Do We Have A Right To A ‘Good Death’?

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[S]hould doctors do everything they can to preserve life, or should some medical techniques, such as cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR), be a matter of patient choice? Doctor Sarah Simons wades into the debate and argues that ‘do not resuscitate’ decisions are all about patients’ human rights.

Of all our human rights, the right to life is the one most often held up as the flagship, fundamental right: after all, without life, how can one learn, love, communicate, play or have a family?

The right to life is closely linked to the right to health. Under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which the UK has signed and ratified, states are required to “recognise the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health”.

Protecting patients’ rights to life and health involves providing necessary life-saving treatment (known as resuscitation) if their life is threatened by serious illness or injury. It also involves enabling patients to live as well as possible for as long as possible: for example, by treating preventable diseases and encouraging people to adopt a healthy lifestyle. However, although many aspects of medicine and health are unpredictable, death is the one certainty for all of us.

Is There a Right to a Good Death?

In recent years, there has been much debate surrounding how healthcare practitioners should approach end-of-life issues with patients. A ‘good, natural death’ is increasingly recognised as a part of someone’s human right to life.

When healthcare professionals acknowledge that someone is approaching the final stages of their life, and no longer responding to life-saving treatment, treatment is not withdrawn, but instead, the goal is changed to treatment focussed on preserving the patient’s quality of life and managing their symptoms in accordance with their wishes. It’s important to draw a distinction between this and the ethical debate on euthanasia, which is altogether different from end-of-life care and natural death.

A ‘good, natural death’ is increasingly recognised as a part of someone’s human right to life.

Sarah Simons

This change of focus often includes completing a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ (DNR) order, instructing healthcare teams not to carry out cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) when the patients’ heart and lungs cease to work. This decision is usually made on the grounds of pre-existing medical conditions and poor physiological reserve and frailty, which mean that CPR will not be successful. A DNR should always take into account the patient’s informed opinion on the matter, or at least their next of kin’s.

A DNR decision only refers to CPR. The patient can still receive treatment for related issues, such as antibiotics for an infection, and all other life-preserving or life-saving treatments can be given until the patient’s heart and lungs stop working. A DNR decision never means that life-saving treatment is not given – the purpose of a DNR is to allow the patient to pass away naturally and peacefully, with dignity and without traumatic medical intervention.

What Exactly is CPR?

Understanding the reality of CPR is vital to understanding why it is a human rights issue. CPR is used when someone has a cardiac arrest, which means they have suddenly stopped breathing and their heart has stopped beating.

CPR specifically refers to the chest compressions, electric shocks and artificial breathing technique used to stimulate and replicate the beating of the heart to pump blood around the body and the breaths taken to inflate the lungs with oxygen. This is effective when a sudden cardiac arrest occurs and someone’s organs stop unexpectedly, but the underlying mechanism of a cardiac arrest is very different from when the heart stops beating as part of the body’s natural decline at the end of life

CPR is traumatic, undignified and usually unsuccessful in patients of all ages.

Sarah Simons

Sadly, despite Hollywood’s optimistic depictions of resuscitation, the reality is that CPR is often traumatic, undignified and usually unsuccessful in patients of all ages. CPR will not reverse years of gradually shrinking muscle mass, rejuvenate brains worn down by the steady decline of dementia, remove cancerous tumours or clear obstructed lungs weathered by years of COPD, which are often the underlying causes when someone’s heart and lungs have stopped.

 

CPR will cause bruising, vomiting, bleeding and broken ribs. CPR will render someone’s dying moments traumatic and undignified, and it will leave their friends and families with lasting memories of a failed, brutal resuscitation rather than a mental image of their loved one peacefully slipping away pain-free and asleep.

What Do Experts Have to Say About This?

Guidance published by the General Medical Council (GMC) in 2016 emphasised the importance of recognising patients’ human rights in relation to decisions about CPR and end-of-life care. The guidance recognised that “provisions particularly relevant to decisions about attempting CPR include the right to life (Article 2) [and] the right to be free from inhuman or degrading treatment (Article 3)”.

Article 3 of the Human Rights Convention specifically refers to the right to protection from inhuman or degrading treatment, and understanding the brutal, traumatic reality of CPR is a crucial consideration when thinking about DNR decisions. The GMC goes on to reference “the right to respect for privacy and family life (Article 8), the right to freedom of expression, which includes the right to hold opinions and to receive information (Article 10) and the right to be free from discrimination in respect of these rights (Article 14).”

The GMC guidance also highlights that the Human Rights Act, (which incorporates the Human Rights Convention into UK law), “aims to promote human dignity and transparent decision-making”, which should also be key concerns for doctors making decisions across all aspects of medicine.

Making the Right Choice For The Patient

Having open, frank discussions about CPR, and end-of-life decisions in general, enables healthcare professionals and patients to make informed decisions together. Doing so empowers patients to ask questions and insist that their rights are respected. It gives patients time to talk to their loved ones about what’s important to them, including any religious considerations, before their health deteriorates to a point where these conversations may not be possible. 

Having open, frank discussions about CPR … enables healthcare professionals and patients to make informed decisions together.

Sarah Simons

Avoiding these conversations, while perhaps understandable given that no-one likes to think of their loved ones dying, means that important questions may not get asked and the patient’s wishes may go unheard. Making decisions on CPR and other practical matters is important, but so is acknowledging that someone wants to spend their last days eating mint chocolate chip ice cream at home listening to a specific Eva Cassidy album whilst surrounded by their pets and children.

