Woman, 29, Will End Her Life In Nov. 1

[Ice_nine]

Hello friends, has anyone seen this story circulating on thier respective social media sites?

 

I have a lot of feelings, concerns, and thoughts about this. It's a lot to process emotionally as well as intellectually, especially with the fact that the few people who have retweeted/posted the story are pro-assisted suicide at least in this matter.

 

My questions for you all, is how do you respond in a Christian way, to a largely unbelieving, or only nominally religious society who no longer sees the value of suffering? I've heard that it's "selfish" to tether our loved ones to life while they become incontinent and lost their mental faculties (perhaps, as in the case with degenerative brain diseases) even become violent or hostile in their last stage of life, people should die with dignity (insinuating that those who do suffer like that till the end are somehow undignified in doing so). I've heard people say "we are kinder to our pets than to our people," in this regard.

 

Just because I see value in suffering doesn't mean I'm voyeuristic in that I want to see other people suffer. I'm not sitting up on my high horse wishing for other people to suffer, deciding how much pain they must endure. Nor do I think God is gleefully twisting limbs just for the sake of causing pain, but I do firmly believe that he allows suffering to enter our lives so that we may become closer to Him, to the Suffering Servant, the Son of God. The greater the trial, the greater the reward, but people lack faith and they don't see that.

 

Conversely I don't like when our side says "their only making an appeal to emotion" as if that invalidates their argument. Religious folks make appeals to emotion all the time, and I think emotion is a useful faculty when used in conjunction with one's intellect, to make moral decisions. A divorce between the emotion and the intellect is the problem, no?

 

So I tried to keep this brief, but overall I'll restate my question: how do you respond to these stories both internally and to other people. Is it worth even engaging the issue amongst those who lack faith and don't see the value of suffering at all?

Edited October 20, 2014 by Ice_nine

[CatherineM]

I hate seeing it as brave. Since when is taking the easy way out brave. Facing the unknown, with nothing more than a prayer, is real bravery.

[PhuturePriest]

As a good Priest I know has pointed out, it makes no sense to see Robin Williams' end as a tragedy and this as bravery. In both cases, the person feels despair and that the only way to fix the issue is to kill themselves. If one is brave, so is the other.

[HisChildForever]

From my POV, Robin Williams suffered from a debilitating mental disease that prevented him from thinking rationally. Unless the tumor is impacting her competence--which I doubt, since I'm sure they did a lot of tests before giving her the prescription--it's disturbing to me for a person of sound mind to make such a final decision.

[PhuturePriest]

From my POV, Robin Williams suffered from a debilitating mental disease that prevented him from thinking rationally. Unless the tumor is impacting her competence--which I doubt, since I'm sure they did a lot of tests before giving her the prescription--it's disturbing to me for a person of sound mind to make such a final decision.

 

I don't think it's safe to say she is in a perfect state of mind. Not many facing death do so with a clear Dumbledore-esque state of mind.

[blazeingstar]

From my POV, Robin Williams suffered from a debilitating mental disease that prevented him from thinking rationally. Unless the tumor is impacting her competence--which I doubt, since I'm sure they did a lot of tests before giving her the prescription--it's disturbing to me for a person of sound mind to make such a final decision.

 

Severe pain and suffering messes with your brain, especially once it's hard to eat food.  I had a severe kidney infection among other kidney problems and was in the hospital for a week, during which I was often branded NPO, which left me in tears because even though I wasn't very hungry I just wanted chips.  I was pretty irrational.  My husband would visit and I would just cry....and that was just one week in the hospital with pain meds and such.

 

....her physically illness are just as, if not more debilitating than mental illness.

[HisChildForever]

I don't think it's safe to say she is in a perfect state of mind. Not many facing death do so with a clear Dumbledore-esque state of mind.

 

They take a lot of care to ensure that the person is competent to make the decision.

[PhuturePriest]

They take a lot of care to ensure that the person is competent to make the decision.

 

In that case, this shows the evils that occur when the deadly concoction of relativism and hedonism are mixed together and made the staple-points of society.

