Good afternoon! It's a bright and beautiful day charmed by the ceaseless crash of ocean waves and giggling children at play.
I was reminded today, that there is an important question that will eventually touch everyone in California and the nation, during their lifetime. The uncertainty of the answer is universal and eternal, for as long as mankind lives on this earth. The query will be of an either "up close and personal" question, you face about your own healthcare or the healthcare of someone you know and love.
The CELO Act, which became law on June 9th., 2016 let's California residents choose how they will spend the final moments of their life, without any legal backlash affecting their loved ones or anyone remotely associated in their decision.
There have been several media outlets today that have made commentaries and asked the polled question about choosing euthanasia. I have my own story.
On the 3rd. day following my first chemo treatment for breast cancer, I knew why most cancer patients looked like 3rd. world famine victims. I called my sister, after puking non-stop for days. She had miraculously survived cancer twice! My first words into the phone were, "How did you do it?" I couldn't imagine spending the next 13 months surviving the cancer cure of chemo daily. (Which actually turned out to last 18 months.) I continued to say, "It's only been 3 days and I don't want anymore chemo." I told her, "I am so sick, I don't have the strength to walk to the bed. I'd have to crawl to get there, I've been sleeping on the floor next to the toilet." Literally. Again, I asked her, "How did you get through it?" There was a moment of silence and she responded... "Hour by hour."
She continued, "You have to find a place inside your soul, that is either at peace with dying or strong enough, that it won't accept letting you die."
She said, "If you want to live...then you fight!" I heard her weeping and she said, "I don't want you to die. I love you Sis." My big sister was the strong one. When we were children and I would cry about something, she would smack me and tell me not to be a baby. She never cried, even at our Mother's funeral.
I told her I would try to keep taking the chemo treatments. My husband forced me to go to the next chemo treatment. I told my oncologist how hard this had been for me. I told him I wasn't sure I could continue my chemo treatments. He adjusted my chemo cocktail and gave me alot of anti-nausea and pain killing drugs to help me.
Every Friday morning, when I walked into the chemo lab I got depressed looking at all the other cancer patients lying in the beige vinyl recliners curled up into the fetal position. If you want to know what death looks like, spend some time in a cancer chemo lab. The invisible emotional vibes from the other dying patients, made me want to cry, every time I went there. They all looked up and over to the door every time they heard it open. There was one collective look on the faces of every cancer patient lying in a recliner with their caustic bags of poison hanging above their heads. I read that look on their collective faces asking, "Are you going to make it?"
After months of the same routine, I had become used to the scary non-verbal inquiries. Oddly, against my best philosophical and cognitive resolve, to seem unconcerned and apathetic to people who entered the lab through the notoriously squeaking door, my basic human instincts took over. One day, I found myself sitting in my chosen beige recliner, also looking at the door when I heard it squeak to open.
The next time I arrived at my chemo treatment, my oncologist told me that I had lost 30 pounds and prescribed some drugs to help me eat and an antidepressant. I was going through alot of agonizing internal self-examination, family relationship difficulties and financial disruption, in addition to all the physical distress.
It was indeed, a time that tried my mind, body and soul. When you are in the throes of making fast, hard decisions about a future you can only see with a bleary eyed perception, it truly makes you re-evaluate everything past, present and future in your life. It forces you to let go of some long-held beliefs and people in your life, as well as, providing new opportunities and challenges to embrace the unknown.
The question of euthanasia, has been a long-time, well-worn pre-ponderance from the men of low estate up to the greatest minds in modern history. What bothers me most, is the conceited arrogance of some people who deem themselves the qualified deciders of how the whole world should embrace that most personal, private and final act of dying.
Because I have survived breast cancer, I believe I am my most qualified authority to determine my last wishes. I believe I have the right to determine whether euthanasia is what I want to do in the last moments of my life. I believe every person who is suffering from a terminal disease, has the right to choose, whether they will languish in a horrific matrix of inextricable pain and suffering or find release and relief from it. It remains my personal belief, that the decision is a question best answered in Holy prayer, between you and G-d.
My oncologist told me and my husband at my first chemotherapy consultation, that if I chose to skip chemotherapy, he judged that I had a 15% chance of living without it. He also said that if I decided to embark on this journey of healing, that I had an 85% chance of survival. In the end, for me, I was glad to have the option and immediately began the most difficult and powerful journey of my life.
Because I have survived breast cancer, I believe it is a deeply sacred and somber personal decision between you and G-d. When you are facing the diagnosis of death by this disease, you think about ending it, on your terms. I can tell you that my personal belief is that this decision, is a question best answered in Holy prayer, between you and G-d. Talk to HIM.
When it comes to laws and disassociated community opinions of other people, who have never experienced cancer or terminal illness of any kind, telling you what you can and cannot do with your body and the end of your life- those laws and opinions become meaningless to you. When you are faced with the decision of naturally dying slow with all the pain/suffering guaranteed in those final moments, before your journey is finished or ending your suffering on your own terms, no one else should have the right to make a determination against your last wishes.
What is the ONE thing my personal battle with cancer taught me?
That you will not know for 100% certain, what you will think, say, do or choose, until YOU are the one dying. The legal right to endure/not to endure through the pain/suffering of a terminal illness, is and should only be, your choice. There should be no room in a discussion about carrying out this most profound act as an end to the human experience, by a sanitized and legislated majority vote enacted into law. No one else's edict should count, but your own prayerfully well-considered opinion!
p.s. "Good Night and Sweet Dreams!" and "Boner Appertite!"
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