As the NHS turns 70 later this year, and continues to navigate the challenges of an ageing population, conversations about end-of-life care are more important than ever before. Grief and bereavement are difficult, emotionally charged topics of conversation, but death is a normal human process. Taking the opportunity to talk about what we want at the end of our lives empowers us to make informed decisions and ultimately help all of us to die well one day.

Complete Article HERE!

‘Living While Dying,’ Cathy Zheutlin’s film explores end of life

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Filmmaker Cathy Zheutlin, right, with her mother, Jonnie Zheutlin. Cathy Zheutlin was inspired to make the film ‘Living While Dying,’ when her mother’s partner was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

“It wasn’t loss that triggered this, it was curiosity,” says filmmaker Cathy Zheutlin of her new documentary, “Living While Dying,” a short film whose subtitle reads: “A story of life. A story of death. Finding joy in the journey.” Zheutlin, who stumbled upon the good fortune of having two parents alive in their 90s, became fascinated with the idea of mortality, an inevitability we all face, despite it being hidden from view — and polite conversation, for that matter. Her exploration of the topic extends an invitation to viewers, one that hinges on conversation as the most necessary component surrounding mortality and the end-of-life choices that arise as a result. After having made its debut in Ashland and Portland, Oregon, where the filmmaker and her mother reside, Zheutlin’s film is making the rounds in the northeast; it will be screened Wednesday, June 6, at 7:30 p.m. at Kimball Farms Life Care in Lenox.

The inspiration for Zheutlin’s film came when her mother’s partner, Clair, learned he had terminal cancer. “We had a dying man in the living room,” she recalls in the film’s trailer. “I am a filmmaker so I asked Clair if I could film him; he said ‘yes,’” continues Zheutlin. This impetus, coupled with what she calls a desire to push the envelope of consciousness, led Zheutlin and her husband, Edis Jurcys, a brilliant photographer, to embark on the telling of these stories. Their exploration took them to Australia where they met a death walker, and to Bali where they saw a mass cremation. When the pair learned that dear friend Don was dying back at home, Zheutlin took “a deep dive into reflecting on death and grappling with the meaning of life.” The result is “Living While Dying.”

“This is territory that we cannot avoid,” said Zheutlin, whose work stemmed from a simple observation on her part: “So many people have so much to say [and yet] the conversation is mostly not happening.” The documentary project, a full five years in the making, catapulted her back into the world of professional filmmaking after a 32-year hiatus. She decided to pick up her camera and film four friends with terminal illnesses who chose to live out their days in hospice care at home. What ensues is a bold discussion of the inevitable, and one filmmaker’s attempt to remove the pall from a subject that, if considered from a different perspective, is but the final developmental stage in life — one to be revered and celebrated in much the same way as all those that precede it.

Jonnie Zheutlin’s partner, Clair Killen, near the end of his life.

“You can’t destroy energy, that became really clear to me,” recalls Jonnie Zheutlin of her own experience walking through end of life with her partner of 12 years, Clair. “I don’t actually fear dying,” is the elder Zheutlin’s stance on the subject. Jonnie took an OLLI class in Oregon called “Talking About Dying as If It Could Happen to You,” which she found to be both fascinating and on target — not to mention independent of her daughter’s project. This, coupled with Clair’s death, urged her on to further explore the subject. She recounts the first time Clair showed up, shortly after he died; she was looking out the window and, from the trees, this tape kept coming out. At first Jonnie thinks it’s a kite; she wonders what’s going on and then she has a realization: “The way it moved, it moved the way Clair danced — it was so clear, but I was frantic, I wanted someone to validate it,” she explains. From these experiences, a conversation between the mother-daughter pair has ensued.

“The advantage of having conversations when we are healthy is that, when we are in crisis, it’s not the time to begin thinking about all the various choices. And there are a zillion choices,” says Zheutlin. It’s the pre-thinking to support us along the way that Zheutlin hopes will inspire others to embark on a dialogue that, for many, is not welcome. In the documentary, Jonnie and her daughter model a conversation (Zheutlin is the film’s narrator) while Jonnie sits in a coffin. Zheutlin was conscious of her choice to model the conversation with her mother — who is very comfortable talking about her own EOL choices — in the presence of an image that was not terribly stereotypical. She felt the iconic images of individuals contemplating death while meandering through a cemetery to be too cliché. “That step of taking something scary and foreign and only associated with grief” proved liberating in her portrayal. She goes on to clarify: “I don’t think we should ever disassociate grief and death — it’s just that it’s not the only part [to be emphasized] because it’s natural. We somehow need to integrate it,” Zheutlin explains.

The film arises out of a grassroots movement — with titles running the gamut — that revolves around reclaiming death in much the same way baby boomers reclaimed birth. “They said, ‘let’s have our babies at home, [as] birth is not a medical event.’” Well, death isn’t necessarily a medical event, either. “Death is a natural thing that happens at the end of every single life. It’s 100 percent going to happen,” Zheutlin reminds her audience. But we don’t get to see the images of nonmedicalized death; this is where Zheutlin comes in. “Living While Dying” offers viewers a glimpse of what death looks like when one goes the nonmedical route and chooses hospice at home. “My experience is not prescriptive or comprehensive; everybody’s experience is going to be unique and important and worthy of being uplifted,” Zheutlin said. “I’m not promoting an ideology, I’m promoting a conversation,” she says of her intensely personal approach. One thing is certain: Death is somehow less scary after viewing this film. “It’s not articulated, but it’s felt,” Zheutlin explains. As for Jonnie Zheutlin’s last word on the topic? “I used to have cement in my mouth,” she says, borrowing a term she once heard a child use in her days as a therapist. “I am learning to verbalize; it’s taken me almost 90 years to learn to use my voice,” she jokes, adding “Thank God I’ve lived long enough to do that!”