[blazeingstar]

They take a lot of care to ensure that the person is competent to make the decision.

 

yeahhhhhh  Like they take a lot of care to ensure that people are actually brain dead.  http://abc7.com/news/jahi-mcmath-case-family-says-brain-dead-girl-moves-on-command/336470/

[Archaeology cat]

Every time I see this, I think of the vast difference in my grandfathers' deaths. Dag had pancreatic cancer, very painful. He was surrounded by all of us, and his last conscious act was to squeeze my grandmother's hand while my cousin sang "You Are. My Sunshine." We prayed, sang, read the. Bible. It was sad and beautiful at the same time.

PapaDoc, on the other hand, had a stroke and didn't want to keep living like that, so he refused all food and water. I understand his fear of being dependent on others so completely, and I know he didn't share my beliefs. I know I can't imagine the anguish Brittany Maynard must feel either, but if pray she reconsiders.

[4588686]

From my POV, Robin Williams suffered from a debilitating mental disease that prevented him from thinking rationally. Unless the tumor is impacting her competence--which I doubt, since I'm sure they did a lot of tests before giving her the prescription--it's disturbing to me for a person of sound mind to make such a final decision.

 

 

Then if, god forbid, you are ever put in the same position, you should make a different decision.  Since you're not, maybe you shouldn't second guess somebody who is.  

[beatitude]

I hate seeing it as brave. Since when is taking the easy way out brave. Facing the unknown, with nothing more than a prayer, is real bravery.

 

I am not sure that this woman would view it as 'the easy way out'. From her perspective, it may well seem that she is faced with two terrible frightening choices and that neither is good. She only talks about the decision to die as being 'less terrifying', not that it's not terrifying.

 

This is one reason why I don't think that we as Catholics should try and frame the euthanasia debate as a choice between bravery and cowardice. Some people might see the decision to die as 'brave', but that doesn't mean the sufferer would - people often respond to anyone who lives with debilitating illness with "Gosh, you are brave" and I've seen this produce a lot of eye-rolls from the ill person. "This is brave" seems to be society's shorthand for "I'd hate to be in that position" and it says more about the speaker than the person they're referring to.

 

In response to the original question - how I respond to these stories - I make a conscious effort to show the value of life in everything I do. When I worked in the inpatient dementia service, I never spoke about patients as though they weren't there or couldn't hear me (some staff did). When I was with patients who couldn't speak I used the clues around their bed space (the photos and personal items they'd brought from home) to furnish a guess at what they were like as people and I talked to them about those things. I brought in pictures and music and magazines that I thought they were going to like based on what I'd observed of them. I found out patients' favourite foods and asked the catering department to take these into account when planning the menu. When nurses were complaining about a particular patient being difficult, I would never join in, but instead volunteer to be that patient's 1:1 support person. That kind of thing. There was one woman who had a reputation for being very difficult and demanding - always crying and screaming - and due to this private policy of mine I ended up spending most of my time with her. One day as I settled her on her bed for a nap she took my hand, raised it to her cheek, and said drowsily, "I'm that thankful for you." That made me tear up a little, because even though we could not understand her very well any more, I knew that she was registering that I cared..

 

I have also worked in a school for young people who have profound intellectual disabilities, who often receive substandard healthcare from doctors who don't believe their lives are worth as much. I have been involved in advocacy work on their behalf and I try to challenge the stereotypes about them whenever I encounter them. For example, once I met a support worker who said that her client "couldn't communicate at all". I said lightly, "To paraphrase from Dr Who, I've been working with people with severe intellectual disability for years, and I never met a person who couldn't communicate before." I tried to gently encourage her to realise that communication is two-way, and that she needs to make an effort to understand the person rather than to assume that just because the person can't talk they're not trying to say anything to her. Not being able to speak is not the same as having nothing to say. I think that when you tackle attitudes like these, you help people to realise that all lives are valuable, even ones that look very difficult.

 

My internal reaction when I see someone who doesn't want to go on any more is to pray for them. I do not know what they're experiencing from the inside, but God does, and God can reach them.

