What is Digg?353 Comments
- nageroc, on 08/23/2008, -7/+193My mom died of colon cancer. Right up until the end I though she could make it, and as a result, I was not prepared for her death.
If there is one thing that I will take from the experience it is this: if I am ever given the news that I only have X days/weeks/months to live and there is very little chance that I will survive, I want to go out with my wits and with my family on *my* terms, and I want my family to be prepared. Any else would be too cruel, for me and my family.
My mom died with her family and friends. I just don't know if she realized it. Her last days, when she was awake, was somewhere between drug induced euphoria and brain damage due to organ failure. I hate that these are the last memories I have of her. I would rather she had me scrubbing toilets. That would have seemed more like her. - yosserhughes, on 08/23/2008, -3/+123I remember my dad dying of stomach cancer, always a fit man, never a day off work in his life. I remember as the cancer got worse and his deterioration, mum trying her best, over the long weeks he became bedridden and was losing his ability to talk or communicate. Mum would have to change his bedding because he lost control of his bladder and bowels. Mum didn't mind, but it must have driven dad to despair, seeing his wife of 45 years having clean him up.
He eventually was taken to hospital were they gave him more and more drugs. We would visit him every day, watching his waste away to a skeleton covered in wax-paper. Mum was there every day doing what she could, seeing her man vanish before her eyes.
The kids would visit, but he didn't recognize anyone by then.
I remember the day he died, gathered around the bed watching him struggling, gasping to get his breathe. I remember watching him struggle to take his final breath, there was nothing dignified in it, he just gasped and gasped and then
could do no more.
I have vowed ever since that I would never, never go like that. A bottle of good scotch, some sleeping pills and a garden hose through the car window.
And if the holy rollers don't like it, they can go ***** themselves. - koldmilk, on 08/22/2008, -11/+120Wow... what can i say...
- lormahoykyd2007, on 08/23/2008, -5/+110I am glad she lives in a place where she has the choice. My better half is in Palliative Care. She works with people in the same position except they are 60 lbs, can't get out of bed, in so much pain that the constant Morophine drip does not even take the edge off they are still in unbearable pain. One of her co-workers was just committed because of the mental stress of what she was seeing. This lady is one of the lucky ones.
- CosmicJustice, on 08/23/2008, -10/+94According to the article they gave her an injection and she "went to sleep." So why is execution by lethal injection so damn hard to get right and why is it challenged as "inhumane"?
- Number23, on 08/23/2008, -0/+82Any one who has seen a loved one taken by cancer knows it is exceedingly cruel and the treatment can be as bad as the disease. I wouldn't pass judgment on anyone decision as to how to deal with it.
- Hoofenhoffer, on 08/23/2008, -10/+92If I could be a vegetable, I would be a carrot.
- inactive, on 08/23/2008, -14/+87Last I checked, choosing to die was not cowardly. Please don't make yourself look like an idiot.
- SlappyMc, on 08/23/2008, -6/+71My mom hated the chemotherapy and always complained about how terrible it made her feel. Who are you to say that she "should" have gone through the chemotherapy? The fact of the matter is you don't really have a say when it comes to what another person decides to do with their life.
I personally like the Netherlands' physician assisted suicide. The way I see it, why on earth WOULDN'T you be allowed to end your life if you wanted to? It's Yours..
On a side note, this article moves me deeply and mirrors a lot of the things I went though when my mom passed away a year ago. The woman in the article may seem crazy or silly at some points, but you need to truly understand the new way she is seeing the world. She KNOWS she is no longer going to live in a week (or a month or what have you) and that probably makes less sense to her, than her actions make to us.
I don't even know what I'm saying anymore..
try to be more sympathetic and less judgemental.. or something - dubdope, on 08/23/2008, -3/+67good for the dutch for having the freedom for people to have this option.
- wwwonka, on 08/23/2008, -3/+63...and finally we get to see the capabilities of DIGG.com getting these type of amazing (and real stories) to internet readers worldwide....as opposed to endless trivial Dark Knight blurbs and images.
- HHP2K, on 08/23/2008, -0/+58Christ.. fighting back tears. Lost two people to cancer and so terrified of the rest of my smokestack family..
