I’m not. I’m very much for *informed *choice. He was asked by his family to make a permanent decision at a time when there’s no way he was fully informed, no way he had time to fully digest the information and actually come to grips with what would, would not, or might not be possible - all when he was in the worst possible state of mind to actually make any decision.
When a loved one passes away, experts recommend waiting a few days before making any major decisions, noting that decisions made in the immediate aftermath while still in the depths of grief and emotional turmoil may not be the wisest path. You don’t think at a minimum the same care should be taken for a permanent decision such as this?
He could move his head, was able to speak, and the day after the accident was able to breath on his own for five hours. We’re not talking Terri Schiavo here.
You do realize that people decline similar life-sustaining interventions every single day, right? No press conference, no criminal investigation, no internal inquiry. It’s commonplace, but that doesn’t mean it’s trivial. Patients (or their families) choose to end treatment, and the patient dies.
The only noteworthy thing about this particular case, and the singular issue worth discussing, is the rapid timing.
I’m not even sure that’s true. I don’t know what makes certain stories “news” and others not, but this case isn’t even all that unusual for the timeline. It’s not an unusual story, but for whatever reason, it got told outside the family, and here we are.
Some writer found a nice sad story full of pathos and pregnancy and ran with it, trying, it appears from the story in the OP, to raise awareness of the utility of Advance Directives for young people - a group who often doesn’t have them - and about hunting safety.
The anguish over this young man’s decision doesn’t seem to be shared by his wife, his friend, his customers who wrote tributes to him at his funeral home, or the medical ethicist quoted in the article. The anguish seems to be coming entirely from people who didn’t know him at all.
Just do me in already! I do not wish to live paralyzed from the shoulders down, let alone on a ventilator. My life now isn;t terrible by any means, but that would be a deal breaker.
You shouldn’t, except in extraordinarily rare situations, be preventing an adult from killing themself. It’s their life, to do with as they please. This man chose previously that he wanted to die in this situation, and confirmed that when asked.
Of course, this is not in any way suicide. It’s letting a natural death occur, instead of preventing it. And no, they don’t owe you an explanation. It’s none of your fucking business, it should never have been reported, and it should not be considered as anything other than the natural outcome of a broken neck.
And no, don’t leave it to the doctors, leave it to the individual in question. Because he is, unquestionably, the sole expert in how he actually feels.
No, he didn’t. Everyone thinks they would want to kill themselves when something bad happens, but that’s just not the way we are wired. Unless you have a mental illness, you will eventually adapt to your new circumstances and not want to die–unless you are still experiencing serious discomfort. This guy just did not have time to make a rational decision. There is just no humanly possible way that he knew what he was agreeing to.
And having a traumatic situation happen do you is one of those situations. Any time your emotions can completely override your rational judgement, you need to be prevented from doing anything that could have permanent repercussions. When you are emotional like that, you are not thinking correctly.
And, as I pointed out, the fact that you think you would want to die before is no assurance that you would still want that once you’d had time to process what happened. Wanting to die is just not the natural emotional state of any human being. Until he had actually experienced the situation in question, he had no basis to make a rational decision about the subject. He made an emotional one. And we should not support self-destructive behaviors made on an emotional whim.
Any life that is cut short when it didn’t have to be is a tragedy. You are not special, getting decide for future you whether or not you want to die.
And, frankly, it’s offensive to all the quadriplegics out there to think that your life isn’t worth living if you are paralyzed. Because if your life is not worth it, what does that say you think about the lives of others? We instinctually value our own lives more.
Do you support the existence and use of written, legal advance directives for medical care?
Edit:
And I’m calling bullshit on this. Otherwise, by your reasoning and per the previously-cited study from WhyNot, the vast majority of doctors and nurses have no regard for human life since most would do only minimal intervention in their own personal situation.
I do wonder: how many people who think the guy should be allowed to do this have ever been suicidal themselves? Because I’ve experienced what it feels like to want to die and the relief from the fact that I did not go through with it. Even though my life was pretty shitty for a while, I adapted.
I would hate to live in the world where people like me would just have been allowed to kill themselves. You always have to make sure it isn’t a rash decision, and that the likelihood of changing your mind is very low.
And it is not when you’ve made an emotional decision. Our emotions exist to allow us to make quick decisions when absolutely necessary. It is fucking stupid to let them make long-term decisions for you.
No, I don’t support do not resuscitate directives unless the results of violating such directives would likely be that the person would not be able to make the decision in the future, or the person would be in actual chronic pain. You should not be able to say “don’t resuscitate me” when chances are you would have a happy life afterwards.
