In contemplating his 89-year-old mother’s suffering and dying, and her question, “Honey, how do I get out of this mess?,” Dr. Pies wondered, “Should we allow physician-assisted suicide? And, if not physician-assisted suicide, then perhaps some lay person, a ‘Thanatician’ who would be trained, certified, and monitored?”
I personally fear the slippery slope. Who would this “Thanatician” take as a client? And what panel, governing body, or bureaucrat would make the acceptance criteria? As a country, as a people of the universe, I don’t want us sliding along a path that could lead to bureaucrats deciding our fates.
No, I say, we do not need a Thanatician, now or ever!
Dr. Pies’s mother, fortunately, came into the care of a good hospice agency. Hopefully, she received excellent palliation for her discomforts.
It is not that we need physician-assisted euthanasia; it is that we need more nurses and physicians well-trained in hospice and palliative medicine. We need a mind-set in our community and our country that says we will not allow our patients, our friends, and our relatives to die without offering them good medical companionship on their journey. We need to speak out against creating unnecessary suffering. Pies quotes Dr. Fred Rosner who, speaking of the Jewish medico ethical traditions, says, “To prolong life is a [commandment], to prolong dying is not.”
How did we get to the point in medicine where we can stand beside someone who is actively dying, and even consider that modern resuscitative efforts could be ethically correct? How is pounding on the chest of someone actively dying beneficent? How does it live up to our pledge of “do no harm?”
Remedies
I am so proud of OSF HealthCare for taking the painful, but morally correct, time and effort to develop a protocol that allows us to not initiate such efforts when we know it is futile.
We are blessed in hospice and palliative care to be with our patients at their most vulnerable time, and to spend some of their most precious final moments with them. We evaluate their “Total Pain,” a measure of all that is distressing, both physical and spiritual. And we do our best to address their suffering in whatever form it comes.
Sometimes our remedy is a strong opiate; sometimes it is a sedative. But more often than not, it is a gentle hand, and an eye that says “we will not leave you alone.” We are with you on this journey.
Last Updated: December 4, 2018