There is an article in the NYTimes today about a man in Italy fighting for his right to die. Sixty year old Piergiorgio Welby has battled muscular dystrophy for 40 years and has been kept alive by a respirator for 9. He is begging the Italian government to let him die.
“Life is the woman who loves you, the wind through your hair, the sun on your face, an evening stroll with a friend. Life is also a woman who leaves you, a rainy day, a friend who deceives you. I am neither melancholic nor manic-depressive. I find the idea of dying horrible. But what is left to me is no longer a life… It is an unbearable torture”.
This very topic sparked the first fight Clint and I have had. We were on the way to have dinner with his parents and we got started talking about Terri Shiavo. I remember getting so angry with him because he sincerely felt like the doctors should not have let her die.
So here’s why this is a big deal to me: my aunt Brenda was diagnosed with chronic progressive Multiple Schlerosis when she was 18. If you don’t know what MS is, it’s a disease of the central nervous system that breaks down the myelin sheaths in your body that carry neurons (essentially orders) from your brain to the rest of you body. As MS progresses, the patient loses the ability to perform certain functions because the impulses from the brain are no longer making it to their destinations. Slowly over time, MS patients lose the ability to write, to walk, to speak correctly, to see, and even to hold their bowels. I watched this happen to my aunt. I watched her die.
We got a call December 5, 2004 that Brenda had gone into the hospital. Her catheter bag was filled with blood and she was yellow with jaundice. For the first two days the doctors were baffled, they tried to give her antibiotics through a PICC line and collapsed a major vein. She never once complained. She just sat and stared. Then they found the problem: leukemia. The doctors pushed very hard for treatment and said that at the max it would give her 6 months. We all knew she would never make it. She had begun to cough and flecks of blood dotted her dry lips. She went into a coma that night and no longer responded to our touch. Her breathing became labored gasps. They asked us if we’d like for her to be put on a respirator, but we refused. The doctor ordered a morphine drip, the first pain medicine she had received since being admitted, and together, as a family we watched her breathe her last breath.
I realize that this is an ongoing debate between sanctity of life versus quality of life. Yes, I believe that life is sacred, but I also believe that keeping her alive would have been profoundly wrong. To artificially keep someone bound to a body that is already dead is like theft, its robbing the soul. And what kills me about this man’s case is that he’s fighting the church! The church has reduced his desire to die naturally as doctor-assisted euthanasia. What happened to “To live is Christ and die is gain”? Aren’t we as Christians supposed to long for death because only in death can we be free? Do we really believe that, and if we do, why is doctor-assisted euthanasia wrong for those kept alive only by artificial means? I just don’t think it is.
“Life is the woman who loves you, the wind through your hair, the sun on your face, an evening stroll with a friend. Life is also a woman who leaves you, a rainy day, a friend who deceives you. I am neither melancholic nor manic-depressive. I find the idea of dying horrible. But what is left to me is no longer a life… It is an unbearable torture”.
This very topic sparked the first fight Clint and I have had. We were on the way to have dinner with his parents and we got started talking about Terri Shiavo. I remember getting so angry with him because he sincerely felt like the doctors should not have let her die.
So here’s why this is a big deal to me: my aunt Brenda was diagnosed with chronic progressive Multiple Schlerosis when she was 18. If you don’t know what MS is, it’s a disease of the central nervous system that breaks down the myelin sheaths in your body that carry neurons (essentially orders) from your brain to the rest of you body. As MS progresses, the patient loses the ability to perform certain functions because the impulses from the brain are no longer making it to their destinations. Slowly over time, MS patients lose the ability to write, to walk, to speak correctly, to see, and even to hold their bowels. I watched this happen to my aunt. I watched her die.
We got a call December 5, 2004 that Brenda had gone into the hospital. Her catheter bag was filled with blood and she was yellow with jaundice. For the first two days the doctors were baffled, they tried to give her antibiotics through a PICC line and collapsed a major vein. She never once complained. She just sat and stared. Then they found the problem: leukemia. The doctors pushed very hard for treatment and said that at the max it would give her 6 months. We all knew she would never make it. She had begun to cough and flecks of blood dotted her dry lips. She went into a coma that night and no longer responded to our touch. Her breathing became labored gasps. They asked us if we’d like for her to be put on a respirator, but we refused. The doctor ordered a morphine drip, the first pain medicine she had received since being admitted, and together, as a family we watched her breathe her last breath.
I realize that this is an ongoing debate between sanctity of life versus quality of life. Yes, I believe that life is sacred, but I also believe that keeping her alive would have been profoundly wrong. To artificially keep someone bound to a body that is already dead is like theft, its robbing the soul. And what kills me about this man’s case is that he’s fighting the church! The church has reduced his desire to die naturally as doctor-assisted euthanasia. What happened to “To live is Christ and die is gain”? Aren’t we as Christians supposed to long for death because only in death can we be free? Do we really believe that, and if we do, why is doctor-assisted euthanasia wrong for those kept alive only by artificial means? I just don’t think it is.