- ScientistBlah, on 08/23/2008, -1/+55For all you ***** douchebags saying that she's being selfish choosing to die, well, she's not choosing to die. She's choosing how she dies. She was going to die either way, but would you rather have a good chance for your family to say goodbye? Or possibly just slip away one random day? I'd want to go on my own terms, so my family can cope with it the easiest way possible.
- Mootabolife, on 08/23/2008, -4/+53I guess the victim's family needs the shaking and convulsing show to feel like they got their justice.
- IAmSam14, on 08/23/2008, -5/+52Last time i checked Digg still had a reply button you could have used to make that comment
- Twoje, on 08/23/2008, -3/+50I'd be a tomato just to get people into arguments.
- aresef, on 08/23/2008, -0/+45My dad passed away just over a month ago from cancer. We brought him home for hospice care, so in a sense, he too exercised control over how he went. Within four days of getting him home, he died, surrounded by friends and family and music. He passed barely fourteen hours after my little brother's plane landed in town. I feel, in a way, he got his closure that way, knowing that both his sons were there holding his hand.
Perhaps this woman felt the same way in obsessing over the details--she was ready to go when everything was in order for her to go. - santaliqueur, on 08/23/2008, -1/+46With terminal cancer? Better clarify.
- Potent1al, on 08/23/2008, -2/+45"Mum goes to sleep."
that's the saddest ***** i ever heard...that would make a grown man cry! - smartnerd666, on 08/23/2008, -5/+48That's how I want to go
- XxModestMousexX, on 08/23/2008, -1/+43The only time I would want to be euthanized would be if I had become a vegetable, but if that were the case I wouldn't even be able to choose for myself.
- Goldbricker, on 08/23/2008, -2/+43A friend of mine's Dad recently found out he had emphysema. Having seen both of his parents die of this affliction and knowing how hard it was to care for them he didn't want to put his wife and son through the same thing. So one day when they were both gone he went out to the garage and killed himself with a handgun. The emphysema wasn't that bad at that point, but I speculate he probably felt he had to do it then when he was physically able to still do it. I can't help but think it would have been much better for him and his family had he been able to wait a little longer and go to a doctor to die with some dignity instead of alone in a garage.
- smartnerd666, on 08/23/2008, -0/+40I meant on my own terms, knowing when it was coming, and in my sleep.
- zyklon, on 08/23/2008, -1/+40Kevorkian doesn't look like such a crazy when under this light, does he? I've always been a suppourter of euthanasia. I think that if my dog can be put to sleep because of his cancer, I can too. That said, I have a voice and an ability to demand it, whereas a dog doesn't. I don't think it's right that because of law, we're forced to suffer.
- Nollykin, on 08/23/2008, -0/+38My mother was in a similar situation just before she died. It was the drug-enduced euphoria which got me. The morpheine... changed her. I hate that our final conversations were so batty- she'd lose her train of thought and didn't know who we were sometimes. And then she would cry to sleep because somewhere, she KNEW that she was going mad, and that it hurt us to see it.
I know where you're coming from. - stevenyenzer, on 08/23/2008, -1/+37Unfortunately chemotherapy can often be so much of an ordeal that it's not worth it for the extra weeks or month that you get out of it. Not only does the patient have to travel to the hospital 2-3 times a week for the treatment and checkups, the side effects can be really, really terrible. Its effectiveness varies so much across different types of cancers and just between different patients that sometimes it's just not worth the gamble.
- Vidalsassgirlie, on 08/23/2008, -9/+45How is it cowardly? Choosing to kill yourself is a very tough decision. Why don't you try it.
- MaxPayne3476, on 08/23/2008, -3/+39This isn't the suicide of a healthy person by any means. She's terminally ill and that's not going to change. The diary points very little of the subtle runs to the toilet and the pain his mother felt. Selfish? So forcing your mother into bedridden pain so you can fulfill you're desire to see her wither isn't selfish? She understandably refused chemo - and as she pointed out, she gave birth to a great family and could die complete. Dying underweight and dependent on morphine is certainly not 'living' by any humane extent.
- inactive, on 08/23/2008, -3/+37I am now thoroughly depressed. What a great way to start the weekend.
- Haoie, on 08/23/2008, -6/+38It's also challenged as 'cruel and unusual' punishment.
