Rattler12 said:

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doubledog said:

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Under euthanasia laws, a person must be in a state of intolerable suffering with no realistic hope of relief and it should only be applied in exceptional and extreme circumstances.

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Who decides such things? For a "person" of faith the answer is God.

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I too had to tell Dr's and nursing home folks to take my mother off all food and liquids when she was in the final stages of Alzheimer's. She couldn't eat nor drink nor swallow and was unconscious. Her doctor told me that there was a very likely chance she would aspirate food into her lungs from her feeding tube and that would lead to a very painful death. He followed up with "dehydration is a painless way to die" I asked him what he was telling me and he repeated himself. She had a directive to physicians and a DNR and I was the POA for her. I talked to my brother and we agreed on what needed to be done. I told them to take her off all food and liquids and three days later she was gone. It was her decision and I followed her directives.

Does that make me a "nonperson" of faith for following her wishes?

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No, each case is unique. You did not choose a time or place for your mom to die, God did.

doubledog said:

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Quote:

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Under euthanasia laws, a person must be in a state of intolerable suffering with no realistic hope of relief and it should only be applied in exceptional and extreme circumstances.

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Who decides such things? For a "person" of faith the answer is God.

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Not everyone believes in the same magical sky fairy, nor do they want you deciding, on behalf of your particular fairy, how long they must remain in incredible pain.

doubledog said:

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dmart90 said:

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doubledog said:

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dmart90 said:

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doubledog said:

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Quote:

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Under euthanasia laws, a person must be in a state of intolerable suffering with no realistic hope of relief and it should only be applied in exceptional and extreme circumstances.

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Who decides such things? For a "person" of faith the answer is God.

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If I know its time for me to go, and I'm physically and mentally capable, would you rather I:
A. Hike to a ledge and step off, hoping its enough to end me, and forcing the S&R team to scrape me off the rocks and deal with that trauma
B. Go to a medical professional who is prepared to help me end it in a humane way.

Please, let me know how YOU would like me to handle it.

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Driving a vintage mustang over a cliff into the Grand Canyon. However this would be suicide.
A person of faith would tell you: "We do not own our life, it belongs to God and God's alone."

It took my father two weeks to die from terminal cancer. He was never alone. One of us stayed with him at all times, he was not in pain (morphine) and his eyes and smile told us all we needed to know. God decided when and where it would end.

We did not pull the plug, but we allowed him to die naturally as he wanted to do.

"God's will not mine", is the moto of a person of faith.

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So you speak for all persons of faith? I don't believe i would ever presume that...

As a person of faith, I believe God gave us free will and the ability to exercise said free will.

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Would that include suicide?

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Yes.

Again, I believe God granted us the gift of free will. I also believe God provided us with guidelines for how we should live our lives. I also believe God grants us grace when we use that gift of free will.

My gosh. Some of the stories on this thread are horrendous. I really feel for those of you that had to make life decisions and/or watch loved ones wither away in a horrible death. I pray I never have to be in the position that you've been in.

flown-the-coop said:

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Maybe quit calling it euthanasia and call it what it really is…



mercy.

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I think this marks the first time I have ever agreed with you. Our lawmakers need to get behind this not being murder. This is 100% mercy. When you look into someone's eyes that you love and know that as much pain as they are in at that moment, it is the best they are goig to feel for the rest of their life, mercy is what we need to give them. And the people willing to help them with this deserve grace.

B-1 83 said:

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Rubicante said:

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I feel like most people who are against euthanasia in all circumstances have the fortune of never having had to personally witness a loved one waste away in a 24/7 existence of agony and terror. I came very close to killing a loved one and accepting the consequences so I could release them from their torment.

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Try having your wife ask you to kill her

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And I would. In a heartbeat. I would give everything to her.

God bless you and your trials.

I deal with patients who are on hospice services every single day for the last 15 years and have not once seen a patient request water/food and be denied.

edit: i now see someone else has already called you out on your ridiculous statement.