Zheutlin’s film has been hailed as a brave and honest immersion in a difficult topic. In her director’s statement, she cuts straight to the chase: “Death is a teacher. Many of us are scared of death. We feel unprepared both for our own deaths and the deaths of people (and animals!) we love. Our associations with death are morbid, dark, cold, depressing, and laden with grief and pain. So we do not talk much about death. In modern times, we have medicalized the end of life, and disconnected it from nature. In trying to prolong life by any means necessary, we only succeed in keeping death shrouded in darkness. By keeping our distance from death, cloaking it, hiding our eyes from it, we actually lose touch with a sacred phase of life. Because, as we all know, death is a part of life — for all of us.”

Director-producer Zheutlin has been principal cinematographer on award-winning PBS documentaries including “The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter,” “The Other Philadelphia Story” and the 1982 Academy Award nominee “See What I Say.” Her 1986 documentary “Just One Step: The Great Peace March” led to a co-production with Soviet TV about the first Soviet-American peace walk. In short, she has spent her career making films that explore consciousness and encourage progressive change. Her documentary “Living While Dying” was an official selection for the THIRD ACTion Film Festival, which celebrates aging and older adults while helping to create an age-positive culture shift. For more information, visit www.livingwhiledying.org.

Complete Article HERE!

‘My dad gave us a gift’

Daughter opens up on father’s medically assisted death

Jen Wiles, far left, and Shanaaz Gokool, CEO of Dying with Dignity Canada, second from the right, pose with other speakers ahead of an end-of-life speech on Saturday, June 2, 2018.

By Zach Laing

[A]s with thousands of other Canadians, Robert Wayne Nelson had the chance to die on his own terms.

Nelson’s earlier diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease was enough to handle in the years leading up to his spring 2016 diagnosis of progressive supranuclear palsy — a disease his daughter, Jen Wiles, described as Parkinson’s “evil big brother.”

Doctors didn’t know what to do. The severe brain disorder holds no effective treatments.

However, as a biologist throughout his life, the then-71-year-old had always followed legislation surrounding medical assistance in dying.

“My dad was the first medically assisted death in our community,” said Nelson’s only daughter, Wiles, of her father who died on Feb. 15, 2017, in Camrose.

“He really understood that there was a place for this — not that he ever thought he would use it.”

In February 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Carter v. Canada that parts of the Criminal Code prohibiting doctor-assisted death would need to change to satisfy the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The ruling opened the door for medical assistance in dying and on June 17, 2016, federal legislation allowed people to die on their own terms, under certain circumstances.

In October 2017, Health Canada released numbers showing there were 2,149 medically assisted deaths in Canada between Dec. 10, 2015, and June 30, 2017.

As of April 30, 2018, Alberta Health Services reported 364 Albertans had received medical assistance in dying — of those, cancer, multiple sclerosis, ALS and advanced lung disease are the most-cited health conditions.

Those who wish to end their life on their own terms must have a grievous and incurable condition. Then, they have to make their initial request before two required assessments, followed by a 10-day waiting period — one that can be waived.

Wiles said their fight for her father to undergo doctor-assisted death was a challenging one.

“We didn’t have community support because of our faith-based community, which was really challenging,” said Wiles.

Robert Wayne Nelson pictured in an undated photo, died with medical assistance on Feb. 15, 2017.

“It was really hard to find assessors in central Alberta.”

It took nearly a year for Nelson to get his wish of assisted death, but it was something that left his family at peace.

“Despite the fact that we went through this really challenging couple of months … for us, it was really good,” said Wiles.

“The outcome for our family was positive — it was what he wanted. After his death we felt good, which is a strange thing to say. We did everything with him. We went to the funeral home, we picked up a column burial together, we did all this stuff with him.

“Through all those months, we came to a place that was really kind of beautiful and we have felt good since. We were able to really grieve ahead of time. He was relieved, we were relieved. We got up the next morning and we felt good.”

Knowing he was able to go out on his own terms only help the family he left behind.

“He did not want to go into palliative care, he did not want to see the end of his disease process,” she said.

The day after Nelson died, Wiles’ mother went to her coffee group sharing the story of the day before.

There, a woman who lost her husband nine years prior to a terrible battle with cancer wept openly as she wasn’t able to be over the trauma of his death.

“My dad gave us a gift — we didn’t have to watch that suffering,” said Wiles.

“He already couldn’t write, couldn’t read, he couldn’t be on the computer, couldn’t talk on the phone. All the beautiful things he did with his life, he couldn’t do anymore.”

Shanaaz Gokool, CEO of not-for-profit Dying with Dignity, explained ahead of a Saturday speaking event marking two years since the practice became legal how the process can be different for everybody.

“The more precarious your health is, the greater chance you have of losing capacity and therefore you can lose the right altogether. Medical assistance in dying is a life-affirming treatment,” she said, noting in communities that are less prepared, it’s more difficult to find support.

“Assisted dying for those left behind can be the gift of no regret.”

For those in small communities like the one Nelson lived in, the process for medically assisted death can be a frustrating one.

However, those living in major centres like Toronto can go through the process start to finish in one day.

Gokool said the next step for the country is looking at opening up the legislation to make medically assisted deaths easier and more accessible.