Funny, because animals are euthanised that way all the time. - mimigins, on 08/23/2008, -3/+34While it's a very personal decision, to have one's own life ended, it's tragic how much it upset the people around her. I suppose dying naturally or by choice would disturb the people around her anyway, but knowing she was choosing everything and dictating the outcome... Very sad.
- Jimbob200, on 08/23/2008, -3/+32And yet still, it was her choice, and one she should have by law, IMO.
- Nytewind, on 08/23/2008, -4/+33Until you stand in that womans shoes, until you stand in that familys shoes, you have no right to condemn them. Not the woman with cancer and not her family.
I have been in that position without the option to end it peacefully. It took time but I did in the end understand my mothers choice to not fight the cancer and spend her last days in a hospital but to instead spend her last days on her beloved farm and her family. My only regret is the very end when the only option I had to ease her pain was to send her to the hospital against her wishes and upsetting her immensely. Luckily God saw fit to allow her to come home that night and be placed in her bed. She died within ten minutes of being there. My mother would of taken the same path as this women, there is no doubt in my mind. - JoWiGo, on 08/23/2008, -0/+28I'm not positive but I'm pretty sure that the lethal injections used in the American justice system are different than the one given here. In the American justice system (and worldwide? I really don't know) it is a three stage injection. It's been said that the first makes the person not feel anything while the second and third destroy the lungs and heart, but there is controversy over whether the first actually surpresses the pain and is not just a muscle relaxer. Seems to me something that puts you to sleep would be the most... er... humane? way to kill someone.
- MacEnvy, on 08/23/2008, -0/+27Haha, you're such a fruit.
Tomato. - inactive, on 08/23/2008, -6/+33koldmilk: as chico marx would say, "if you don't know what to say, then shut the ***** up."
why are we all supposed to feel sorry for this bitch, just because she died. we're all going to die someday. this woman had a full life, lived to old age and had a husband and children who cared about her.
what did she care about? not wanting to live an extra year because she was too vain to go bald (my very vain cousin is still alive because he chose to care about himself and all who loved him, took chemo and went bald...he now has a full head of hair again and a bit less vanity). this woman's terminal illness just caused her to continue to be what i've gleaned she's been her whole life: an insecure, self-absorbed, bitchy, guilt-tripping control freak. what's most depressing to me is that her impending doom only exasperated her worst, life-long qualities.
i have no pangs of sadness or sympathies for her death...only the suffering of the only people who loved her and whom she ardently chose to make feel miserable during the last days of her life.
i'll rest my case on this quote from her son:
"But there is also shock at her fixation on material objects and the little interest she shows in how the people around her actually feel."
(cue up the digg down and all the chivalrous defenders and bleeding hearts) - jjk7288, on 08/23/2008, -4/+30Nothing less than an absolutely touching story. One can only imagine how it would feel to be in a similar situation.
Perhaps the most wrenching part of it all is that Mum passed in times when tensions ran high. How terrifying must it be to live knowing when you will die? How heavy would your heart be knowing that the days of someone you love are numbered?
Brings a tear to my eye. - TheRhinoceros, on 08/23/2008, -1/+26I cannot help but feel that this woman made the right choice. She was going to Die anyway, and death is death. To choose the moment of death seems so much more humane than being forced to live in agony, suffering because the society you live in does not allow you the peace of the grave when you choose if you are dying. Suicide, unlike what several people here have said is not cowardly. It is facing the certainty of your own death and, in this instance, knowing how and when it will happen. To have it planned on a calendar seems a bit insane, but then again hearing you have cancer and only having a few months to live is insane in and of itself.
Her attitude is to me odd and fascinating. She was so attached to the things in her world that she at times forgot her family and thought more of the house, it seems a pity that...but then again, what is the common way for a person to act who is about to die? I cannot plumb the depths of her actions here. They are "beyond my pay scale".
To Tyrghast: There is nothing wrong with selfishness if you are faced with the termination of everything you are. She was going to die anyway. The time difference would have been months. Why are you concerned for those who will live?
She was dying. She comes First. That Simple.
Kind to the Family? Kind to go bald, lose weight, go through chemotherapy, waste away every day until you are a shell of the person you were before and have your family WATCH YOU SUFFER BEFORE YOU DIE? NO. That is not kindness. That is cruelty. That is Insanity on a monstrous level. She chose well.
America would do well to follow suite with the Netherlands here. - guyperson, on 08/23/2008, -2/+26Don't underestimate the power of Asian children.