STL_aTm said:

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I deal with patients who are on hospice services every single day for the last 15 years and have not once seen a patient request water/food and be denied.

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Again, I didn't say it was denied. They choose to not have it when they want to die. Which to my point starts splitting hairs on where we draw the line on suicide vs not suicide when someone else may make the same choice but instead of days of opiates, they choose a quicker medication to ease to the end

Enrico Pallazzo said:

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Hospice at the end is providing no water, no food, only morphine droplets inside the cheek.

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yes you did

Edit; just to add I'm completely torn on this topic. I see it everyday of how brutal the end of life can be. I just want to clarify that hospice is an incredible resource for families and they will not starve or dehydrate you to death.

STL_aTm said:

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Enrico Pallazzo said:

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Hospice at the end is providing no water, no food, only morphine droplets inside the cheek.

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yes you did

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Well, if you know hospice as you say you do, then you know this is how it is at the end. Yes, the patient makes a choice but this is how the choice ends for a vast percentage of them. The hope is that it's limited to a couple of days. For many it isn't

And yes, hospice does great work given the limits our state puts on them/it. But let's not delude ourselves that it is always some dignified, smooth process. Diapers, gurgling up secretions, labored breathing and anxiety - a good hospice nurse helps mitigate these with meds/vacuuming/diaper changing, but it's a tough process at the end for many

flown-the-coop said:

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The Fall Guy said:

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Some of yall have never seen the worst of the worst. Watching my Mom and Grandmother pass away with Alzheimers was horrible. I never wish myself to live with Alzheimers. My brother and I even thought about taking my Mom to Oregon euthanize her because the laws her in Texas would put us in jail. Watche both of them whither away and my Grandmother became feral and would crawl on the floor trying to bite and scratch us.

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We treat violent illegal gang banger murderous child rapists orders of magnitude better than we treat end of life dementia patients. That is a fact.

We treated them like holocaust candidates during COVID. People better pray to Jesus that those folks were truly absent of mind or there may be some questions to answer for in the great beyond.

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Yes my Mom was stuck in an Alzheimers unit during covid and I was her guardian. The rules Abbott put in place were ludicrous. Luckily the units rules ended when you went to the patients rooms. Then leave the room mask up again. Stupid

army01 said:

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flown-the-coop said:

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Maybe quit calling it euthanasia and call it what it really is…



mercy.

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I think this marks the first time I have ever agreed with you. Our lawmakers need to get behind this not being murder. This is 100% mercy. When you look into someone's eyes that you love and know that as much pain as they are in at that moment, it is the best they are goig to feel for the rest of their life, mercy is what we need to give them. And the people willing to help them with this deserve grace.

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You will find I am quite reasonable when the topic being discussed is not trying to convince that I should be violently opposed to something because Orange Man supports it.

Teslag said:

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Euthanasia is a weird topic. We consider it the humane thing to do for our pets when they are terminal and in severe pain. But it's considered evil and barbaric to do to our loved ones.

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This.

But it's also something we decide to perform on criminals as well, in a very humane (way too humane IMO, but that's another story) manner. But we have to watch our loved ones suffer for sometimes months on end.

Like most everything else, our laws are stupid.

Enrico Pallazzo said:

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STL_aTm said:

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Enrico Pallazzo said:

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Hospice at the end is providing no water, no food, only morphine droplets inside the cheek.

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yes you did

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Well, if you know hospice as you say you do, then you know this is how it is at the end. Yes, the patient makes a choice but this is how the choice ends for a vast percentage of them. The hope is that it's limited to a couple of days. For many it isn't

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Glad you had the chance to clean that up. My mother was offered the water "gel" until such point she was no longer able "ask for it", which was a couple days before she passed which i think is what you are getting at

I had a former hospice nurse work for me years ago. She worked hospice for 10-15 years then worked as a customer service senior manager for large consumer products company before I recruited her to internal audit for a rotation. Craziest woman i ever worked with but she was great at her job, great at the customer service job and after seeing her passion, i know she was a great hospice nurse.