“The problem is that the legislation uses deliberately vague language and it excludes many hundreds and possibly thousands more. We have different interpretations from one end of the country to the other in terms of the eligibility criteria,” she said.

“Then we have different access issues people are having — hurdles and obstacles in their way.”

Complete Article HERE!

‘It was a good death, the kind most people would choose’

Sophie Mackenzie on why her family backed her mother’s decision to stop eating and drinking when faced with terminal cancer

By Sophie Mackenzie

[I]t was late evening on a Monday in April, the end of a bright autumn day in Johannesburg, when Mum died. The nurses who were caring for her had made her comfortable for the night, turning her on to her side with a pillow to cuddle, the way she liked to sleep. My sisters Vicky and Jassy and I were with her. We held her hands, told her how much we loved her, and that it was safe and right for her to go. After a few minutes, her breathing stopped. It was a good death – the kind of death I think most people would choose if we could: free from pain and surrounded by love. She wasn’t hooked up to tubes or monitors; she was even wearing her own pretty nightdress rather than a hospital gown. I suppose it’s what you’d call a natural death. But in one way Mum’s death was exceptional, shocking even. She had decided to die, about 10 days before, and for the previous six days had had no food and almost no water. She had chosen to die of thirst.

The story of Mum’s death begins in September 2008, when she sent an email to her daughters, telling us that she had been diagnosed with colon cancer. “Don’t worry about me, darlings,” she wrote – but it was clear that she herself was desperately worried: about loss of dignity, about the cost of her medical care, about whether Dad would be able to learn to make his favourite spaghetti bolognese if she was unable to cook for them both – all the details of death. In the event, after a frightening and rocky few weeks and major surgery, Mum recovered well, and by the beginning of this year we had all started to make plans to celebrate her 80th birthday in August. With Mum and Dad’s five daughters living so far apart, times when we were all together are rare and precious.

Then, at the end of February, came a letter from my eldest sister Emma in place of Mum’s normal Sunday email. “Mum isn’t feeling great,” she wrote, “and she asked me to write so you wouldn’t worry.” But, of course, we instantly did begin to worry, and it was only a few days before the diagnosis we’d dreaded arrived. Mum’s cancer had metastasised and spread to her brain and possibly also to her lungs. Her oncologist immediately set her on a course of radiotherapy and cortisone to shrink the tumours, telling us that it would take up to two weeks before we knew whether the treatment had been effective.

Vicky, who has experience caring for the terminally ill, travelled to Johannesburg to help Mum and Dad, and they had long and honest talks about the decisions Mum faced. She wasn’t quite ready, she said at first, to leave Dad, “this beautiful world”, as she put it, and us. But over the next few days, Mum’s condition began to deteriorate, and she became increasingly uncomfortable and frustrated. Mum was a very private person. She loved order; she hated mess and squalor, and illness is often messy and squalid. She told Vicky again and again that she didn’t want to go through more treatment. She didn’t want Dad to see cancer killing her. She wanted to die quickly and quietly. She didn’t want any fuss.

It was Emma who first told Mum about an article she’d read several years earlier in the Journal of the American Medical Association about voluntary refusal of food and drink as a means of bringing about death in the terminally ill. The author described it as a relatively painless way to die: a gradual slipping away into a coma, followed by death. Typically, a person will take between five and 10 days to die this way and, crucially, they have the option to change their mind and stop the process until almost the end. Mum just latched on to the idea, Emma remembers. She decided that she was going to stop taking the cortisone that was keeping the tumours in check, and stop eating and drinking as well. She wasn’t going to let the disease take over.

Like many people, I simply didn’t know that choosing to stop eating and drinking is, as Jassy put it, “a Thing”. But it is – it’s a thing about which you can find pages and pages of information on the internet, once you have a reason to Google it. It’s a thing that’s been reported quite extensively in medical literature, known variously as VSED (Voluntary Stopping Eating and Drinking), VRFF (Voluntary Refusal of Food and Fluid), PRNH (Patient Refusal of Nutrition and Hydration), or self-dehydration. It’s a thing doctors who have practised for a long time and seen many patients die at home describe as “taking to their bed” or “turning their face to the wall”. It’s a thing that was explored and argued by lawyers acting for the man known publicly as Martin, whose case was recently heard alongside Tony Nicklinson’s. It’s a thing, as I discovered when researching this article, that people seem afraid to talk about.

‘She wanted the kind of death most people would choose, if we could’ (from left): Jassy, Juliet, Sophie, Emma and Vicky with their parents.

There is nothing illegal about refusing food and drink; in fact, feeding a competent person against their will constitutes assault. Nonetheless, Mum was afraid that something would happen to prevent her reaching her goal. She worried about falling and breaking a hip, ending up in hospital and being caught in a spiral of intervention that would prolong her life. She worried that intravenous nutrition and hydration would be given to “keep her comfortable” if she became unconscious. She had signed a living will expressing her preferences, but such advance directives are generally regarded as worthless unless the dying person has a supportive medical team who understand their wishes and are prepared to act upon them.

South Africa’s legal position on assisted dying is fundamentally the same as Britain’s: if you help another person bring about their death, you could risk prosecution. As in the UK, there have been attempts to clarify the law on end-of-life decision-making processes, removing the grey areas that currently exist. Professor Willem Landman, CEO of the Ethics Institute of South Africa, is one of the leading figures campaigning for a change in the law. He explains that in 1998, President Nelson Mandela commissioned a report into the legal and ethical issues surrounding assisted dying, assisted suicide and euthanasia, but after being tabled in parliament in 2000, the report was ignored by the ministry of health. Landman believes this may be because the then minister of health, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, regarded the issue as something of a middle-class problem. Perhaps it is. When birth and death are less medicalised and a more integral and familiar part of life, perhaps choice in such matters seems an unnecessary luxury. Perhaps mothers do die gently, cared for by their daughters, without worrying about indignity and fuss. But they don’t die quickly, or without pain.

