Jul. 15, 2004 - 18:33 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Personal

A column by Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times in the Rocky Mountain News today. Makes me think a lot and try to make sense of my own mixed feelings.

In part: Oregon law honors life by giving death dignity

PORTLAND, ORE. -- "John Ashcroft and other members of the Christian right have desperately tried to eviscerate Oregon's Death With Dignity law, on the ground that it undermines the sanctity of life."

"They should come here and talk to people like Florence Tauber. Tauber's husband Al, was a consultant who jogged, lifted weights and seemed destined to live forever. Then a doctor told him he had chronic lymphatic leukemia and the Taubers' world shattered. The leukemia left him so weak that he couldn't even hold a book, and he became utterly demoralized. "'I don't want to go through this,'" Florence Tauber remembers him telling her. "'I don't want you to see me lose my mind.'" . . . . . So Al Tauber obtained a lethal dose of medicine under the Oregon law, after getting statements from two doctors that he had less than six months to live. "It was a very difficult decision for me," Florence Tauber said. "But he made it easier by saying he was giving me the best of himself and not leaving me with ugly memories of him diminishing." Last year Al Tauber said his farewells and drank the medicine."

"Ashcroft and other critics have lost, so far, in their efforts, in the courts and in Congress, to block the Oregon law. But instead of moving on and letting Oregon proceed with its pathbreaking experiment, the Justice Department asked a federal appeals court on Monday for a new hearing."

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It mills around in my mind, to and fro, pro and con. Of course Nicholas Kristof has his opinions and writes deftly about them. But I am trying to reason it out for myself.

How much sanctity does life have when someone is in such pain or in such debility that life is not worth living to them anymore ?

When a person is in so much pain, knowing the end of his life is near, knows there is no hope to survive and be at peace as well and opts to end his or her life -- in essence aren't they dead already ?

Some of us are stubborn enough to fight to the end. And to my mind if the will to live is strong enough -- more power to that person. Some of us believe in miracles, as do I. But miracles are few and far between.

I often wonder in a case like an incurable condition, with life short anyway just how I would react ? Would I want to see my family and friends make the trip to hospital every day, to watch me fail a bit more each day ? To see me trying to cope with unbearable pain ?

Perhaps it is too soon after Rob's death for me to even think about such things. He was a fighter to the very end. It was so hard to see him fighting with all his might and see so little good effect on his health.

For myself I fear being a human vegetable, or going into the end stages of Alzheimer's - long past the point where I have any control over anything.

There are some folks who have written DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) instructions and have them filed with doctors and family in case of such things happening.

Another thing that comes to mind, if I am in such a condition that I cannot be of any help at all to another person, should I continue to live in agony ?

Heather and I have seen both sides of the question that attacks us all in one way or another. From all different angles. She faithfully nursed her Mom 'til she died of breast cancer, her sister she nursed through her last days too. She was with my Grandmother when she died of cancer. I will not ask her feelings on the subject, and it wouldn't surprise me that we each feel differently.

In recent years Hospice care has reached an acceptance amongst many of us. If someone is in a terminal condition the philosophy is to keep a patient as comfortable as possible but not go through procedures and operations when the end result is going to be death anyway.

All this talk and I still don't know what to think, how to feel -- except for one thing, "Circumstances alter cases," don't know who said it but I think it can have a bearing on what happens down the line aways.

I will leave it to my Higher Power and hope to have my doubts and fears assuaged in that way. After all I don't think there could be anything more Personal . . . . . . . . .

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