Would you plan to be euthanized?
Asked by
6rant6 (
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April 20th, 2011
A lot of people have living wills that say they don’t want “heroic measures” performed to revive them if their heart stops. People tend to do this when they have debilitating diseases and little or no prospect of getting well.
That represents the passive side of it – “Don’t do anything if…”
How about the active side? Would you want someone to euthanize you if you lost your mind to Alzheimer’s, for instance? What if you had a head injury and became so violent that you had to be chained to a bed in a room that no one you knew would enter? What if you were catatonic or comatose, with little or no hope for recovery.
Are there any circumstances under which you would want your loved ones to give the order to put you out of your misery.
(I know there are legal issues involved. Please don’t deflect the discussion into those. This is about personal choice, not law.)
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26 Answers
My brain tells me to survive. My plan is to do so until I don’t have the option.
With that being said, say I was on some sort of life support. I wouldn’t want my friends/family to go into debt by keeping me alive but as long as staying alive is an option, I’m going to do what I have to in order to do so.
Yes. Comatose, brain dead, out of my mind insane…just do it!
Hey!!! That line formed quick!!
Yes. I strongly feel that if a person decides they don’t want to live anymore, especially due to suffering and diminished quality of life, that what they decide to do with their life/body should be respected.
Anyone care to comment on what particulars you would put in the instructions?
I used to agree with the idea of being euthanized until my head injury. My father was told first of all that I would die like my mother had, and when I survived that there was no hope for me to have a halfway decent life. “They” were wrong, and I’m glad dad didn’t listen. I just mentioned this because things are never black and white. (I actually would want to be euthanized, but not right away!)
@GracieT I agree with what you say. On the other hand, you do have to make a “best guess” action. If there is a 1 in 10 chance of someone recovering, is that enough? 1 in 100? 1 in 1,000?
To say “Don’t do anything,” is the same as saying, “Keep me alive”. Keeping someone alive is not without cost to those around them – emotional and tangible costs.
Not for alzheimers, because I’ve no way to know that I might not actually be happy locked away in my own scattered mind. However if I was of sound mind but in constant excruciating and permanent pain, with no hope of recovery, then yes I would choose death with dignity.
No. I’m gonna hang on to the bitter end.
I don’ see that cyanide pie-in-the-sky.
@downtide my mother wanted this. She was the smartest person in the room even when, in the end, she could no longer talk. But her body eroded and and she lost more and more ability until she couldn’t walk across her own room to the crapper. She finally was able to let go, in her son’s house, surrounded by love.
Nah, fuck with that! I wanna go kicking & screaming like a kicky screamy thing.
@ucme I guess you are not going gently into the good night,
Instead you’ll burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light,
Andb won’t go gently into the good night,
sorry I just hadda do it.
@anartist Wise words m’dear, ones to live by methinks :¬)
:-)
thank you.
Easier to say to a loved one you’ll miss so terribly than to yourself though.
Yes, most definitely yes. Pull the plug and put me out of my misery. If I’m not attatched to machines, then inject me with whatever shit will kill me quickly.
I don’t want my family to bear the burden of taking care of me if I turn into some weird, limp, useless thing. I’ve already got the “weird” accomplished. One down, two to go.
My mom had a DNR [do not resuscitate] order and a DNI [do not intubate] order in her will as do I. She wore color coded plastic bracelets whenever she was in hospital that informed the staff of this order.
I agree with @downtide. Our uncle died at 98, and while he had Alzheimer’s, he was as docile as can be and able to take care of his basic needs while our aunt handled the rest. On the other hand, if it were something like Huntington’s disease, then yes, please put me out of misery.
Here is a link to the story of Carol Carr, who shot two of her sons suffering from Huntington’s disease. Did she do the right thing, despite it being illegal? I don’t know, but it sure seems to have been an act of love.
Yes. The only thing that concerns me is that the person who aided my end could end up in trouble. I wouldn’t want that.
My SO and I asked our internist if he would do that for us. (Not right now; we still have some good years left.) He said it was the first time anyone ever asked him that. He thought about it and said no, but he would keep us totally comfortable. I think we’d have to have a law like Oregon’s before he’d be willing. I don’t blame him.
I sent an e-mail to a US doctor friend asking her about the change in the Hippocratic Oath. Here is her response:
Heavy stuff…honestly I don’t know what the meaning was when penned 1964, but we cannot and should not deliver euthanasia as I was taught. That is not to say that it doesn’t happen, of course, but it is not an “approved” activity. Maybe the 1964 alteration opened the door a bit, but it seems to have muddied things. Often morphine drips (started often for “air hunger” which is part of the dying process) are just turned up in the very last stages to make the patient comfortable (i.e. the patient essentially dies from respiratory depression) and no one blinks. It happens, and I can honestly say in the last stage when the pt is terminal, it is a good thing in my opinion.
It depends on the state from what I understand. I have a relative who was a nurse in MD and they turned up the morphine as a common practice, and that was at a Catholic hospital. Later she worked in NYC, and they were not able to do it.
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