of some use to someone else in the future. He never complained to us and was always cheerful and positive. One day I noticed that he looked sicker than usual, and soon after that he stopped whistling. And stopped being positive and cheerful. He used to go around the house happily whistling to himself all the time. He was really good at it and very musically inclined. He could hear a song once and then play it on the piano, for instance. Then one day it stopped. I knew things were not going to go well at that point. He was fortunate that the Dr.s that were treating him were his friends on the staff at the same hospital that he had worked in. Towards the end they kept him sedated with morphine and he went in his sleep. I cannot describe to you what he looked like near the end - he’d lost half his body weight and the cancer disfigured him. I have never gotten over that. I know that I would never have the courage to face what he did - nor should I have to. Nor should anyone. Any possible belief in “God’s mercy” that I could have had in life, died with my father. This does not mean that I am an amoral person, at all. I also think abortions in the 1st trimester should be allowed, but severely frowned upon. Late-term abortions (unless there is a valid medical reason for it - like health of the mother or the foetus will be severely handicapped) and partial-birth abortions make me physically ill. I hate homosexuality - that makes me sick as well. It should be obvious to any decent person that it is an abomination and a disgusting perversion. So no, I am not a moral relativist at all. I am also a big 2nd-amendment supporter and a single-issue voter on 2nd-amendment rights. My wife and I both detest the disgusting hip-hop and anything-goes culture and hate the language being used in movies and in secular fashion today, as well as the general utter lack of morality. I am not a Darwinist - that is a hate-label attributed to people that believe in the mountains of evidence in support of the theory of evolution by those that do not. Darwin’s theories are almost 170 years old - the evidence is much more complete and compelling now than then. As for the quasi-atheist part - well, not really. There is no evidence for the existence of God that is convincing, as there is no certain proof of his non-existence. I guess it would be more accurate to call me extremely skeptical on the subject of the existence of God rather than an outright atheist; atheists insist that there is no God and they have no absolute proof that this is the case. I cannot lie to myself to so I am just highly skeptical. Many people who are intrinsically amoral do espouse atheism - in order to justify their improper behaviors - communists and homosexuals for example. I am disgusted by this kind of rationalization. Being an atheist does not mean that you are morally bankrupt by any means. In terms of morality, I would guess that nearly all of the things that morally outrage you would morally outrage me. The main difference between us as I see it, is who we think is responsible for our lives. I say we are. You would say we have to bend to God’s will. Let’s assume for the moment that you are right. There are over 50 different versions of the Bible – which one is the actual, correct version that God wants us to follow? And how can we be sure?
Was this a paid advertisement in the Oregonian by the ghouls who assist in killing ill people? Or was this pro-death puff piece someone’s idea of objective journalism?
What a sick world.
http://blog.oregonlive.com/multimedia/2007/09/lovelle_svart_1945_2007.html
Nope, this was a highly editorialized puff piece that they tried to pass off as objective.
Thanks for sharing your obsession.
Funny, most people don’t consider opposing murder to be an obsession.
If this woman was facing an inevitable and excruciating death, I won’t begrudge her the choice to choose the time and manner of her death. I know other folks will disagree.
But the way she did it is screamingly narcissistic. She arranged things so she could plan — to the Nth degree — her own funeral. And then attend it.
The messianic obsession is manifested by the culture of death’s desire to play god.
In my writing I study the scriptures in several languages. Interestingly, the more languages in which one reads the scriptures, the more the essence of the written 'epistles' shines, for the Spirit Who inspired the writers of the New Testament 'books' is the same for all of the writers! Here's an example.
In Paul's letters to the various churches he either established or help to establish and edify, Paul maintains one major theme: we are cleansed (in spirit) from our Sinful nature by the blood of Jesus The Christ, and we are then transformed in our soul --a life-long process changing mind, will, and emotions-- by the indwelling presence of God's Spirit, possible in our inner man because of the cleansing Jesus's blood accomplishes when we 'faithe' (act based upon belief and sustained by confidence in the promises of God) that He is sufficient for our need to be cleansed.
[A deeper, 'meaty' issue to explore when you have accepted Christ as personal Savior, is the one God includes in the Bible for our study and contemplation, 'works versus faith', and the historic process the early Christians went through as the issue bounced back and forth between Paul and Peter and James and the various Churches. I personally believe God included that issue in the Bible so we can study it and the outcome for our current edification.]
If you choose to test this series of notions, it will not matter which translation in which language, this theme will shine forth clearly, even when you read the letters written by Peter or the Gospels written by John, Mark, Mathew, or Luke. The reason for this is that the message IS the Gospel. The Gospel is administered by God's Spirit.