Well, yes. Doctors generally have a really low regard for human life. That’s how they can do what they do. They have the ability to become super callous towards the whole thing so they can do their job.
WhyNot herself is a pretty good example. She thinks that a 2% or so chance of survival with CPR is not worth trying to revive a patient. And, again, I think it’s much more likely she would not still think that way if the situation happened and she was allowed time to adjust. Human beings just so rarely work that way.
How arrogant you are to decide for me whether I should live or not. What on earth makes you think you have that right?
And yes, I have been suicidal, probably will be again, and consider it my right to kill myself if I choose. I think it’s pretty fucked up that it’s basically impossible for me to do that in a controlled manner that doesn’t leave other people with a mess to clean up.
I don’t talk much about this here, and I don’t intend to talk more about it, but I’m not speaking from a position of ignorance.
Also, your claim that me thinking my life would be worthless if I was paralysed has any impact on the worth of anyone else’s life is fucking stupid.
In certain specific situations, of course. But don’t strive for accuracy in your portrayal or anything.
(I believe **BigT **is referring to a thread a while back about a social worker in a nursing home lunchroom who didn’t perform CPR on a 90+ year old woman with a heartbeat who was still breathing, but rather she sat with her and comforted her until paramedics arrived, and the woman later died in the hospital. But I’m not sure. At any rate, I, like the deceased woman’s daughter, supported the nursing home in rewriting their policies to allow employees to do CPR when needed, but also supported the social worker in not performing CPR in that particular instance.)
Some people aren’t as strong as you. Maybe they don’t have a safe, comfy basement to live in. They don’t have parents or other loved ones who will take care of them well into adulthood. Perhaps they lack the internal resources you naturally have. You obviously have hope for yourself. Some people simply can’t see hope for themselves.
I have been suicidal too. I haven’t acted on it, but I have been close. The safest conclusion that I can draw from this “failure” is that I haven’t wanted to die badly enough. But I’m under no delusion that it could never be bad enough or that because it hasn’t been bad enough for me, this means it’s not bad enough for someone else. My life experiences don’t inform me about anyone’s. Just because I went through X, Y, and Z doesn’t mean my way of coping is the only way.
If they are not a loved one and their life doesn’t impact mine, personally (and on a moral/emotional level) I don’t care what someone else decides to do with their life. If they want to sit at home and pig out on Oreos and pizzas, wasting brain cells to Jerry Springer and Judge Judy, more power to them. If they want to die, more power to them. Life isn’t precious. It just is. Some people are destined to be the Next Big Thing, but a whole lot of other people are not. It’s hard to tell which is which at any point in time. But let’s not pretend that everyone’s life is equally precious and valuable. It’s not.
When it comes to my loved ones, I don’t want any of them to die. But I don’t want any of them to live for me. If they can’t think of anything or anyone that’s worth living in agonizing pain for, then I don’t want put them on a guilt-trip by nominating myself. If I have to do that, I just need to say good-bye.
Yeah, but gut reactions are often the purest ones. Unadulterated by someone else’s projected guilt, shame, and irrational fears. I’m my most decisive when I’m alone and I’ve got the facts in front of me. As soon as everyone and their mama starts weighing in, suddenly I become overwhelmed with meaningless opinions and ideas. And the truth is hidden.
Some things simply don’t need to be solved by committee. The outcome of one’s life is one of those things, IMHO.
People with ALS and other degenerative neurological diseases have to make decisions like this, or their caregivers do, all the time. For ALS, the most common line is drawn at a ventilator, and if the person doesn’t want it, eventually they can’t cough and usually get pneumonia, which they may or may not choose to treat. I also read a book a while back by a writer who found out he had ALS, and by the time the book was published, he had died, although not from ALS! He found out he had a brain tumor, decided not to treat it, and died from that a few weeks after he was diagnosed. Interestingly, he was also a lifelong bachelor who married a much younger woman he met long after his diagnosis.
You do not have to be mentally ill to want to end your life when it’s unbearable for health reasons. Having worked in geriatric care I can tell you that there are plenty of people who would take their own lives if they were physically able. In the UK, some people have been fighting for the right to die for years. It’s a little arrogant of you to diagnose all those people as mentally ill.
I’ve been suicidal, FWIW. Your suppositions are unfounded.
I’ve been suicidal from Depression. I have no idea what it has to do with this thread, where the entire point is that someone who does *not *have Depression wished to decline life prolonging treatment. (But at the same time I don’t think that only *physical *illness and suffering should give one the right to end one’s life in a more active manner. Also not the point of this thread, though.)
Interestingly, he was also a lifelong bachelor who married a much younger woman he met long after his diagnosis.