- FromFirstToLast, on 08/23/2008, -3/+27I don't know how anyone can dig that down..
- topgigmedia, on 08/23/2008, -2/+25I am sorry for your loss and hope that you have found some solace. I too have lost people in a similar way that were very close to me. Thanks for sharing.
- WESTEE, on 08/23/2008, -16/+39***** ***** up
- dubdope, on 08/23/2008, -1/+23she was terminally ill and was going to die anyway. not sure why you think it's wrong and selfish for her wanting to skip the pain and suffering and end things a little sooner and on her own terms? why should her last moments on earth be to suffer in pain and agony?
- mushoo, on 08/23/2008, -3/+25Good for you. But this isn't about you or me and what we would do. And it shouldn't be up to our criteria, specially when it's based on our "feelings" how and when people choose to end their life. It's above presumptuous to suggest that someone should be psychoanalyzed just because they make a decision we feel we wouldn't choose for ourselves.
- Wolfboy, on 08/23/2008, -0/+22re: animals euthanized the same way...
Keep in mind that the chemicals used for executions in the United States are banned for euthanizing animals because they could cause extreme pain as the animal dies. - MacEnvy, on 08/23/2008, -0/+19My grandmother is going through something similar, right now. Alzheimer's is eroding her memories, but she can still remember that she used to be intelligent and quick-witted. I visited her 2 weeks ago and she kept going on about how she can feel herself slipping away - people she used to know, that she no longer can pull from her thoughts ... faces, names, even current politics.
She used to be a political junky, and she and I would discuss Hillary or Bush or Barack with gusto. The other day she said of Barack, "Isn't he awfully ... different?". Upon further inspection, it was confirmed that she meant "awfully ... black". This was the first time in 75 years that anyone could remember her being even remotely racist.
It's sucks to lose people like that ... bit by bit, memory by memory ... until the personality that you once knew is gone. And now I'm tearing up just thinking of it, but even worse, my grandfather has to decide how to deal with someone who cannot live on her own nor even make rational decisions about her future. The dementia ward is the only option, which is heartbreaking for someone who used to be as mentally active as her.
Two weeks ago we had a family reunion, and I sat next to her and spoke to her for a long time. I knew it might be the last time she knew who I was. She talked of the old times, when she used to give me books to read when I was a kid. She talked about going to the doctor for her emphysema, and about a man she knew when she was a little girl who had lost both his feet in the Civil War. I didn't even realize that my grandparents had *known* people from the Civil War erfa, and this blew my mind. To think that living people had contact with people from that part of history, which seems ancient to me ... amazing.
But at the end of it, she complained that she could feel herself going. That she could feel herself not knowing the things she used to. That sometimes she felt as though she was going crazy because her experiences didn't match her memories. And in those times, I think she would have chosen death over what she knows as life.
So I think I understand, at least a little bit. - ngmcs8203, on 08/23/2008, -4/+23You're right, it is up to the person having to deal with it, but to be honest I do not understand the people that outright deny it due to religious beliefs or disdain against modern medicine. I was a child and had no choice. I hated the needles, spinal taps, doctors visits, etc. But you know what? I'm still alive because of it. If I was given the choice between painful needles and just living (as a child) I would have gone the latter route most likely and be dead now. So sometimes you've just got to suck it up and at least take that gamble.
- santaliqueur, on 08/23/2008, -2/+20Where can you check such a thing?
- DeFex, on 08/23/2008, -2/+20yeah like that baby whale who was dragged thrashing over the bay and then on to the beach after several shots. i think i would have preferred the sharks to the naked house monkeys.
- flynnfx, on 08/23/2008, -5/+23What an awesome person. Choosing to die on your own terms, by any rationale, is one of the most self-rational acts someone can commit. I'm a religious person, but I feel so happy for the family, that her own mother chose to end her own life. This isn't a vegetable like Schaivo, with no quality of life. It would have been infinitely harder to her family had she tried to stay alive as long as possible, clinging to life, and making her family watch her suffer in pain and suffering.
We allow our pets to die in dignity.
One can only hope one day we will have the same treatments for humans.
Those who protest euthanasia have the same rationale as those who protest gay marriage - it's morally rephrensible.
Get thee back to hell, you holier-than-thous. -
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