I share that as an example that many of those who work in hospice care are noble souls doing noble work.

Teslag said:

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Euthanasia is a weird topic. We consider it the humane thing to do for our pets when they are terminal and in severe pain. But it's considered evil and barbaric to do to our loved ones.

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It's a pretty significant double standard.

Go figure... Big Medicine would rather keep you plugged in so they can keep billing for their services. Dead men create no cash flow for them.

hunter2012 said:

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Nature must take it's course, it's not splitting hairs to say there's a difference between alleviating pain while nature take it's course and actively killing someone. There must be a black and white line regarding life and death of people. Anything else justifies human malevolence, even if it's under the guise of mercy.

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F that nonsense.

Sorry, completely disagree with the "yeah, we know you are suffereing and are in absolute misery 24/7 and sht yourself and are little more than a vegetable that will die within a few days, but we'll just sit back and watch the show because nature must take it's course".

Guess what? We ARE nature. We have the capability of thought, which is why we are the top of the food chain. If you are in a rational state and make the decision that when it is time to end your existence on this planet because you don't want to spend weeks or months laying in a bed simply existing or to put your family through the absolute God awful experience of watching you shrivel up and die, you should have that choice.

I'd rather get taken out to the back 40 and have a bullet put in my head than go through some of the stuff I watched my grandmother and my father go through. Because it took more of a toll on the rest of the family dealing with what they were witnessing than the actual death, which came as a relief. We are not meant to live an existence of pain and agony simply "because". Talk about cruel.

I sincerely hope you never have a pet nor have to be the decision maker for family, because I feel sorry for both already if you do.

12 year old seems bad, but i don't know enough details.

If I became a vegetable with no hope or if I got to be 95, in bed and just wasting people's time, money and emotions, just euthanize me and be done with it. That would be a sweet release. I even put it in my Trust covenants.

This issue is not clear-cut.

Ag with kids said:

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Teslag said:

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Euthanasia is a weird topic. We consider it the humane thing to do for our pets when they are terminal and in severe pain. But it's considered evil and barbaric to do to our loved ones.

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As someone who had to tell the doctors to pull the plug on my late wife, it is not an easy decision to make.

I wish that pain on absolutely no one....

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Having gone through severe dehydration a few times, I can say with authority that it is not a "painless" thing.

The "let nature / god take its course" crowd were absent on the day the parable about the man in rising flood waters was taught.

Enrico Pallazzo said:

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Is not feeding a baby "nature taking its course" when it dies? That's basically what we are doing with hospice. Choosing to withhold basic sustenance that would otherwise prolong life from someone incapable of doing it themselves

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Complete fallacy. Hospice is intended to make the patient comfortable and provide the family with any support they need prior to an after death. They do not actively keep the patient from eating or drinking. Either 1) you need to educate yourself better about hospice, or 2) you had an incredibly bad experience.

doubledog said:

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dmart90 said:

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doubledog said:

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Quote:

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Under euthanasia laws, a person must be in a state of intolerable suffering with no realistic hope of relief and it should only be applied in exceptional and extreme circumstances.

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Who decides such things? For a "person" of faith the answer is God.

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If I know its time for me to go, and I'm physically and mentally capable, would you rather I:
A. Hike to a ledge and step off, hoping its enough to end me, and forcing the S&R team to scrape me off the rocks and deal with that trauma
B. Go to a medical professional who is prepared to help me end it in a humane way.

Please, let me know how YOU would like me to handle it.

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Driving a vintage mustang over a cliff into the Grand Canyon. However this would be suicide.
A person of faith would tell you: "We do not own our life, it belongs to God and God's alone."

