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Religion should at least be somewhat concerned with the above.
Okay, so yesterday, I was visiting my aunt who was turning 90, and her diabetic husband. Anyway, I have a grandma who was not into doctors (and managed to die peacefully in her sleep, bless her stubborn cheerful soul), after they botched her stiff neck. My dad's not real into doctors, as a general rule, but that's mostly general cynicism. But me, at age thirty, I completely don't trust doctors.
And I have fairly good reason to. I was taking ADD medicine for years, and years, before I got fed up and threw the stuff away. It made me neurotic, upset my stomach, and stunted my ability to make social connections because I was always ON. I was also probed and prodded, because of Rolandic seizures when I was a kid. I later read up on both of these. One, ADD is commonly misdiagnosed, there can be many causes for a person to be distracted and inattentive, including emotional and social like for instance "adjusting to moving alot" (which we did). And my doctor tried to give me some bullcrap when I poured it down the toilet about how people "crash" without it (I'm a fully functioning adult ten years later, granted with dependence issues, but my hobbies include game programming, which is very attention-oriented). And the Rolandic seizures? I found out, not only do people tend to outgrow them without the need of medicine, but some seizure medicine actually messes with brain function (see the film First Do No Harm, for a good idea of just how bad seizure treatment can get). And then a derma-cream (that made me rash) to treat acne, and then another doctor taking chunks out of my skin and leaving scars, which were benign. Not even being sick, and I keep going in and out of these places. Now, I found out that trans fats do cause diabetes (not sugar), and I probably have diabetes from having a mostly healthy diet (vegetable oils like canola, has trace amounts smuggled in, for that matter the milk you drink probably has some, due to poor cattle diet) not due to negligence of my own, but because poor standards of health in this country make people sick in the first place. I am watching my diet, to eat a good amount of healthy fats (which would also be butter, but for the abysmal treatment of cattle in this country), instead of letting one doctor know of my suspicion.
Oh, and also? I was in a car accident with my dad, and later found that my leg was injured and I'd been numbing it out (I ignored treatment, but was not allowed to ride with him, "family can't ride together, unless they both request treatment" making me instead walk about ten blocks). When I got there, they had yet to treat him, or even ID him! We were out of town, in Richmond, so my mom wasn't there, just me and him. After contacting my mom, and getting my bro involved, we managed to get phone reception enough to do so (as this was during the hurricane outage the other year, and the reason for the crash was an outted stoplight where some jerk didn't even stop), I finally managed to get her involved, and she got me in so I could wait there. Two hours later. By the way, I know it was outtage, but they were woefully inefficient. My dad was groaning in pain due to the damage to his arm and side, and nobody showed by to check on his symptoms, instead taking care of some goof who took some drugs (like 40 of them), and joking amongst themselves. Okay you have a guy lying there in pain, and you can't dress his wound, give him painkillers, or do something besides have a laugh among yourselves?And then to get him to leave, we had to wait another thirty minutes to order a wheelchair. If he had an actual emergency, not only would we not know who he was to see his final moments, but they'd be to busy to do some actual work that might make a difference in his life.
So anyway, somehow or other, the conversation led to medicine, and I blurted my feeling out, and they give me a long lecture about without doctors, they would not have lived that long. Ummm, sorry, but I know you're ninety and all, and family, but you don't have the right to lecture me about what I want. It works for you, I'm not denying this. What I'm denying is that I personally don't trust doctors.
Hospice has a name for this, "Dying With Dignity." Of course, I don't want Hospice if something bad happens to me either. I don't want a third party, period. If someone in my family knows medicine (my bro-in-law is a male nurse), they have the right to treat me. But I don't want strangers seeing my last moments, and I don't want to be on life support while inefficient doctors have a good chuckle.
Bleh, long post. Anyway, do you have special convictions on how you want to be treated should things turn south? And yes, this does include atheists being able to shoo away "final moments" chaplains.
Last edited by bulmabriefs144; 07-14-2013 at 07:11 AM..
... do you have special convictions on how you want to be treated should things turn south? And yes, this does include atheists being able to shoo away "final moments" chaplains.
