A bit heavy-handed, but I think about death off and on. My grandparents died what still feels recently, my living grandmother is not doing so well, my parents aren't getting younger, and me too, I am probably half way or more through my life. So I try to get used to and familiar with death as a way to prepare (??)
I recently watched a very well-done Frontline piece on assisted suicide, following 59 year old Craig Ewert's wish to die with dignity after living as much as he could with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). He travelled to Switzerland with his wife to do this, since it's more difficult in the U.S. By having the process and the moment of his death documented, he hoped to open the conversation around dying in the U.S. where people are afraid to face and talk about death in a practical manner, and for the most part do not graciously let people die when it's time.
In his words:
At this point, I've got two choices. If I go through with it, I die, as I must at some point. If I don't go through with it, my choice is essentially to suffer and to inflict suffering on my family and then die -- possibly in a way that is considerably more stressful and painful than this way. So I've got death,and I've got suffering and death. You know, this makes a whole lot of sense to me.
Today I read an incredible piece, "Hospice medical care for dying patients," in the New Yorker, by Atul Gawande. I highly recommend it. Its tagline:
Modern medicine is good at staving off death with aggressive interventions—and bad at knowing when to focus, instead, on improving the days that terminal patients have left.
Just seeing this, Mie. Great article. I deal with hospice nearly every day at work so it's a topic dear to my heart. I wish more doctors would offer it and I wish more patients would accept it. The author of the New Yorker piece has written some books, one of which I've read, Better, it's excellent.
Posted by: Jennifer Modi | 08/20/2010 at 07:11 PM