My personal anecdote around this issue was from when my mother was dying of pancreatic cancer. Once the actual process of dying started, the doctors and nurses worked to "keep her comfortable" but the pain killers didn't do much. For those last few days it struck me that in essence she was being tortured to death from the inside and all we could do was sit around and wait for the pain, and her life, to end. The last thing she ever said to me, through gritted teeth in her native tongue was "how long does it take to die?" I will never forget that and I will always support the right for anyone to choose dignity.
Oh puritanical Americans once again Afraid of a neighbour giving their citizens a bit of agency over their own bodies.
Bogeymen be here!
Graziano_M · 4h ago
Can you imagine carrying around the MAiD tote which they apparently give out?
JohnnaDoe · 2h ago
The article discusses two types of cases, with examples, that I find particularly interesting: people who are choosing to die because their pain is inadequately addressed, and people choosing to die because they are disabled and cannot afford to live.
If assisted suicide were available in the united states, I would have taken it at multiple points in the last three years.
I've been disabled by autoimmune arthritis for over 20 years now, and every year it gets more impossible to make it on SSDI. Within the year I will be on the streets unless something unlikely happens, and I will not live like that. Secondarily, doctors have been completely unwilling to treat pain for almost ten years now, despite never having had any addiction issues, or having any problems other than pain when discontinuing pain medication in the first place. I've had multiple surgeries required by the condition, and I've been on biologics and methotrexate and steroids. Nothing seems to be working anymore.
Over the years your friends drift away, you drift in and out of insane housing situations, and things steadily get worse and worse until you feel inhuman. My rent is 90% of my check. I cancelled internet this year, my last luxury. I read the threads that come up several times a year on hackernews where the consensus always seems to be that the poor or the homeless are irredeemable drug addicts, who if they weren't so stupid or morally bankrupt, wouldn't be where they are.
And there are people who are worse off than I am. I met a lovely young girl in her 20s a few years ago whose hands were bent and twisted with the autoimmune arthritis she'd had since around age 7 or 8. She had no family willing or able to help her, and was living on around $700 a month SSI (since she'd never been able to work). She survived by living on the couch in a one-bedroom apartment with a creepy guy she met online, and she was lucky to have that. Her doctor was refusing to treat her pain, and she was also going through treatment for a cancer caused by the drugs to treat the arthritis. When she walked, she moved like someone over the age of 90, and there was pain telegraphed loudly in every step.
Keeping people like us alive is inhumane torture, and yet, weirdly, people seem to on the whole, want to keep torturing us. It's also inhumane that people like us are forced to make these choices.
Do I want to die? No, but I want the option, because living like this is a living hell, and not if, but when I end up on the street it's going to be far, far worse. I won't do it. When it comes to that, I'm checking out. But I don't have Canada's humane option. I'll have to do it in my own clumsy way, and hope I don't botch it.
The nasty reality is that most of the time, I could do some work--tech support work from home? I could do that 80% of the time, and 10 years ago I could have been doing that full time. But all those jobs went to India and the Dominican years ago. I keep making abortive attempts to climb out of the hole, and never make it. Housing lists are closed. Waiting lists are something like 2 years in most places, and when they open they're full within hours and close again. And that's the waiting list. After you get on it, there are longer waits.
I could continue living independently for a quite a while, if I could get things like: an affordable apartment with a washer/dryer, grocery delivery during the bad flare-ups, a toilet that is raised, transportation to pharmacy and medical appointments, voice control tools that work, and internet. But I don't get any of those things, because in its great and vast wisdom, the United States, my home, has decided I must suffer instead. To prove what? To help whom? Who does my suffering help? I suppose it makes some people feel better that assisted suicide is out of my reach. The same with the opioid crisis.
