The death of Bill Chinnock got me thinking about all the times I've talked with other chronically ill folks about suicide. Its an open secret among folks with chronic pain conditions and we hardly ever talk about to other people. I know several chronically ill people who horde a stash of pills or who have a plan for the day when it gets to be too much
Let me be clear, when the chronically ill talk about suicide, they're generally not suffering from depression. They don't say anything to their doctors because they don't need a psychiatric referral. What they need is relief from intolerable symptoms. Some of those symptoms are physical and some are mental and many are psychosocial.
Imagine breaking a leg and not being offered any pain killer. Then being given a crutch and told "You'll get used to the discomfort" without the benefit of a cast. And maybe it'll heal and maybe it won't. You might even be told that your limp is merely to get attention. As your leg heals deformed, you feel that you are an increasing burden on those around you. After a while, checking out of this life might start to look attractive.
The Vermont Legislature just debated a death with dignity act. It would only apply to the terminally ill. I believe that assisted suicide or whatever you want to call it asks the wrong question. Rather than asking whether its okay to help a person in intolerable pain kill themselves, we need to ask why we're allowing people to suffer in intolerable pain.
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4 comments:
The question of late seems to be,for me,'which day would be the right day?" I think one of the problems with asking others for amerlioration of symptoms is there are too many fear based, human reactions in providers to have them think clearly and rationally about the prescription they may determine. And if one doesn talk too much about the fact that there is a stash to the wrong people,the focus then becomes placed upon the mental issues brought on by the symptoms and not upon the relief of said symptoms.
Was that foggy enough? No? I'll try harder next time.
BTW, excellently and succinctly writ
The huge paranoia about "drug seeking" is certainly a problem. And yes, there are drug seekers. There are also women who falsely accuse men of rape and people who fake back injuries to win lawsuits. The medical profession is slowly becoming educated, but every time I see an educational outreach attempt to physcians, someone like Rush Limbaugh appears in the news saying they had been prescribed too many pain killers and their drug problem is their MD's fault.
Far too often society seems to look at the exeptions to the rule (like the fact that there are drug seekers, or people who abuse the welfare system) and decide that they are the majority. This post was wonderfully written, clear and to the point (as was already pointed out). And isn't it usually the things we don't want to talk about that need to be talked about the most?
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