This is a taboo subject so no way are we going to have accurate numbers. I am hoping a poll will give us some baseline as I suspect it is far more common than most people realize.
Anyway, do you know anyone who has used medical advice or help to end his/her life? Has a caregiver to someone you know provided a method (e.g. drugs) or instructions on how end things as humanely and comfortable as possible? I realize there is some grey area, but I am talking about deliberate actions (or inaction I suppose) that result in death when death itself wasn’t imminent.
Well, I indirectly know of a few people who did it… but euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands. I also happen to know a doctor, who finds it very difficult and usually ends op taking the rest of the day off, whenever he is part of such a procedure (patient is terminally ill and suffering; and judged as such by at least two doctors).
I’m fairly sure my grandad died of a painkiller overload. It was kinda necessary, and kinda not, and we had a conversation with the hospice staff about the consequences of increasing his load that much, with many pregnant pauses. It was just a shame it couldn’t be official so that we could be there with him as he passed.
My mother’s a geriatric nurse, so I expect she was occasionally the one delivering the extra drugs after such a conversation.
This nearly happened with a co-worker’s mother. At the hospice, she was unresponsive. The staff suggested not to take her to the hospital, but “wait it out” for 24 hours. They claimed it was an “end of life” thing and that they could find nothing wrong with her except just being old.
My co-worker stayed the night, waiting it out. Her mother rallied, lived and is doing much better now. Took her to the hospital, and found out that she’d had a minor stroke, and pneumonia.
I’ve had family members “bumped off” when terminally ill, yup. It’s not especially uncommon but it’s ridiculous how it’s actually done, all nudge nudge wink wink.
In Oregon physician-assisted suicide is legal. Despite this, in 12 years I’ve never seen it happen. Ever. Never known anyone who utilized it. Never had a coworker who witnessed it. Never seen a script for lethal drugs, despite being a med-aide for 5 1/2 years.
All the assisted suicides I’ve ever heard of have been FOAF’s grandma or somebody. Never anyone with a verifiable medical record. Never heard of it happening that I could actually verify.
So, I’m willing to bet it happens very, very rarely. In my experience people simply want to live, even if they are terminal, in considerable pain, etc. The will to live is very strong.
71 patients used Oregon’s “Death with Dignity” act guidelines to end their lives in 2011, and a total of 596 have from inception in 1998 to Feb 29 of this year. So no, it doesn’t appear that people are lining up in droves to die by this method.
Like Lancia, I’m also rather doubtful that physicians or nurses Ever just open up the morphine drip weeks or even days before a patient would naturally expire. Minutes, perhaps, when a patient is in obvious pain or distress. And then, only if there was a separate, medically justifiable reason to administer that dose of that drug. But I sincerely can not believe that any hospice, as a matter of either policy or “that’s just what’s done,” intentionally hastens the death of a terminal patient, period.
We were told in nursing school that if we were treating an EOL patient and the Dr. ordered a dose of pain medicine that we knew would kill them we were still to administer the specified dose. I was shocked. Plus DNRs are pretty close to letting a person die, though I will be a DNR myself if I ever get hospitalized and have little to no hope of recovering to a reasonable capacity. If I crash I just want them to let me go.
Hijack: Reading this, I was thinking I should move there when I get older, but I see that there has to be a terminal condition that will lead to death within 6 months. I’m way more worried about a slow, lingering death from dementia-type or other degenerative diseases, which doesn’t really have that neat end-date.
I don’t really want to get into the who’s of the situation so I leave that out except to say that no one involved was a doctor or nurse or caregiver in any respect.
Having said that, this person was in the final stages of cancer. Hospice had given family members dosage instructions for giving him liquid morphine after she left for the day which they had been doing (properly) for the last week or two. The last night, two of the son-in-laws were over there (there was round the clock family at his bedside at that point) spending the night chit chatting in his room over some drinks and decided that, that night, they were going to drink ‘to him’ instead of ‘with him’. Instead of following the dosage instructions, they gave him a few drops every time he moaned, he finally passed the next morning a few hours after they left. I would assume all the extra morphine probably had something to do with it. My understanding is that he he had been going downhill for the past month or two, been bedridden for two weeks or so and basically unconscious for the past few days. I’d guess that even without the help he didn’t have more then a few days.