I want to have self determination and human dignity to the end if at all possible. This means, amongst other things, that I want to be able to determine when my quality of life is such that it's time to hang up my spurs. If I have a choice of living another two years bed-bound with Other People scraping excrement from my gnarly touche, vs going to sleep tonight and not waking up ever again, I want to have that self determination without people hovering around and second guessing it.
The trouble in practice is that this kind of thing tends to creep up on you, it's usually not obvious how things are going to go, and before you know it you are in a situation where you don't have the independence and strength to deal with your own affairs as you see fit. So ironically some people pull the trigger on rational suicide far sooner than they'd prefer, because they're entirely on their own ... no societal support at all.
I had a relative with a rare degenerative disease of extremely uncertain outcome who could have lived another 20 years in unspeakable agony, with a small chance of substantial remission of symptoms, but elected to end their life before they became so debilitated they could not set up their death in a certain manner. My guess is that this person, armed with a plan and the means to carry it out, lived a couple years longer than they would have without that hope and self determination. But if, when you are ready, you could just go to your doc for the same painless end we give to our dogs, I think they might have managed to eke out another year or two.
So that's the "how" of my dissolution, or at least a major aspect of it. With any luck I will be like my father, in reasonably good health until his final weeks, followed by a fairly quick exit, stage left; no real need to take any action. But if not, I will have contingency plans, just as I have a will in place. My wife is the same way, as are a lot of other people I know. One interesting difference with my wife is that she would tolerate even less "assisted living" than I would. Everyone's different in what sort of life they consider worth living.
I do know one thing: I wouldn't shoo away a chaplain. In fact, I'd request a representative from every single religion willing to come to my bed. Gotta hedge my bets, ya' know!
Has nothing to do with my religious beliefs but in my "living will" I have made it clear that I I refuse any and all medical treatment for any reason, including even first aid or any pain alleviating medications and/or sedatives.
I do go for My annual physical at the VA and will ask for non-medical self treatments I can do on my own and will accept general non medical procedures such as physical therapy, diet suggestions and group sessions for PTSD
But as for any thing like surgery or any medications those are all declined.
I see no connection between my religious belief and the lousey condition of what remains of what I call a body.
Do as the native americans did. They went alone ,found a quiet place and waited for death to come to take them. Thats about as alone as you can get. Nobody looking at you nor shoving meds down you,talking, no nothing and all for free.
Religion should at least be somewhat concerned with the above.
Okay, so yesterday, I was visiting my aunt who was turning 90, and her diabetic husband. Anyway, I have a grandma who was not into doctors (and managed to die peacefully in her sleep, bless her stubborn cheerful soul), after they botched her stiff neck. My dad's not real into doctors, as a general rule, but that's mostly general cynicism. But me, at age thirty, I completely don't trust doctors.
And I have fairly good reason to. I was taking ADD medicine for years, and years, before I got fed up and threw the stuff away. It made me neurotic, upset my stomach, and stunted my ability to make social connections because I was always ON. I was also probed and prodded, because of Rolandic seizures when I was a kid. I later read up on both of these. One, ADD is commonly misdiagnosed, there can be many causes for a person to be distracted and inattentive, including emotional and social like for instance "adjusting to moving alot" (which we did). And my doctor tried to give me some bullcrap when I poured it down the toilet about how people "crash" without it (I'm a fully functioning adult ten years later, granted with dependence issues, but my hobbies include game programming, which is very attention-oriented). And the Rolandic seizures? I found out, not only do people tend to outgrow them without the need of medicine, but some seizure medicine actually messes with brain function (see the film First Do No Harm, for a good idea of just how bad seizure treatment can get). And then a derma-cream (that made me rash) to treat acne, and then another doctor taking chunks out of my skin and leaving scars, which were benign. Not even being sick, and I keep going in and out of these places. Now, I found out that trans fats do cause diabetes (not sugar), and I probably have diabetes from having a mostly healthy diet (vegetable oils like canola, has trace amounts smuggled in, for that matter the milk you drink probably has some, due to poor cattle diet) not due to negligence of my own, but because poor standards of health in this country make people sick in the first place. I am watching my diet, to eat a good amount of healthy fats (which would also be butter, but for the abysmal treatment of cattle in this country), instead of letting one doctor know of my suspicion.