Edited October 21, 2014 by beatitude

[Lilllabettt]

It is impossible for someone of sound mind to "want to die."  if she thinks death is the less terrifying option, she is confused about what death is.

It is a ghastly, fundamentally unnatural process.

it is a humiliating, hideous, ugly event, 100% of the time, no matter 'how you go.' I don't care how religious someone is or who they've got around them or how many "peaceful" deaths anybody has witnessed. 

On a cosmic scale, death is a breakdown. Every time someone dies there is less energy available to "run" the universe. The "circle of life' you've heard about is just the universe scraping together the usable energy that remains and using it try to turn over the engine. Every time someone dies it takes longer and longer to start the engine.  Harder and harder to fix the breakdown. Each death is a step closer towards that day when all the cosmos is reduced to a ruined, empty, radioactive wasteland.  

so your death directly contributes to the destruction of the universe. 

and when all is said and done, you poop your pants.

repeat: no death is beautiful. no death is peaceful. no death is dignified. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Credo in Deum]

Hello friends, has anyone seen this story circulating on thier respective social media sites?

 

I have a lot of feelings, concerns, and thoughts about this. It's a lot to process emotionally as well as intellectually, especially with the fact that the few people who have retweeted/posted the story are pro-assisted suicide at least in this matter.

 

My questions for you all, is how do you respond in a Christian way, to a largely unbelieving, or only nominally religious society who no longer sees the value of suffering? I've heard that it's "selfish" to tether our loved ones to life while they become incontinent and lost their mental faculties (perhaps, as in the case with degenerative brain diseases) even become violent or hostile in their last stage of life, people should die with dignity (insinuating that those who do suffer like that till the end are somehow undignified in doing so). I've heard people say "we are kinder to our pets than to our people," in this regard.

 

Just because I see value in suffering doesn't mean I'm voyeuristic in that I want to see other people suffer. I'm not sitting up on my high horse wishing for other people to suffer, deciding how much pain they must endure. Nor do I think God is gleefully twisting limbs just for the sake of causing pain, but I do firmly believe that he allows suffering to enter our lives so that we may become closer to Him, to the Suffering Servant, the Son of God. The greater the trial, the greater the reward, but people lack faith and they don't see that.

 

Conversely I don't like when our side says "their only making an appeal to emotion" as if that invalidates their argument. Religious folks make appeals to emotion all the time, and I think emotion is a useful faculty when used in conjunction with one's intellect, to make moral decisions. A divorce between the emotion and the intellect is the problem, no?

 

So I tried to keep this brief, but overall I'll restate my question: how do you respond to these stories both internally and to other people. Is it worth even engaging the issue amongst those who lack faith and don't see the value of suffering at all?

 

 

This is a great question and one I ask myself a lot when speaking with others about these topics.  It's very difficult to engage people because a lot of them are suffering and do not see the point, or they see loved ones suffering and do not see the point of it.   With that said I try to establish common ground.  A lot of people call euthanasia "death with dignity" which begs the question; why?  Are we saying natural deaths are undignified or that those who die natural deaths are lacking dignity?  Is our dignity as human beings found in the quality of life we live or is our dignity and value intrinsic and therefore not reduced by any physical condition or economic status?  Are those who are handicapped whether physically or mentally, undignified? When does one not have dignity?  And if we approve of a state that society claims is undignified and therefore justification for euthanasia, will this then be applied to others without their consent? Will they be deemed unfit to make the choice themselves once they reach this so called undignified state?

 

Such questions are not only at the heart of the euthanasia debate but also the abortion debate as well.  

[HisChildForever]

Then if, god forbid, you are ever put in the same position, you should make a different decision.  Since you're not, maybe you shouldn't second guess somebody who is.  

 

Who said anything about second guessing? Her situation clearly fulfilled the requirements of the law or else she would not have that medication in her cabinet. My comment was meant to illustrate how difficult it is for me to wrap my head around this. It's frightening. No judgment or condemnation here. In other words I expressed my thoughts. Last I checked it was okay to do so.