"And you had the audacity to go on national television, show the world what you did and dare the legal system to stop you. Well, sir, consider yourself stopped." (Judge Jessica Cooper)
The above quote is from the sentencing order by Judge Cooper in the trial of Jack Kevorkian. As you may recall, Dr. Kevorkian made the idea of assisted suicide a famous idea.
The reason I'm bringing this up is because I recently had a conversation with my mother dealing with issues such as the one Kevorkian faced. Kevorkian helped terminally ill patients end their suffering and die. Why the conversation? Last week, my aunt had a seizure at work. She has been having seizures and migraines for the last decade or so. Medicine to prevent one triggers the other. Needless to say, after recovering (her seizures are more of an unconscious state than violent shaking) she drove home and swallowed a bottle of pills. She was found by family and taken to a hospital where she survived. They kept her in the mental health unit of the hospital and over the ensuring weekend, she twice tried to kill her self, once by ripping up a bed sheet to make a noose and once by finding a pen in a magazine she was given and trying to slash her wrists.
In talking with my cousin (aunt's son) my mother realized he now has come to realize that it is not a matter of if she will commit suicide, but rather when. So my mother and I got into a discussion and I told her that I don't believe I would still be alive in my aunt's shoes. For about a decade (give or take a few years) she's suffered from migraines and seizures. Doctors have no idea what causes them and medicine to alleviate one triggers symptoms of the other. This has affected her entire life, as well as the life of the entire family. She has had her license taken away thus not allowing her to drive (she currently has it back). It is one thing after another.
I told my mother, and she agreed in theory, that I probably wouldn't have lasted as long as my aunt. There is a limit of what a person can take. Each person is different, but each person has a limit. How long would you put up with debilitating seizures and migraines? 20 years? 30 years? 4 years? It's tough to say unless you're in that position. But I don't think I could take it for long. I often fear going to the doctor because I'm afraid of what he might tell me. If I got diagnosed with a terminal illness, I just don't know how long I would honestly take it.
Part of my consideration for not putting up with as much is family. Yes, dying would be hard on the family and be very emotional. However, assuming my aunt's situation, how hard is it to deal with someone with seizures and migraines? This sounds harsh and uncaring, but objectively think of the emotional toll each one of these episodes cause. And then figure that these episodes occur several times a month, on at least a weekly basis, usually more.
This leads me to the title of the post. For as long as I can remember, my mother has quoted my grandfather as saying "we treat animals more humanly than humans," and I believe this to be true. As soon as an animal gets diagnosed with a terminal illness, they are put down. With humans, it's usually trying vast amounts of medicine, both new and old procedures. But at what cost? Just like a sports star likes to go out on top, why not human life? Why not end life being happy (somewhat since you know you're gonna die) and leave a positive image for friends and family to remember? Why do we instead suffer for days, months, even years until at the end, we're a fraction of what we once were? Why go out like that and why suffer through all that. Modern medicine is great, but it's not always a good thing that the average life expectancy is so much longer than it was for our ancestors.
Note: I am in no way condemning suicide and I don't want my aunt to die. If you got that from this post, you've misinterpreted the entire thing. I just don't want her to suffer. Slightly off topic (but maybe to put this into perspective), I'm glad, on one hand, that my father passed away. I'm selfish to wish he were still here or would have lived longer, but he was really sick and in constant pain. Who am I do prolong that or wish that to be prolonged? To me, that wish is a worse crime than wishing him to die (at that point in life).
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