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Why Scott Adams Wished Death On His Dad
theodp writes " I hope my father dies soon," Dilbert creator Scott Adams wrote Saturday in a frustrated, angry, and poignant blog post. 'My father, age 86, is on the final approach to the long dirt nap (to use his own phrase). His mind is 98% gone, and all he has left is hours or possibly months of hideous unpleasantness in a hospital bed. I'll spare you the details, but it's as close to a living Hell as you can get. If my dad were a cat, we would have put him to sleep long ago. And not once would we have looked back and thought too soon. Because it's not too soon. It's far too late. His smallish estate pays about $8,000 per month to keep him in this state of perpetual suffering. Rarely has money been so poorly spent. I'd like to proactively end his suffering and let him go out with some dignity. But my government says I can't make that decision. Neither can his doctors. So, for all practical purposes, the government is torturing my father until he dies.' Adams also had harsh words for those who would oppose assisted suicide, 'I don't want anyone to misconstrue this post as satire or exaggeration. So I'll reiterate. If you have acted, or plan to act, in a way that keeps doctor-assisted suicide illegal, I see you as an accomplice in torturing my father, and perhaps me as well someday. I want you to die a painful death, and soon. And I'd be happy to tell you the same thing to your face.' His father passed a few hours after Adams wrote his screed. Challenged later by the SF Chronicle's Debra J. Saunders, an opponent of assisted suicide, Adams stood firm on his earlier words. So, can Adams succeed in convincing the U.S. where Dr. Jack failed?"
My dad degraded to the point where I just went crying to my (now) wife and told her I felt terrible but I just wanted him to die. (And long before that I wished that we had universal health care so it wouldn't have gotten to this point).
He ended up dying Thanksgiving day at home while trying to make it to the bathroom. But unlike Scott's dad there was no hospital, no hospice prolonging anything. However it got to the point where I honestly started looking into trying to get morphine such that it'd make his final days a bit easier.
In that situation, I'll kill my wife or she will kill me. Otherwise I wouldn't have married her.
I am not sure what she'll do after but I am positive I'll commit suicide after killing her.
I've lived something close to what Mr. Adams describes and I now need such certainties to live in peace.
For the most part, while there are exceptions, active suicide is almost unnecessary for someone in a grossly debilitated state. As a physician, I both have a living will and my family is well-informed that if I ever lose the ability to function mentally, in a way that is not reversible, I am not to receive ANY life-prolonging treatment. That means no artificial hydration, no feeding, and no antibiotics. Many of my physician colleagues have made similar arrangements. That's why MDs are the group in the population with the lowest end-of-life cost. While a surrogate or healthcare proxy may not make a decision to end a life, they are certainly within their rights to do the abovementioned, unless a person's living will specifically forbids it. In general, this means a person will pass away within days. For the most part it allows the family time to fly in, and make peace with the inevitable.
I'm in favor of someone having the right to end their own life, but I do have a concern about how easily "I don't consider my life worth living and want to die" will morph into "We don't consider your life useful and want to kill you".
By this reasoning, there should be people wishing death on anyone who ever voted (directly or indirectly) for a policy which causes people to suffer.
And if you're about to point out that the opponents of every policy claim that the policy causes people to suffer, you are of course right.
You don't usually see people whose sons die in Iraq claiming that anyone who voted for George Bush needs to die, and when you do, they're considered nutcases.
I have 10 grams of coke hidden in my house. My dad suffered tremendously during his last weeks of life. I've seen it with my own eyes. If I'm ever in that situation, I've instructed my family to overdose me with the coke. They'll have plausible deniability (I was a junkie who wanted his dose). As for me, they say the first hit is better than an orgasm, and with 10 g, it'd also be my last, so I'd go in style.
Of course, if I'm conscious and able to, I'll do the coke myself if I have to...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
You don't know until you have gone through this yourself. I just did - twice within months, once for my Mother who died in home hospice and again for my Father about 5 months after she passed. I went through it alone, even though a sibling lived only 2 miles away from them. You can't imagine watching someone you love, someone you owe your whole world to waste away in this fashion. I was lucky enough that both were cognitive right up until the end; for me it was the only saving grace in all this that I could at least still communicate and interact with them up in until a day or two before each passed. I can't fathom the pain Adams went through in his situation. I understand fully why he said what he did and where it came from. To those who think they know better, be careful becuase karma has a way of administring harsh lessons of reality.
Yeah, then tell us why the death penalty closely corresponds with the bible belt?
Because it seems like a lot of religious people feel that revenge and two wrongs making a right is how it's supposed to be done.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I have a buddy who went through this with his mom. She had a DNR, as well as detailed instructions about what conditions she didn't want to be saved from, and shared them with her GP.
His response was "That's fine, but I don't agree with it, and feel that DNRs fundamentally are in conflict with my Hippocratic Oath. If you are brought to me, I will do everything I can to keep you alive. You can sue me later, if you live." She would have changed doctors, but the next nearest was more than 60 miles away.