It took my father two weeks to die from terminal cancer. He was never alone. One of us stayed with him at all times, he was not in pain (morphine) and his eyes and smile told us all we needed to know. God decided when and where it would end.

We did not pull the plug, but we allowed him to die naturally as he wanted to do.

"God's will not mine", is the moto of a person of faith.

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As a person of faith, I firmly believe that God gave man the capability of higher level thought, compassion, reasoning and critical thinking as part of His will. It is what makes us human and not just another mammalian species. And I don't believe for a minute that God's will is to force people to suffer needlessly when we as a species have many alternatives to alleviate that suffering.

I'll just assume you think I'm not as Christian-ly as you are though, and I'm good with that.

3rd Coast said:

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Enrico Pallazzo said:

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Is not feeding a baby "nature taking its course" when it dies? That's basically what we are doing with hospice. Choosing to withhold basic sustenance that would otherwise prolong life from someone incapable of doing it themselves

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Complete fallacy. Hospice is intended to make the patient comfortable and provide the family with any support they need prior to an after death. They do not actively keep the patient from eating or drinking. Either 1) you need to educate yourself better about hospice, or 2) you had an incredibly bad experience.

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The baby analogy is apt when the individual no longer has the ability to clearly communicate their comfort and hunger and certainly cannot do anything on their own to resolve their circumstance.

Not a fallacy at all.

The need to read the parable I posted.

Pretty sure the concept of mercy is covered in the Bible. Maybe it's been taken out.

schmellba99 said:

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hunter2012 said:

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Nature must take it's course, it's not splitting hairs to say there's a difference between alleviating pain while nature take it's course and actively killing someone. There must be a black and white line regarding life and death of people. Anything else justifies human malevolence, even if it's under the guise of mercy.

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F that nonsense.

Sorry, completely disagree with the "yeah, we know you are suffereing and are in absolute misery 24/7 and sht yourself and are little more than a vegetable that will die within a few days, but we'll just sit back and watch the show because nature must take it's course".

Guess what? We ARE nature. We have the capability of thought, which is why we are the top of the food chain. If you are in a rational state and make the decision that when it is time to end your existence on this planet because you don't want to spend weeks or months laying in a bed simply existing or to put your family through the absolute God awful experience of watching you shrivel up and die, you should have that choice.

I'd rather get taken out to the back 40 and have a bullet put in my head than go through some of the stuff I watched my grandmother and my father go through. Because it took more of a toll on the rest of the family dealing with what they were witnessing than the actual death, which came as a relief. We are not meant to live an existence of pain and agony simply "because". Talk about cruel.

I sincerely hope you never have a pet nor have to be the decision maker for family, because I feel sorry for both already if you do.

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The hospice worker for my mom said she starts coming every day when she thinks someone is about to die in a day or so. My Mom lived for 2 weeks after that. She was in a hospital bed in my sister's dining room. It was extremely painful to just watch her starve and eventually dehydrate to death, not to mention very taxing on my sister and brother in law. At the end she was not conscious. She was absolutely terminal with no hope of recovery and absolutely zero quality of life.

Starving and cutting off water is, in effect, euthanasia. I don't see a difference other than, like you said, the medical bills.

I don't think God wants you to force you or your loved one to suffer needlessly. My Uncle passed recently too. Same scenario.

Enrico Pallazzo said:

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Right, this vision some have is unplugging and drifting away while the family surrounds the bedside. In many many many cases, it is far more disturbing and much less dignified even with best care and hospice efforts

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Exactly. For the most part, hospice is where we simply drug people into oblivion with morphine and lorazepam and let them starve to death. I sat with my dad for days hitting the morphine pump every 20 minutes because the pain from organ failure was unbearable for him. When my mom died last month, all I could do was sit there hoping and praying for God to take her before she went through what dad did. Thankfully, He answered my prayers, but yeah, the reality is anyone at the end of their life who can no longer consume food or water and has no chance of recovery is going to die a horrible, painful death while we insulate ourselves from that reality by incapacitating them with loads of drugs.

dmart90 said:

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doubledog said:

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dmart90 said:

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doubledog said:

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Quote:

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Under euthanasia laws, a person must be in a state of intolerable suffering with no realistic hope of relief and it should only be applied in exceptional and extreme circumstances.