Mum had always talked frankly to us about death. My sister Juliet remembers when she was a little girl and terrified of dying, Mum telling her, “Your body is like a suit of old clothes – by that time you will be tired of it and you won’t want it any more.” Mum hated clutter and hoarding; when a thing had outlived its usefulness, it was to be disposed of without sentiment, whether it was a favourite dress the moths had got to, a book that was falling apart at the spine or her own body. She made it clear to us that she would far rather be dead than be a burden on her husband and daughters. Now, with her hands becoming increasingly unsteady and fits of dizziness coming unexpectedly, she was finding the colostomy bag she’d had since her surgery in 2008 difficult and humiliating to deal with. She felt that her body was wearing out and, more frighteningly, her head felt heavy and fuzzy.

Over the course of a long phone call, Vicky told me that Mum had made a decision. She was going to stop taking the medication that was checking the spread of her cancer, and stop eating and drinking, too. We had about a week to say goodbye, so Juliet and I flew to Johannesburg as soon as we could. It was the sort of family reunion Mum loved, and in many ways it was like all the other happy times we have spent together, filled with love and laughter. We planned meals together, cooked in Mum and Dad’s tiny kitchen, ate and drank together, just as we’ve always done on family holidays, over Christmases and at other celebrations – only this time it was Mum’s life we were celebrating, while she went through the process of dying.

It was the most remarkable week of my life, and it has left me unafraid of death.

I’d been afraid of seeing Mum since this latest illness. I was expecting to find her diminished, somehow less herself. But I was amazed by how well she seemed. Vicky had cropped her hair so that she wouldn’t have to experience it falling out, and Mum, with the pride in her looks that beautiful women never lose, was obviously upset by her appearance. But to me she looked lovely. She shone with happiness at having all her daughters there with her and Dad. She was full of her usual curiosity and humour. She didn’t look like someone who was ready to die, and this frightened me – what if somehow stopping eating and drinking didn’t work, and Mum lingered on in pain? What if the process didn’t take a matter of days but a matter of weeks? Part of me knew how much she would hate to be thwarted in her intent; part of me longed to keep her with us for longer, and hoped that, even now, some sort of miracle might happen. I even suggested to Mum that she should stay at home for a few days, just to see how she felt, but she was adamant: her decision had been made. The next day, she was going to move to the nursing home at the retirement community where she and Dad lived, and she was going to die there.

Although Mum was unable to walk unsupported and her hands were very shaky, she was alert and lucid, chatting to us as she always had. Her appetite was small, but she was still enjoying food: pizza with olives and anchovies, strong cheddar cheese, the fruit cake Juliet had baked and been saving for Mum’s 80th birthday. Juliet’s cake was the last thing Mum ate, on Wednesday 28 March, when her brother visited to say goodbye, and she had a last chat with her sister in the UK. We were all in tears that morning, except for Mum, who stayed calm and cheerful.

I didn’t see Mum leave her home for the last time. Dad, Emma, Juliet and Vicky were with her, and Juliet cried afterwards when she told Jassy and me how Mum had gone around the little house where she and Dad had been so happy, saying goodbye to it and all her precious things, before being driven the few hundred yards to the nursing home. The staff there welcomed her and settled her into bed, and she curled up and went to sleep.

It’s fortunate that Mum was surrounded by people who supported her decision. Her GP believes that people at the end of their lives should have the right to be “conductors of their own orchestra”, and made it plain that she would prescribe whatever pain relief Mum needed to mask the symptoms of her advancing cancer, and whatever sedation she required to alleviate distress. The management of the nursing home hold the same view. Her GP gave them written instructions explaining Mum’s decision and outlining the care she would need. “She is a very brave lady,” the email concluded. And, of course, Mum had five daughters who adored her and a husband who’d worshipped her for almost 60 years, and we were all unequivocally on her side.

The five of us sisters rallied behind Mum and Dad; we were a team. As I write this, it’s difficult to isolate my own feelings and experiences from those of my sisters – who said what, who made decisions, who cried. It’s a gruesome analogy, but the five of us, Dad, Mum’s GP and her carers were like a cheerleading squad urging her on towards the goal she had chosen. This isn’t always the case. I was horrified to read a 2011 report in the New York Times which told the story of Armond and Dorothy Rudolph. The Rudolphs, both in their 90s and with failing health, made the decision to end their lives together by stopping eating and drinking while they were still mentally competent and able to live independently. The management of the assisted-living facility where they had their home responded by attempting to evict them. It was only after intervention by the couple’s family, the local press and medical and legal experts that the attempt was stopped. Armond Rudolph died after 10 days without food and drink, and Dorothy a day later.

We laughed a lot over the next few days. We teased Juliet about developing late-onset colour-blindness when she kept putting bottles of red wine in the fridge, while the white stayed warm on the kitchen counter. Jassy and I speculated macabrely about what would happen if the nurses forgot to take down the “Nil by Mouth” sign over Mum’s bed after she died – we imagined some poor old dear being moved into her cubicle and waving plaintively as the tea trolley rattled unheedingly past. Emma and Juliet still haven’t let me forget the nightmare 10-mile walk I dragged them on around the suburbs of Johannesburg, possibly the world’s least pedestrian-friendly city. One night after dinner, Emma and Juliet went to visit Mum, and the three of them chatted and reminisced until eventually my sisters were asked to leave – their laughter was keeping the other old ladies awake.

