Life Support...

It’s 2:44 in the morning and I just finished feeding and putting Mikayla back down. During her feeding, I read some news and found out that Tammy Faye Messner has died. Now this would normally not have been a point of writing, but I started to think and I couldn’t stop. People die on a daily basis for one reason or another, and if one is in pain (constant pain as Tammy mentioned), don’t they have the right to take that pain away?

As I said, I just put my little girl done to sleep again and noticed that Eva, our 13 year old dog was not in the room with us. I noticed that she was in the hall and she was lying there alone. She is a bigger dog and being thirteen, she is not the puppy that Mark has so many timed told me about and I wish that I could have meet. There are times thatr I see the youth in her eyes, but I also see the confusion because she doesn’t understand why her body isn’t working the way it used to. Now we, as humans, have the ability to help our companion animals pass from this earth with grace, love, and care. Why then can’t we help our loved ones do the same?

I have always been part of the crowd that believed in assisted suicide. I hate that term, lets call it assisted life choice. It’s more PC for the people that don’t feel comfortable with death. I think I have the right to decide what to do with my life. Not the government, not my family, not even Mark, my partner. I have the right. If I am in constant medical pain and there is nothing that can be done for me, then I have the right to take that pain away. I have the right to decide when I should go. I have the right to my life.

I have already told Mark that if I am in the hospital with tubes and wires keeping me alive, PULL THE PLUG! First, what kind of life is it if I am just waiting for my life to slip away? Second (and most important) what kind of life is it for Mark? If the doctors know that I am going to die and if they know that keeping me on “life support” will do nothing but keep my brain active, I then have to ask why? I don’t want my partner and my daughter to have the last memories of me lying in a hospital bed waiting to die. I don’t want to have their lives taken from them as well. They are alive and should stay that way. Not to lose it in endless visits that do nothing accept make the Christian right feel good about themselves because they “saved another soul”.

I was talking with my mother not long ago and we got on the subject of my grandfather (her father) and the last memory that I have of him. The memory started when my mom got a call from my grandmother. I remember that she started to cry and my father jumped in the car and took off. He raced out of the driveway and when I found out that it was my grandfather, I took off in my car trying to keep up with my dad. He was much faster than I was and I lost him on the way. I then started to think about my mother and that she was alone. I turned around and went back to the house. When I got there, mo was in tears with keys in her hand ready to take off as well.

She told me that he (my grandfather) was taken to the hospital and that she needed to have me drive her there because she didn’t think she could make it on her own. When we got to the hospital most of the immediate family was there. The hospital had put us in a small room. This room was right next door to where the doctors were working on my grandfather. He was in emergency and my family was right next door. The room was getting stuffy and people were crying and I needed to get some fresh air. This I should not have done. I walked by the room where my grandfather was. The room had a window that you could barly see throough, but I saw more than enough when a nurse went in.

Tubes were running out of my grandfather’s body. Fluid was being pumped in to help stabilize him. A tube was coming out of his mouth to help him breath. Doctors and nurses gathered around him beating on his chest to try to get his heart started. Needles being stuck in his arm and chest. All to make him live again. Doctors frantically trying to start this man’s heart and then nothing. It suddenly all stopped. I didn’t hear the doctor call time, but I did see my grandfather’s body lay there limp and lifeless. I remember it like it was yesterday.

Then the worst thing anyone could have done or said happened. The doctor who was working on my grandfather came out and told me he had passed, but that wan’t the worst. He then said that they needed to “clean him up”, but if I wanted to “I could go in and see him”. I could go in and see my grandfather lying on the hospital table with tubes and wires still sticking out of his chest, arm and mouth. I could go say my final good byes to a man that I know was no longer there. I could have the last and final memory of my grandfather lying dead on a table looking like a plastic doll that doctors use in school. So I walked in and saw this body that used to be my grandfather. This is my last memory of my grandfather and it will live with me. No matter how many times I try to remember when we all went to see “Good Morning Vietnam” and laughed so hard. Or all the Christmas time and the gathering of the family and his smile. No matter how hard I try to rip that image from my mind – it’s there and always will be.

So back to my first rant. I don’t want my family to be burdened with memories of me in constant pain, hooked to tubes and gadgets not awake and will never be again. I want to be able to decide what to do. I want to know that MY wishes are being carried out, not some republican bureaucrat whose ideas are not his own, but the many of thousands who think they talk to god. We al have to remember that not all people follow the same religions and again – IT’S MY LIFE. Let me decide when I should be out of pain.