There is no help that I know of for nursing home patients. A request to the doctor would only ensure that you were added to the “suicide watch”. I have Primary Progressive MS and have seen many of my friends and acquaintances die either of or with the disease.
I am in constant severe pain and in a wheelchair all the time. I need help going to the toilet and getting into and out of bed. I have some very good carers, but I cannot get them to help me as they would be fired.
Even if I could afford the trip to Switzerland there is no one to go with me, my two sons are against Euthanasia. Now Social Services are threatening to evict me from my current lovely room, as I have run out of money to pay my portion of the Care Costs.
My husband and I had a pact, but he died three years ago from Oesophageal cancer, and yes, he was helped, I was still reasonably active at that time and we had a very good and helpful Doctor. Unfortunately he is now dead himself.
This looks like a long list of woes which is what, I suppose, it is. I have to plan my own death and therefore have to go earlier than I probably would have if everything else was equal. I would like to put one or all of the Catholic Bishops in this situation and see if they are quite as stoic as they purport to be.
– Anne Veasey
from World right-to-die news list, Saturday, 18th June 2011
Anne, I do not know what to say. I am truly sorry for your dreadful predicament. I hope it might bring you at least a glimmer of light in the darkness to know that others will be reading your post and thinking about you.
I know what the hypothetical bishop(s) would probably say, though:
As Christians we believe that even suffering itself need not be meaningless—for as Pope John Paul II showed during his final illness, suffering accepted in love can bring us closer to the mystery of Christ’s sacrifice for the salvation of others.
He at least could take comfort in meaningless words. For those of us who cling to the rags of sanity it’s an awful lot harder.
I suppose they used to say things like this in the torture chambers of the Inquisition, as they watched the systematic destruction of a human being, clutching their crosses and beads and books. This is why their “respect for life” is the opposite of “caring about lives”.
My mother died of a brain tumour, meaninglessly dragged on for years long after she had lost her mind, and my poor father who slept beside her in the same bed every night just gave up and died within a few months of her. What was the point of all that? These people just live in their heads. Their contemptible doctrines are an insult to common humanity.
Yet more evidence that supposedly pro-life policies actually aren’t very good at protecting life at all.
Probably not. Just like anti-abortion activisists are known to get abortions, only to rejoin the picketers, I fully expect there to be anti-euthanasia activists who are perfectly willing to make exceptions for themselves or their loved ones. Rules are always for those other people, they are special.
I want to thank Anne for speaking out, and wish her peace of mind.
I would like to put one or all of the Catholic Bishops in this situation and see if they are quite as stoic as they purport to be.
Thank you Anne – I’m sure everyone following this blog would support you. You have illustrated a point I made following the Terry Pratchett documentary. In the Newsnight debate following it, the right rev. Michael Langrish (bishop, C of E) complained about lack of balance from the BBC, in not showing enough of the hospice alternative at the end of life, and this complaint was repeated on the Today programme, and has been aired elsewhere. I agree with the bishop on this point, and believe that the BBC should air a one-hour documentary following people like Anne through the process of dying in a hospice. To be a fair comparison, this should continue to the point of death, and should include people who have requested and been refused assisted dying.
Sorry, that first paragraph should be in quotes – how do you do that?
I haven’t figured out how to show the proper syntax without WordPress thinking that they are real html tags. Here is a try…you enclose the word blockquote between a less than symbol and a greater than symbol at the beginning of the quote. Then, at the end of the quote you enclose the word blockquote between a less than symbol…a forward slash…the word blockquote…and a greater than symbol.The html tag looks like this… and ending them with
I will hit ‘post’ now and see what I get!
hmmm…the example tags disappeared.
here is a link
I received another email from Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life, alerting me to his column “which this week is about a book called _The Sacrament of Abortion_, whose author describes abortion as a sacred act.” The column is at http://www.priestsforlife.org/columns/3657-the-sacrament-of-abortion , but here is Pavone’s statement about life and death
‘the proclamation of the Gospel of Christ is that He alone has authority over life and death. Neither the mother, nor the father, nor the state, nor the individual herself, can claim absolute dominion over life. “Nobody lives as his own master, and nobody dies as his own master. While we live, we are responsible to the Lord, and when we die, we die as His servants. Both in life and death, we are the Lord’s” (Rom. 14:7-8).’
Another easier suggestion: If you want to quote a sentence or sentences from the original post you can enclose them in quotations marks.
Example
“I would like to put one or all of the Catholic Bishops in this situation and see if they are quite as stoic as they purport to be.”
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These recent posts have me thinking about a common phrase “sanctity of life” bandied about by the religious. So much capital is spent on the making sure the unborn are born and the dying don’t die that the time in between is ignored – yet people are killed everyday from entirely preventable conditions: starvation, disease, weather, war, etc. Why stop a woman from aborting a child, but allow her to skip vaccinations, keep guns in her house, drive drunk, deny education (especially about sex), support wars, etc? In the US, we have people who were educated for next to nothing in state schools denying that same education to the next generation. We have an economic system that promotes profit over people – ignoring consumer and worker safety. We have old men (largely) sending young people off to conflicts where the young will likely die or be horribly maimed – old men who were lucky to survive previous conflicts. We never hear from the dead as to if it was worth it – would they do it all over again knowing they would die at 18?
Gosh, I hadn’t thought of that!
Thanks Dean, I understand what you are trying to say. When I first posted above, I did what you suggest, but used the word “quote” instead of “blockquote”. I’ll try your suggestion:
Cheers!