In the midst of Mum’s death, our normal lives went on. I was writing a seemingly endless list of product descriptions of cheeses – I’d hoped that Mum would have enjoyed working with me on them; a writer herself, she would have embraced the challenge of describing the differences between stilton and roquefort. But she was too drowsy, although she loved being read to. We planned each day as it came: who would be spending time with Mum, and when; who would cook, and what, and for how many. Of course we talked about Mum and what was happening, sharing our fears about what the next few days would hold, and our happy memories of her. Often, it felt just as if she was there with us, as she always had been when the family was together.

There were hard parts, too. By Friday, although Mum was still spending a lot of time asleep, her waking hours were difficult. She was dreaming, she told us, about drinking ice-cold Coke, and waking feeling desperately thirsty, as one does with a bad hangover. Chips of ice helped to relieve the dryness in her mouth, and she had sugar-free mints to suck as well as frequent glycerine mouth swabs, but the thirst remained. She also developed a pounding headache as her blood sugar level fell. Emma bought her some Coke, thinking that the occasional sip would make her more comfortable and do little or nothing to prolong her life. But Vicky, determined to support Mum completely in her decision, said, “It could set her back days!” and took it away, leaving the nurses crying in her wake. That day, Mum said to us, “I didn’t realise it would be so hard.”

She wasn’t the only one. Being a spectator at the death of someone you love is bitterly hard. We expect medical science to intervene to relieve suffering, and to a great extent it does. But the journey is a lonely one. Even surrounded by the people who loved her most, and professionals who gave her the very best palliative care, Mum fought her battle for death alone. How much more lonely, and how much more frightening, the process must be for people who aren’t supported by their family, or aren’t able to communicate their wishes, I can only imagine.

Mum spent a lot of the next three days asleep, but when she was awake, we chatted to her and to each other, and Jassy read to her from her new novel, which is dedicated to Mum. She also enjoyed having her hands massaged with her favourite body lotion as her skin began to get dryer, and the scent greeted us when we came into the ward to see her. Dad was his usual self: strong, serene and often silent, surrounded by his five chattering daughters, but occasionally cracking us all up with his characteristic dry wit. He spent a lot of time at Mum’s bedside, sitting with her while she slept. Mostly, it was a peaceful and happy time.

On Sunday, Mum began to slip away. In the morning she was still alert, asking for ice to suck and chatting to us almost normally, but by the evening she was no longer able to speak easily. I’d had a bad cold for the previous few days, and when I heard the new rattle in Mum’s breathing, I became convinced that she had caught it and my virus was going to be the thing that finally carried her off. I sat by her bed and cried my heart out – a mixture of guilt, grief and all the stress of the last few days just pouring out of me. I felt embarrassed by my tears in the face of Mum’s courage – absurdly, I didn’t want to worry her. She asked me several times, “Am I going to be all right?” I told her that she was, and that I loved her. There wasn’t anything else to say. That was the last time she spoke.

For most of the six days it took her to die, Mum was in no pain. The morphine patches she had been prescribed relieved any symptoms her advancing cancer might have caused, and the sedatives kept her calm and drowsy. However, it’s not known whether such palliative care actually removes the dying person’s experience of hunger and thirst, even once they have lost consciousness. A paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics in 2011 concluded that “continuous deep sedation may blunt the wakefulness component of human consciousness without eradicating internal affective awareness of thirst and hunger”. I hope that, for Mum, the dreams of ice-cold Coke and the sensation of thirst stopped once she fell asleep on that Sunday night.

On Monday morning, Mum was moved from the main ward where she had spent the past five nights. The curtains around her bed had remained closed while she was there – Mum would have wanted the privacy, we knew, but still we speculated darkly about whether the staff had kept her hidden in case the other ladies got ideas and decided to emulate her. Her new bed was in a private room. She barely woke when she was lifted, and she was losing the ability to swallow. In the afternoon, the vicar came to say the last rites, with all five of us sisters and Dad there, perching on her bed and chairs around it. Mum seemed to be aware of the words of the service – perhaps owing to the vicar’s maximum-decibel delivery, which we all laughed about afterwards – but she was sliding deeper and deeper into unconsciousness.

That evening passed slowly, as time does when you’re waiting for something important to happen. I carried on with my writing – the cheese product descriptions were complete and I’d moved on to fish, and it was comforting to escape into work. Emma and Juliet were spending the night at home with Emma’s partner and his children. Dad did a crossword puzzle; Vicky made a batch of chicken soup, using Mum’s recipe. Over dinner we talked about the practical things that would soon need to be done, and decided that Vicky would be the one to phone the undertaker, and that she would remove and take care of Mum’s rings and watch. We asked Dad if he felt it was important for him to be there when Mum died, but he felt that he had already said a very temporary goodbye – he was, and remains, confident that they will be together always once he joins her. So Jassy, Vicky and I took the familiar route up to the nursing home to see how Mum was and decide what to do about spending the night with her. It was the last time we’d walk that way; within a few minutes of our arrival, she was dead.

I went back to Jassy’s house that night and wrote about Mum’s death. My overwhelming feelings were relief and pride – my brave, beautiful mother had taken on the hardest challenge of her life, and won. I could go home to my partner, whom I missed desperately, my home in London and my little cat. My sisters and Dad felt the same, I think: tired, but triumphant, too. We’d achieved what we had set out to do, as sisters and as a family.

