Even though I would argue that most deaths aren’t good, we improve the quality of death of the vast majority of people we care for, often substantially. And there isn’t much that’s more satisfying than that.
It just doesn’t make the death good.
It’s time that we revise and refine our cultural lexicon around this emergent end-of-life practice. A medically assisted death definitively warrants a linguistic and conceptual category of its own.
We had a a rare reason to celebrate last week when the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) pulled back on its threat to curtail the boom in “telemedicine” that allowed us to deal with COVID-19.
The lawsuit does not attack the right of patients to access medical aid in dying, which is the heart of the bill. Rather, it challenges provisions of the law that require providers to inform patients of the availability of medical aid in dying, and to refer those patients to a willing provider if the patient’s primary provider is unable or is unwilling for any reason.
“You have to be well connected within a network of doctors or skilled in researching such matters, and that’s one possible explanation of why well-educated people are disproportionately represented in our findings.”
Unconscious, Michael lingered for hours. His waiting children had no one to call for advice, but Michael had left instructions for this eventuality. Sobbing, his son Bill lovingly carried out his father’s wishes.
“The rest is up to you,” he finally said, ending the conversation for good. He didn’t have any more guidance, and certainly no more patience to talk about it. I was surprised. To me, it felt slightly irresponsible to leave all these decisions to other people.
Recognizing the importance of psychosocial factors to those considering a hastened death led FEN to more explicitly recognize the importance of psychosocial factors when evaluating an applicant’s medical records. By making psychosocial factors more explicit in our criteria, we honor what truly matters to those who reach out to us.
There are so many ways do die with dignity – we can’t let the word “dignity” be hijacked to the service of just one way of dying.
VSED might not be for everyone, but it is the only chance for some to experience an end to unbearable suffering. Done with careful preparation, medical support, and compassionate caregiving, VSED offers a natural end to life.