9 comments:
I am with you 100% on this. I get really fired up talking about the Schiavo case for the same reason you do. And I think the way that y'all handled your aunt's last hours was very admirable and in HER best interests.
You made such a good case. We have someone in our family with MS and although it is very painful to watch him struggle, I can't imagine being so selfless as to let him go. I think, and I know your heart confirms, that you did the loving thing. This is a hard issue and I think as we struggle with it as a church and a culture,we must draw that line between euthenasia and an artificially-prolonged life. You're right--for the Christian, death is the hallway we walk down to meet the person of Jesus in a more complete way. I think prolonging someone's life by allowing them to be on a respirator for years robs them (or can rob them) of a dignified death.
This makes me think we need a living will...
I used to think life was sacred. but I don't think so anymore.
brooke's family is all medical and they are all VERY pro-euthanasia. you should talk to her about it sometime. she gets really fired up about it.
I'm in perfect agreement with your sentiments here, and your aunt's case is a great example of a situation where all possible medical care isn't the best way to go.
The Schiavo situation just factually didn't fit, that's all. She was in no apparent pain, she appeared to respond with pleasure to family members, and she wasn't on a no-return trip down a horrible road of suffering. At WORST, she was unaware of anything (in which case, she certainly wasn't suffering).
But even those apparent facts didn't seal the case for me either way. To me, the fight in her case was really about who got to make the decisions for her -- her parents, who would presumably have her best interests in mind at least as much as parents can (and they wanted to take responsibility for her care), or her "husband", who had promised to use the large civil damages award he received in connection with her accident to care for her, who was living with another woman with whom he had two children, and who was petitioning for her food and water to be removed. What kind of sense did it make for him to get to decide?
I want to stress, though, that I really do agree with your thinking on this. My mother died at home after about eight weeks of hospice care following our family's mutual decision for her not to undergo yet another surgery for recurring ovarian cancer. She was 54 and had made it seven years. I still think the right decision was made.
I just think you don't have all the facts straight in the Schiavo case.
Note to Brian -- there's a big difference between supporting a right to reject some types of medical care in essentially futile situations or cases where prolonged suffering will inevitably result and full blown "euthanasia" where drugs causing death are administered. From your comment, it's not clear which approach Brooke's family supports.
legally it was the husband's decision to make...not the parents. this bothers me because her husband seemed unfit to make the decision for the aforementioned reasons.
i dont know what was right or wrong...but since when does right or wrong win the day anyway?
i think watching her starve to death and die slowly of malnutrition was the wrong thing to do. we're only alive once and we have the technology to prolong life. we should respect the mystery and the uniqueness of life...eve if it is difficult and painful.
we support premature death because we say it spares the victim pain. i wonder if we're concerned with sparing the victim's pain or our own pain.
“To live is Christ and die is gain."
I think that's the part that strikes me most about this entry - not that the rest of it isn't thought-provoking - because we say that, and believe that ... but when someone dies, it can be so HARD to believe.
or maybe that's just me.
But seriously ... I had a friend die a few summers ago, and that really stuck out to me. I believe, but sometimes it is hard to believe.
I'm rambling.
First off, I think I agree with you and Brooke. But, a little research tells me we are all probably wrong.
Church history teaches us that evil men went to great lengths to see that those who proclaim Christ died slowly and suffered greatly. And to this end, thousands (perhaps millions) who have witnessed the accounts of these saints were converted. Alas, the Gospel was revealed through the testimony of martyrs and suffering. Is this issue all that different?
For the Christian, doesn't pain and suffering always have meaning in our lives? To end suffering because of some self-proclaimed moral good is to say that the particular suffering itself is meaningless and unfruitful. How should we know such things? Is God not merciful enough that He would not take a life in its time? Certainly we can't say that Christ's suffering was meaningless? Can we be certain that God isn't revealing His image through the sick and terminally ill?
"To live is Christ" implies suffering. To live in this way glorifies Christ and has immeasurable meaning.
To the hedonistic pagan, pain is bad and suffering should be stopped at all costs. Suffering is meaningless. Euthanasia is the only good and merciful answer.
i think this is yet another situation where we allow american culture and technology to infect spirituality. in all honesty, there are very few places on earth where the technology exists to even attempt to prolong a life in this manner. if we really believed that this was a sanctity of life issue, wouldn't we be fighting for the export of these machines to the poorest parts of the world where they currently aren't used? aren't those lives worth as much. obviously not, because while we spend thousands and possibly millions of dollars to prolong the life of a person who doesn't want to live, we allow people to die around the world for lack of simple medicines that are readily available at our neighborhood CVS. why aren't we going to the Supreme Court about that? other than this probably isn't a US legal matter (but that is beside the point)
-JW
You know i just talked to may mom about my living will when i was home! Living in pain and being kept alive on machines is not living. I told her that if something were to happen to me and i was was not able to have my own mental or mobile function that i did not want to stick around. I've told Jason the same thing, so no one is keeping me around when i can function on my own. Plus I don't want people to remember me like that, laid up in a hospital bed not being able to talk or control anything. I want people to remember me for the hot, sexxy, fabulous woman i am ;)
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