Saunders's response was rather confusing, esp the closing "Me, I don't want to live in a world where one group of people decides when another group should die." I guess it is not oppression as long as the choice you want is the one being mandated.
I'm not sure whether she is just unbelievably oblivious (to the fact that she is deciding when another group should die) or whether she is falling prey to 'default blindness'.
For whatever reason, it's not uncommon for people, when faced with or analyzing a decision, to treat the 'default'(the option characterized by perceived inaction, not necessarily actual inaction: 'life support' is a lot more active than 'not supporting life', indeed it's quite sophisticated and tricky in very sick patients; but it merely maintains the status quo, rather than changing it) as not being a 'choice' or a 'decision' and to characterize whatever outcome is defined as the 'non-default' as a 'choice' 'decision' or 'imposition'.
Especially in situations where there really aren't any good options, this tendency can be as powerful as it is dubiously intellectually honest(or just confused, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between mendacity and incompetence). If 'euthanize' and 'do not euthanize' are judged as equally 'chosen', they both have their major downsides, and you don't really feel good about choosing either; but nobody asked if you wanted to choose, they asked you what you wanted to choose, so what's it going to be?
If 'do not euthanize' is treated as the 'default' and 'not chosen', then (however serious the consequences), that's just the way these things go, while anybody who opts for 'euthanize' is judged not against the standard of having chosen 'don't euthanize'; but against the (fictional) standard of having 'not chosen'. And, against that standard, they will look pretty dubious. It's just that that standard is fiction; because you don't get to not choose. There may be one choice that requires you to actively request, sign on the dotted line, whatever, and one choice that you can make just by inaction and letting the system grind on its inertial way; but both are choices, and you cannot escape making them.
Again, I don't know about her specifically; but this sort of 'default blindness' seems to color a lot of analysis of 'no good options' situations, since if you think of only one of the options as a 'choice', and none of the options are good, obviously anyone who 'chooses' that option is going to look like a monster(and arguing otherwise is going to be an uphill battle, since it is the case that both options suck relative to not dealing with the situation, the issue is that 'not dealing with the situation' isn't an option, it's just a passive way of choosing one of the options that is on the table...)
Anybody who knowingly exploits 'default blindness' is the worst sort of charlatan; but it seems to creep up on people without their noticing it, as well, which is what makes it so effective. Unfortunately, it's nonsense, a cognitive error.
Sue him even if she dies.
He provided care no one wanted only to increase his own pay with no care for the wishes or health of the patient.
I would have to assume at some point resuscitating someone would violate "First do no harm".
Wow. Be careful what you wish for. In countries where assisted suicide is legal, it becomes the default. (In Belgium, they are even debating whether depressed - not terminally ill - children should have the "right" to die!) And it's not just those who are concerned about the sufferer's pain deciding. The doctors, the healthcare administrators, and, yes, families with a financial stake (healthcare costs, insurance, inheritance) in terminating the family member's life as quickly as possible are making the decision, even against the patient's will, and even when the illness isn't necessarily terminal! Withdrawing extraordinary medical treatment and providing sufficient pain medication should be enough to keep a terminally ill patient from suffering. We can't prevent every kind of suffering in the world; it's part of life, but we can do better than we do, and we don't have to kill people to do it.
I had a stroke. The neurovascular specialist said it was one of the largest he'd ever seen (essentially the entire right hemisphere). I was also young at the time, 30s and physically fit. My recovery was swift and (nearly) complete. But for a few hours, I was "critical". I didn't have any complications, but often with strokes, choking from conflicting orders for the different sides requires resuscitation. I don't want to die a long protracted death, but I don't want a DNR for a transient event that is past and had no lasting effect. Though "stroke is permanent" is what people believe. So I could see how, at the time, a DNR could result in my unwanted death.
That's why choice and assisted suicide is "better" than a DNR. There's a family member who can help make the choice, if you are unable. There are more considerations as to future prospects. A living will can't cater to all situations, assisted suicide can.
Learn to love Alaska
Watched my father die by his refusing food altogether. He was still lucid enough to do this. The "rule" in my state apparently is that you can offer food three times, and if it is refused, you need not offer it again. I realize he was 'in the driver's seat,' so to speak because he was lucky enough not to be already hooked up to tubes and such.
The medical people were giving him morphine and told me I could ask them to give him more if I wanted. I really didn't understand what they were telling me at the time. Today I understand there was a lot more behind this statement than I realized.
Also, though I appreciate Adam's lament that his father's estate was being burned up at $8,000 a month and that he was probably speaking as if his father was average, the fact is Adams is a multi-millionaire several times over and could easily afford to subsidize his father's care. Few of us are in that position. I think Adams' failure to at least acknowledge his father's true financial position is a bit disingenuous on his part. He could still make his case with full disclosure.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.