If you choose to do it, you can even trace the Gospel in the pages of the Old Testament, whether read in Hebrew or in Greek (as in the 3rd Century BC Septuagint). The reason this is possible is related to what scriptures Paul preached from ... he quotes the Septuagint often and precisely.
To cut to the chase, there is not really conflict in the Gospel as God's Spirit administers it through His Word, but men can and have made minor changes, such as when the Bible was translated from Latin and Greek to English in the day of King James; the word 'agape' is translated as charity and love, and a couple of other alternate English terms, but the message remains clear, yet when one digs into the Greek and sees that 'agape' (one of three Greek word for Love) is the word translated so many differnt ways in the English, the Gospel shines even more, not less. [A short Book, Colossians, will reveal this interesting tendency to translate 'agape' as charity in several places ... the King James compilers didn't like reapeating a word too often in a paragraph, though Paul repeated for empahsis.]
So, which 'version' is accurate? They all are! Read the modern language version first because it will flow quickly, leaving an impression which can be amplified by, then studying in, the NIV or King James or other modern version. What makes the newest versions so important is the stack of older manuscripts now available that were not known in the days of the King James translation. Which one does God want us to follow?... None of them, He wants you to follow Him, THEN be edified by His Word in any version you feel His voice coming through! It's so easy too, just whisper a thank you to God for dying on the Cross to redeem YOU and believe in your heart that God has in fact raised Him from the dead, and you will be saved, right then, not at some pie in the sky future, and by His loving presence you will have an astonishingly interesting and glorious life thereafter! That new life starts with your open affirmation that you believe God when you submit yourself for baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ... in any Christian denomination you choose to start your journey with. He will drierct you thereafter as you listen to His voice within. And this exact same thing has happened for hundreds of millions since 33 AD! Join the family, read the book.
This woman was a loser...a failer.. and a coward..
She was none of those things. She loved, and was loved by, many people, some of whom found her so remarkable that they did an incredibly difficult thing in coming to be with her on her last day. A person with that much love in her life is anything but the nasty things you ascribe to her. How dare you, anyway?
She gave up and gave in and didnt bother to fight...
She did no such thing. Rather than meekly succumb to pain and disease, she chose her own path. She chose not to give up her dignity and self-determination. She chose not to give in to cancer, but to choose for herself how her life would end.
Life is a gift from God...nobody is to take it..
As my wife always says, if you give someone a gift, it is theirs to do with as they wish, not yours any longer.
Indeed, God gives us life, which makes it all the more meaningful when we bring that life to seek His leadership of it. You cannot compel love, eh?
This is about “duty to die” creeping in.Eventually the government will say, society says you must die because you are a burden.
I find this comment very confusing. The entire article was about this woman's desire to choose this for herself. Where does "duty to die" or the government come in?
What a tragic way to die. What a waste.
The same reason people don't lick themselves clean.
There are different rules for different species.
Animals are subject to man. To whom is a man subject?
sw
Perhaps I missed it in the article, but I saw nothing to indicate that Lovelle was Catholic. How does the Catholic dogma pertain to her and her decision?
Well, that’s how *I* always felt about it.
True believers, people who believe in Heaven and the great rewards of After - I’d think they’d embrace that. Most people believe in our concept of Heaven from Sunday School -fields of gold, no pain, everyone you loved present, pure happiness. I fail to understand why that would be something to dread, that people would prefer to stay in incredible pain here on earth (or want their loved ones to), instead of wanting them out of pain whatever the belief is.
I also think people with lingering or painful illnesses or diseases come to terms with death long before the families do. I miss my dad for selfish reasons, I don’t want him ‘gone’, I want to be able to call him whenever, wherever, still be ‘his girl’. But that’s the selfish side of me. I wouldn’t want him here but in pain, debilitated, suffering, dependent (even though I would have gladly taken care of him) because *he* would have hated it. That wouldn’t have been ‘quality of life’ to him.
Before and after his death, I watched my MIL die over a 2 year period, in and out of the hospital and nursing homes. She was only 67 when it started. And since I had so recently and unexpectedly lost my own father, I realized that death is not a terrible thing compared to ‘living’ the way she did during that time. All her kids were ready to see her go - she was suffering a *lot*. Only my FIL wasn’t ready and I think she hung on for him. My H told him within her hearing ‘You need to let her know you’ll be ok. That she doesn’t have to fight anymore. Dad, we’ll all take care of you, you won’t be alone. We’re here and we’ll stay here.’ My FIL said he couldn’t, but H kept saying ‘She needs to rest. We’re here, you won’t be alone’ and within 2 days she was gone. She fought hard for a long time but it did no good.
Again, I’d rather have a last day filled with everything good than 2 years like she did.
LOL ~ The combination of your screen name, tagline, and post #108 is comically ironic.
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