Even if Dignitas had been a practical option for Mum, I don’t believe she would have chosen it. Apart from anything else, she loathed travelling. (I suspect she would also have regarded the cost as a wanton extravagance.) But what if there had been another way for her to take? An injection administered by a doctor she trusted, or pills brought to her by Dad or one of us? I’m not sure. Perhaps she wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to bear the responsibility of having ended her life. Also, I think part of her relished the challenge, the control and the independence of doing it the hard way.

In the obituary that was read at Mum’s funeral, Vicky remembered a saying that Mum was fond of quoting: “Old age is not for sissies.” Mum was no sissy – as Emma put it later, Mum was a soldier. She embarked on her final journey with steely determination, astonishing courage and immense dignity. I feel honoured to have been a part of the process. I’ve seen that it is possible to choose and achieve a good death, on one’s own terms. I used to be in favour of changing the law on end-of-life choices; now I am evangelical about the importance of autonomy in terminal illness and death. I’m so proud of what Mum did, and of how my father, my sisters and I helped her to achieve it. But that doesn’t alter my passionate belief that people in Mum’s position, or Tony Nicklinson’s, or Martin’s, should have more, better and easier choices.

Complete Article HERE!

How Death Positivity Helps Me Mourn The Living

By: Lola Phoenix

[T]here are many ways that death has followed me throughout my life. I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my throat and a disability nearly caused my death several times as an infant. When I was three and I stopped growing, my growth hormone, before it was made in a lab, was taken from cadavers.

Fearing death dominated my childhood so much that I became extremely paranoid. Growing up with a gay parent and hearing about Matthew Shepard, I had to trust the friends I brought home into my life. Already having been bullied in school for supposedly being a lesbian, I didn’t want to give them any reason to escalate the harassment physically. While I know I’m not personally going to be targeted, the spectre of death is ever present.

But so much of death is about mourning people who have died, when, for LGBTQ people especially, there is a kind of death that is not really discussed, explored or acknowledged—the death and mourning of the living. Estrangement grief is a thing, and it’s complicated to mourn a person who is not dead.

Death positivity” is about coming face to face with mortality and, instead of fearing and ignoring it, embracing it. I came across this movement through the “Ask A Mortician” channel on YouTube run by Caitlin Doughty, who is also behind the death positivity movement Order of The Good Death. Fundamentally, death positivity is about challenging the way our society views death and creating a culture that allows people to be more prepared and ready to make the difficult choices around death that they may be avoiding.

All around the globe, people have signed up to be part of The Order of The Good Death, and this may mean something as simple as taking an active interest in making end of life wishes to educating people locally about burial options to campaigning in local government for options such as water cremation, which aren’t available in all areas.

The process of becoming death positive is about embracing the realities that lie at the end of my life, it also has helped me embrace several lessons that have helped me live my life.

I am estranged from both of my parents: one of them disowned me and the other has mental health problems that make a relationship between us difficult. Other family members either don’t show very much interest in me or, when I have attempted to reach out for support, have either not responded or told me they were tired of “weird.” As someone who has always felt quite strongly about family ties, these losses were difficult to endure. But the lessons I have learned through death positivity have made them much easier to cope with.

1. Sadness is not shameful.

This seems obvious, but it isn’t. Part of death positivity encourages people to think about what choices they want for their bodies after death. That got me thinking about the complex way I’ve felt about funerals I’ve been to—how cold and incredibly formal they’ve felt and how awkward it was to express strong emotions in austere settings. I decided I didn’t want the people I left behind to feel how I felt. I wanted them to feel like being sad was okay. And in doing so, I had to tell myself that it was okay not only for the people who lost me to mourn, but for myself to mourn the people I have lost.

Estrangement isn’t always permanent, but holding on to the hope of change in many instances can end up causing more pain than it’s worth. It may seem on the outside that your estranged relative has more of a chance of coming back into your life than a dead relative, but that isn’t true for everyone.

Giving others the space to grieve helped me understand that it was okay for me to grieve. At least now when I mourn the loss of people in my life, I can accept that I have these feelings and not fight against them.

2. Grief and recovery aren’t linear.

In thinking about how I wanted to prepare as much as possible for my loved ones before I die so that they don’t have to stumble around in the process of grief, I had to come to understand it more. Despite the presence of death and loss in my life, there have been few family members I have actually felt sadness at losing. My mother was 18 when she had me and her mother was 18 when she had her, so I have a relatively young family. I lost my grandfather and step-grandfather when I was in high school, but I knew both of these men as abusers of my mother.

When they passed, I wasn’t even remotely sad. Many of my great uncles and aunts had passed, and I lost a second cousin to a tragic accident, but I didn’t have very close relationships with these people. It was when my great grandmother died in 2013 and I didn’t have the money to fly home and attend her funeral that I came face to face with my biggest loss.

One of Caitlin’s videos talks about the reasons people fear death, and one of them is the impact it will have on their loved ones. Much of what I suspected from both Caitlin’s videos and the crowdfunders I’ve contributed to for funeral costs spelled out the reality of the impact “traditional” funeral homes and their soaring prices can have on families. I had to understand that grief is expressed in so many different ways and it’s not as simple as “letting it go.”

In the case of my great grandmother, losing her felt so odd and numb that I had almost no emotion when I heard the news that she had passed away. She was 98 years old and the morning I got the news, I’d had a funny feeling that she was gone. Without having ever experienced a massive loss, I didn’t at the time know what was normal. And I secretly felt ashamed that I hadn’t shed many tears, though I told nobody.