Oh, and also? I was in a car accident with my dad, and later found that my leg was injured and I'd been numbing it out (I ignored treatment, but was not allowed to ride with him, "family can't ride together, unless they both request treatment" making me instead walk about ten blocks). When I got there, they had yet to treat him, or even ID him! We were out of town, in Richmond, so my mom wasn't there, just me and him. After contacting my mom, and getting my bro involved, we managed to get phone reception enough to do so (as this was during the hurricane outage the other year, and the reason for the crash was an outted stoplight where some jerk didn't even stop), I finally managed to get her involved, and she got me in so I could wait there. Two hours later. By the way, I know it was outtage, but they were woefully inefficient. My dad was groaning in pain due to the damage to his arm and side, and nobody showed by to check on his symptoms, instead taking care of some goof who took some drugs (like 40 of them), and joking amongst themselves. Okay you have a guy lying there in pain, and you can't dress his wound, give him painkillers, or do something besides have a laugh among yourselves?And then to get him to leave, we had to wait another thirty minutes to order a wheelchair. If he had an actual emergency, not only would we not know who he was to see his final moments, but they'd be to busy to do some actual work that might make a difference in his life.
So anyway, somehow or other, the conversation led to medicine, and I blurted my feeling out, and they give me a long lecture about without doctors, they would not have lived that long. Ummm, sorry, but I know you're ninety and all, and family, but you don't have the right to lecture me about what I want. It works for you, I'm not denying this. What I'm denying is that I personally don't trust doctors.
Hospice has a name for this, "Dying With Dignity." Of course, I don't want Hospice if something bad happens to me either. I don't want a third party, period. If someone in my family knows medicine (my bro-in-law is a male nurse), they have the right to treat me. But I don't want strangers seeing my last moments, and I don't want to be on life support while inefficient doctors have a good chuckle.
Bleh, long post. Anyway, do you have special convictions on how you want to be treated should things turn south? And yes, this does include atheists being able to shoo away "final moments" chaplains.
Absolutely, it is all about how we die. I have known people so terrified of what was next it literally killed them. OK that was a pun, but I really liked it..
Seriously, I have known people who took their on life out of fear they would or might have already disappointed God, the great spirit, Allah or what ever name one uses...
I have also known people who punched their own ticket out of desperation that the next "world" was going to be better and they would not have to get by with the physical disability God forced them to live with in the here and now..
Death with dignity goes beyond the method by which we die, dignity means going out without regrets and surely without fear--regardless of what we believe spiritually.
The greatest manipulation the church has ever pulled is telling people they will suffer for all eternity if they do not accept Jesus as some kind of super savior--even if it is on their death bed. Do we really think (even if this fairy-tale is true) that a person can live their whole live "without" Jesus, do whatever they wanted and at the last minute find "peace" via repeating some evangelical fundie mantra?
How dare someone question another's "salvation"or relationship with their God. This death-bed confession has ONLY ONE purpose--TO VALIDATE the evangelical's vision and belief in their god-in-the_tiny_box so they can say that redemption can be attained even at the last second--but how in the world does anyone know 1.) was the person already "separated" from God or ant other spiritual power? 2). That this confession in Christ was sincere? People facing death may and are very likely to say ANYTHING that might bring them comfort OR get the evangelical to shut up and jut let the person go. 3). If this confession in Christ is bogus on the part of the dying, wouldn't that be even worse that dying "without" God as it is very likely to be seen as MOCKERY on part of the dying?
Wouldn't it be mush more appropriate to spend time with the dying reminiscing about the great times or may be even getting to hear them tell their greatest life stories?
Dignity is being able to die as you want to die, and not be hard wired to some machine because junior cannot bear to say good-bye and wants me to breathe through a machine for another 10 years?? Or a doctor prescribing all the latest high end drugs to prolong my life one more week??
So, in short (LOL) I understand from where the OP is coming from--sorta...and this has everything to do with religion as DEATH is as much a part of life as BIRTH and all that comes in between.
Do as the native americans did. They went alone ,found a quiet place and waited for death to come to take them. Thats about as alone as you can get. Nobody looking at you nor shoving meds down you,talking, no nothing and all for free.
Yeah, that's terrific if death is fairly imminent; not so great if you suffer from intractable pain.
What the hell? This is like a fugue episode. I barely remember writing this. Oh, wait, that's why. This is a TWO YEAR OLD article.
Are you suggesting that this thread should die with dignity?
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