It's so awful it's almost funny sometimes, in a macabre way.
ekanes · 1h ago
Thanks for sharing your situation. I don't have any magical advice or anything, but from an internet stranger, I hope things go well for you.
didibus · 2h ago
Wow, the article's accompanying graphic, which is like all you can see without a paywall seems heavily biased from the get go. I don't even know the article, but it sounds like whoever put that info-graphic disagree.
mikestew · 2h ago
It’s a graphic of the patient consent form (and not an “infographic”, in the usual sense of the term), what bias am I missing?
__s · 2h ago
the patient consent form doesn't have CANADA IS KILLING ITSELF imposed behind the fields
Yeul · 2h ago
The article makes sense to me as a Dutch person.
When you no longer believe that death is up to god (practically impossible to imagine for religious folks) it becomes a normal part of healthcare.
Ain't nobody gonna spend even 1 day suffering needlessly if there's a medical way out.
KyleBerezin · 2h ago
Devils advocate, but you could still make an argument that it is unnatural, therefore making it wrong to naturalist. Suffering induced suicide is virtually unheard of in nature.
Bogeymen be here!
If assisted suicide were available in the united states, I would have taken it at multiple points in the last three years.
I've been disabled by autoimmune arthritis for over 20 years now, and every year it gets more impossible to make it on SSDI. Within the year I will be on the streets unless something unlikely happens, and I will not live like that. Secondarily, doctors have been completely unwilling to treat pain for almost ten years now, despite never having had any addiction issues, or having any problems other than pain when discontinuing pain medication in the first place. I've had multiple surgeries required by the condition, and I've been on biologics and methotrexate and steroids. Nothing seems to be working anymore.
Over the years your friends drift away, you drift in and out of insane housing situations, and things steadily get worse and worse until you feel inhuman. My rent is 90% of my check. I cancelled internet this year, my last luxury. I read the threads that come up several times a year on hackernews where the consensus always seems to be that the poor or the homeless are irredeemable drug addicts, who if they weren't so stupid or morally bankrupt, wouldn't be where they are.
And there are people who are worse off than I am. I met a lovely young girl in her 20s a few years ago whose hands were bent and twisted with the autoimmune arthritis she'd had since around age 7 or 8. She had no family willing or able to help her, and was living on around $700 a month SSI (since she'd never been able to work). She survived by living on the couch in a one-bedroom apartment with a creepy guy she met online, and she was lucky to have that. Her doctor was refusing to treat her pain, and she was also going through treatment for a cancer caused by the drugs to treat the arthritis. When she walked, she moved like someone over the age of 90, and there was pain telegraphed loudly in every step.
Keeping people like us alive is inhumane torture, and yet, weirdly, people seem to on the whole, want to keep torturing us. It's also inhumane that people like us are forced to make these choices.
Do I want to die? No, but I want the option, because living like this is a living hell, and not if, but when I end up on the street it's going to be far, far worse. I won't do it. When it comes to that, I'm checking out. But I don't have Canada's humane option. I'll have to do it in my own clumsy way, and hope I don't botch it.
The nasty reality is that most of the time, I could do some work--tech support work from home? I could do that 80% of the time, and 10 years ago I could have been doing that full time. But all those jobs went to India and the Dominican years ago. I keep making abortive attempts to climb out of the hole, and never make it. Housing lists are closed. Waiting lists are something like 2 years in most places, and when they open they're full within hours and close again. And that's the waiting list. After you get on it, there are longer waits.
I could continue living independently for a quite a while, if I could get things like: an affordable apartment with a washer/dryer, grocery delivery during the bad flare-ups, a toilet that is raised, transportation to pharmacy and medical appointments, voice control tools that work, and internet. But I don't get any of those things, because in its great and vast wisdom, the United States, my home, has decided I must suffer instead. To prove what? To help whom? Who does my suffering help? I suppose it makes some people feel better that assisted suicide is out of my reach. The same with the opioid crisis.
It's so awful it's almost funny sometimes, in a macabre way.
When you no longer believe that death is up to god (practically impossible to imagine for religious folks) it becomes a normal part of healthcare.
Ain't nobody gonna spend even 1 day suffering needlessly if there's a medical way out.