You just got home from visiting Granny at the nursing home. (Easy to use 'Granny' as my fictitious subject because of all the talk of pushing 'Granny off a cliff' recently in discussions about a national health care.)
You are sitting around in the kitchen/living room and you are having THE conversation with your spouse/partner.
You tell them that:
"I never want to be in that situation."
"I never want to live in a nursing home."
"When it comes to that point when I no longer have a good Quality of Life, help me out..."
"I want to die in my own bed, in my sleep, with my family at my side."
For my husband and I, the conversation goes "When that day comes, we just have to remember that 'today is the day' we step off the end of the boat..."
Or maybe the conversation will be different from the one that I imagine, where "everything that's possible" should be done, that there are new "medical miracles" happening every day, that the "power of life and death reside with my God".
But it won't happen like that. The decisions won't be ours. It will be up to others to make the determination of where we spend our final days. It might be our children who make the call, or it might be a case worker at a hospital who finds us a bed to transfer to. There will be that point where we will cease to be in control of our life. Where having that conversation way back when, in the kitchen or the living room, with my spouse or my partner, my family or my friends won't have any real meaning at all.
My Little Blue Pill is intended to be a discussion of how to maintain that control of your own life. Giving ideas and links to legal documents, filling out the paper work, crossing the T's and most importantly opening up those conversations with your family and your friends. That will be the crucial part of keeping control of your life and of your "end of life" wishes.
I invite you to join me in this conversation, by making comments on this blog, by sending emails, by sharing your feelings and your ideas, your discoveries and your solutions.
Deb,
ReplyDeleteYou obviously have been thinking pretty hard about this for a time--is a very important aspect of all of our lives that our culture does a vey poor job dealing with. We can't be surprised about this--just look at the mess our country makes talking about the issue of helath care--something that should be pretty straight forward--at least in my book.
My father is 93 years old and in a "rehab" unit with a very low quality of life--usually he doesn't know family members. You are right--I never want to find myself in this type of situation.
I commend you for having the courage to post this blog--there needs to be a discussion on this subject--I know, for example, individuals in Vermont that have tried get legislation passed that deal with Death with Dignity. Some church groups rush in with big bucks to shut this all down.
I do feel there needs to be the ability for individuals to decide for themselves how they check out from this world--no if ands or buts. If some individuals elect not to deal with end of life issues and just wait for what ever lack of dignity and suffering they may go through in the end --so be it. But I for one would like to be in charge of my own destiny in the end. Those of us that feel this way should not be denied this right.
Argonauta