Also note in Oregon the law is a person must administer their own lethal meds. Absolutely no help from anyone. The doctor(s) write the prescription. The patient does all the rest. One can argue that the physician does not “help” the patient die (the argument that managed to win over voters, and one I think is bullshit, but whatever). So even in this scenario the patient is responsible for their own death. How one feels about this law depends on their own morals, but the nuts and bolts of the process is pretty cut and dried.
Assisted Euthanasia has some interesting facets to it, people have been tried and jailed for it. I’m sure if you look up the definition of euthanasia, you’ll find my description fits it just fine. There is, necessarily, some overlap between murder and assisted euthanasia or suicide. But since this is likely to be a touchy subject, I think it would be best if you’d keep comments and judgements like that to yourself.
I know one. A friend’s mother, someone I have indeed actually met, dying of cancer, and it was very apparently the correct choice. Her passing was almost a relief for the family; she’d been lingering, in terrible pain, for quite some time. It’s definitely a difficult bureaucratic process, and as much as I support the law, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing! All of the horror stories that opponents of the process told haven’t come to pass, and Washington State has followed our lead with a very similar law.
I took care of my mother in her final monthlong battle with cancer, with the help of hospice.Thank god she was never in terrible pain like you hear horror stories about, but if it had reached that point, I seriously would have given her a lethal dose of pain meds and ended her suffering. I still find it mind blowing that when you are in the situation of taking care of a loved one with hospice, you are basically given the role of a doctor as far as dispensing medication. I work retail…I have absolutely no medical knowledge or training…they just told me to basically to give her anything as I saw fit, as I could do her no harm at that point…
I said in the Pratchett inspired thread that my Grandmother probably was- she had been unconscious for over a week, but was fairly stable, and in a state where surgery (to remove her legs which both had gangrene) was being touted as an option. If it was sheer coincidence that she went from that to dead within an hour of the decision being made not to attempt surgery, that’s quite impressive.
I think official procedure at the time would have allowed her feeding tube to be removed, to allow her to ‘naturally’ starve, but a large morphine overdose would not have been legal. I’m not 100% sure on more detail that that; if I was there, I was pretty tiny, and don’t remember, but both my parents have told me about it several times.
Yes, this is all “wink-wink, nudge-nudge” but it does happen. If someone is PVS, (persistent vegetative state) or it’s obvious that the only way they will ever leave the ICU is under a sheet, letting them go is really in their best interest. Occasionally, people need a gentle nudge.
My ex was an ICU nurse. There are apparently a handful of ways to “encourage” someone to make the final transition and the most humane ways involve narcotics. Critical care nurses (at least in California, 20 years ago) have some latitude in patient care and keeping them comfortable via medication. Sometimes, the patients were very comfortable. Does morphine supress breathing? Yes. Are morphine drip doses occasionally mis-calculated? Of course they are.
Then, there’s the concept of a “slow code” - there’s always something beeping and needing attention in 20-bed ICU, and if Mr. Doe stops breathing every so often, well, it might not get noticed immediately.
Most recent example: My uncle had brain cancer and was at home essentially in a coma. Immediate family were asked by GP if they wanted to let him go on a specific night, they said yes, and indeed the GP came around on that night and he went. I think but am not sure that it was a morphine overdose.
Something very similar happened to my great uncle.
And as another anecdote, my dad was fifteen when his dad died and he now realises that the GP had basically given him some way of killing his dad but he didn’t pick up on it at the time, and now he wishes that he had done. I can’t actually remember exactly what that was as it’s a while since I was told that story.
We have also discussed the situations in which I am to kill him or he is to kill me if doctors refuse btw.