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Who decides such things? For a "person" of faith the answer is God.

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If I know its time for me to go, and I'm physically and mentally capable, would you rather I:
A. Hike to a ledge and step off, hoping its enough to end me, and forcing the S&R team to scrape me off the rocks and deal with that trauma
B. Go to a medical professional who is prepared to help me end it in a humane way.

Please, let me know how YOU would like me to handle it.

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Driving a vintage mustang over a cliff into the Grand Canyon. However this would be suicide.
A person of faith would tell you: "We do not own our life, it belongs to God and God's alone."

It took my father two weeks to die from terminal cancer. He was never alone. One of us stayed with him at all times, he was not in pain (morphine) and his eyes and smile told us all we needed to know. God decided when and where it would end.

We did not pull the plug, but we allowed him to die naturally as he wanted to do.

"God's will not mine", is the moto of a person of faith.

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So you speak for all persons of faith? I don't believe i would ever presume that...

As a person of faith, I believe God gave us free will and the ability to exercise said free will.

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Free will yes, but Jesus also clearly set the example "but let your will be done, not mine" right before he was betrayed so all believers can be forgiven for those free will decisions.

FIDO*98* said:

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Seamaster said:

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But it's absolutely not the same thing legally or morally.

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Laws are written by man. It is legal according to the law in many places.

Morality is your interpretation of a divine and higher power. I would guess we believe in the same deity however I do not believe there is a moral conflict. I witnessed an uncle with dementia and cancer who was dead long before his body gave up the ghost. I would have no moral issues facing my God if I had been able to end his suffering early. As you so eloquently put it. It's not that hard.

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morality is not an interpretation. Your interpretation of the moral law or revelation is an interpretation of ontological reality. This is not a minor distinction. We shouldn't allow ourselves to believe that the moral law only exists in our minds. This is the kind of thing people say when they're trying to rationalize their behavior.

STL_aTm said:

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I deal with patients who are on hospice services every single day for the last 15 years and have not once seen a patient request water/food and be denied.

edit: i now see someone else has already called you out on your ridiculous statement.

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Thank you! I'm very passionate about Hospice and think it is a very good service. Hospice nurses are a special bread of people and the constant barrage of insults / misinformation I see on here is infuriating.

No, it's murder. Suicide itself is murder of oneself.

Bob Lee said:

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FIDO*98* said:

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Seamaster said:

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But it's absolutely not the same thing legally or morally.

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Laws are written by man. It is legal according to the law in many places.

Morality is your interpretation of a divine and higher power. I would guess we believe in the same deity however I do not believe there is a moral conflict. I witnessed an uncle with dementia and cancer who was dead long before his body gave up the ghost. I would have no moral issues facing my God if I had been able to end his suffering early. As you so eloquently put it. It's not that hard.

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morality is not an interpretation. Your interpretation of the moral law or revelation is an interpretation of ontological reality. This is not a minor distinction. We shouldn't allow ourselves to believe that the moral law only exists in our minds. This is the kind of thing people say when they're trying to rationalize their behavior.

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God gave me free will. I am using that free will to definitively declare here and now that if I have Alzheimer's, it is my express wish to be euthanized after I have lost the ability to care for myself or recognize my loved ones.

Whether or not you agree or disagree with my choice, or how God will judge me for what I have chosen for myself, I do not see why it is the business of the State to prevent me from doing so.

The people who run to religion or some religious book to decide for them what to do are the problem.

Please quote the location of this in scripture.

flown-the-coop said:

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Maybe quit calling it euthanasia and call it what it really is…



EVIL.

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FIFY