Pat Buchanan Can Suck It
Last night Buchanan was yammering on about the "Death Panels" that (will, in some as yet hypothetical future) convene when terminal patients are given "options." Every option *except* refusal of treatment, which he neglected to add.
I have lost many dear friends to cancer. The hardest was my friend Anne; she was 40 when she died in 1998 after her *third* bout with breast cancer. She knew the news was bad at the appointment when she received her third diagnosis and the doctor (who happened to be my oncologist also) recommended experimental treatments. She had had chemo, radiation, a stem-cell transplant (the first in Indiana) and numerous surgeries. The doctor recommended teflon injections. You know, the non-stick surface in cooking pans?
She told me in our frequent conversations about the terminal state of her illness: "I want to die and my doctor won't let me."
She spent the last four months on Earth falling down stairs, in agonizing pain from the cancer which had spread to every bone in her body, not eating, vomiting at all hours of the day, not sleeping (despite the pharmaceutical soup she was served three times daily), and just generally too aware of what was happening to her.
Those fuckers kept her alive because her health insurance would pay them to. She had a cadillac plan, but she was ready for the end. The end of seeing her husband, family, and friends suffer because she was *so* sick; the end of the unbearable pain; the end of feeling dizzy and scared but acutely aware of her suffering no matter how much morphine they gave her.
She wanted to die.
The last time I talked to her was two weeks before she passed.
The final thing she said as we hung up the phone was: "I don't understand why God won't let me die."
That was Anne. A deeply devout woman who lived a short, loved-filled life and was made to suffer unimaginable cruelty at the hands of people who were trying to *save* her.
What part of terminal didn't the doctor understand?
Right now, a very dear friend of my mom's is losing his battle with liver cancer. He was hospitalized over the weekend and wants to go home to die. He wants to take a jacuzzi, feed the birds, tend to his garden, have one last fire in the hearth that forms the center of his home.
His doctors won't let him leave. They'd rather let him die in a hospital bed surrounded by machines and caregivers who are strangers.
Indeed, there are death panels... doctors who collect from insurance companies on terminally ill patients... suck the well dry. But the patient? There is no end for them until they have been bled dry and can no longer recognize family and friends.
We are fortunate to have the option to end the suffering of our pets... why can't we let those who are terminally ill end the suffering of themselves and those they love?
There are death panels... but they are not the same for everyone. They aren't government bureaucrats with a checklist of costs. They are doctors and hospital administrators who check your insurance and if you are fortunate enough to have good coverage, they will give you the longest death you can afford... and charge your family and dear friends for a ring-side seat to watch.