Years after her death, I was trying to recall how she made biscuits every Sunday morning for breakfast. My mind walked through the process of her pouring flour and lard on her biscuit pan, but there was a lot I couldn’t remember. When it occurred to me that I couldn’t ask her anymore, something broke in me and I finally cried. After being active in Death Positive communities, I knew and understood that grief wasn’t linear and that sometimes the sadness comes and goes when it wants.

Likewise, I stopped telling myself to “let it go” when I was grieving estrangement from my parents. When you experience a loss, you have good days and you have bad days. Thinking about my own death and preparing for it meant thinking about what my loved ones would go through in their grief. I would never expect them to just stop feeling their feelings, so why should I expect my feelings to suddenly go away?

3. Celebrate the time you have.

The Order of the Good Death may sound very morbid and odd to some. But in her videos, Doughty points out that “the good death” is not about failure if you don’t plan, but about the idea that avoiding conversations about death ultimately means much more hardship than addressing it at all.

Facing my own mortality in a healthy way encourages me to actually take advantage of the time I have. When death becomes something that moves from being in the unknown, terrifying and looming but never addressed to being looked at, planned for, and understood, that also means that you’re more likely to take advantage of life.

Loss and grief become part of the process of death and equally part of the process of life. When I learned to address the fact that all life will end including my own, it felt easier to for me to cope with the idea that several of the relationships I once valued and held dear in my life were also at an end—and that’s okay. And what’s more, it’s helped me appreciate what time I do have and know not to waste it on people who hurt me or don’t respect me for who I am.

Death positivity may sound like a bizarre notion, especially as a queer person and a disabled person fighting in many instances to stay alive. It’s not about wanting to be dead. It’s not about being happy about dying. But it’s about facing the reality of death in a way that isn’t the paranoia and fear I’ve had sit heavy on my shoulders.

And doing so has helped me cope with what a lot of other people like me go through when we lose a family member either because of our own identities or because of their inability to accept and see us for who we are in a loving and positive way. Reckoning with the face of grief and mourning has given me tools to use to cope with a different but also painful kind of loss.

Because I embrace the fact that I will die, I live better.

Complete Article HERE!

What does a good death look like when you’re really old and ready to go?

David Goodall a day before his assisted death in Switzerland.

By

[H]awaii recently joined the growing number of states and countries where doctor-assisted dying is legal. In these jurisdictions, help to die is rarely extended to those who don’t have a terminal illness. Yet, increasingly, very old people, without a terminal illness, who feel that they have lived too long, are arguing that they also have a right to such assistance.

Media coverage of David Goodall, the 104-year-old Australian scientist who travelled to Switzerland for assisted dying, demonstrates the level of public interest in ethical dilemmas at the extremities of life. Goodall wanted to die because he no longer enjoyed life. Shortly before his death, he told reporters that he spends most of his day just sitting. “What’s the use of that?” he asked.

Research shows that life can be a constant struggle for the very old, with social connections hard to sustain and health increasingly fragile. Studies looking specifically at the motivation for assisted dying among the very old show that many feel a deep sense of loneliness, tiredness, an inability to express their individuality by taking part in activities that are important to them, and a hatred of dependency.

Of the jurisdictions where assisted dying is legal, some make suffering the determinant (Canada, for example). Others require a prognosis of six months (California, for example). Mainly, though, the focus is on people who have a terminal illness because it is seen as less of an ethical problem to hasten the death of someone who is already dying than someone who is simply tired of life.

Why give precedence to physical suffering?

Assisted dying for people with psychological or existential reasons for wanting to end their life is unlikely to be supported by doctors because it is not objectively verifiable and also potentially remediable. In the Netherlands, despite the legal power to offer assistance where there is no life-limiting illness, doctors are seldom convinced of the unbearable nature of non-physical suffering, and so will rarely administer a lethal dose in such cases.

Although doctors may look to a physical diagnosis to give them confidence in their decision to hasten a patient’s death, physical symptoms are often not mentioned by the people they are assisting. Instead, the most common reason given by those who have received help to die is loss of autonomy. Other common reasons are to avoid burdening others and not being able to enjoy one’s life – the exact same reason given by Goodall. This suggests that requests from people with terminal illness, and from those who are just very old and ready to go, are not as different as both the law – and doctors’ interpretation of the law – claim them to be.

Sympathetic coverage

It seems that the general public does not draw a clear distinction either. Most of the media coverage of Goodall’s journey to Switzerland was sympathetic, to the dismay of opponents of assisted dying.

Media reports about ageing celebrities endorsing assisted dying in cases of both terminal illness and very old age, blur the distinction still further.

One of the reasons for this categorical confusion is that, at root, this debate is about what a good death looks like, and this doesn’t rely on prognosis; it relies on personality. And, it’s worth remembering, the personalities of the very old are as diverse as those of the very young.

David Goodall died listening to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.
 
Discussion of assisted suicide often focuses on concerns that some older people may be exposed to coercion by carers or family members. But older people also play another role in this debate. They make up the rank and file activists of the global right-to-die movement. In this conflict of rights, protectionist impulses conflict with these older activists’ demands to die on their own terms and at a time of their own choosing.

In light of the unprecedented ageing of the world’s population and increasing longevity, it is important to think about what a good death looks like in deep old age. In an era when more jurisdictions are passing laws to permit doctor-assisted dying, the choreographed death of a 104-year-old, who died listening to Ode to Joy after enjoying a last fish supper, starts to look like a socially approved good death.

Complete Article HERE!