29 year old, Brittany Maynard, her husband and her Mother made the choice to move to the state of Oregon for the sole purpose to undergo medical care for her Terminal Fatal Brain Cancer. The treatment she sought out was a prescription that would allow her to end her own life at any time. Physicians in that state and only two other states allow this process to happen. It has be a script to be filled at a pharmacy and it has to be self medicated. No one else but the patient for whom it is prescribed to may administer it. She took her own life on Saturday, November 1st.
Her story hit the news and social media markets because of how public she made her position on "Dying with Dignity" and having that right to. It was her last wish to die on her own terms. She was granted that wish.
Just like anyone else suffering with anything terminal medically, we all want to have that option to have as many good days vs. the bad ones. Science and Medicine are constantly changing and creating outstanding advancements. Hence the reason why pharmacology is not only my specialty, but my love of work.
There are so many people that don't have the option that Brittany has, and honestly I really don't think that they should. I honestly don't understand how this law was passed in any state. No matter how you look at it, its suicide. You are taking your own life not matter how you look at it. She got a script. Some people use a gun or a knife or walk into a train. Maybe my faith is taking over here by being Catholic, but we are all gifted with a opportunity to make the best of the time we have been given on this earth. We don't have an expiration date. Only God has that for us. Doctors may give a diagnostic for 2 weeks or 4 months to live but that's just based on science analogy and how fast the terminal illness populates. No one wants to end this earth without doing everything we want to do or what we think we have to do. Let alone I highly doubt that anyone wants a long excruciating painful death either.
With Brittany's illness, she was suffering. I will never know how bad that pain was for her and I will never question her on that. We all deal with pain differently. Some have a very high tolerance to pain and a lot don't.
We have Hospice to help ease those challenges faced with certain ailments. That to me is dying with dignity. I just don't agree with the right of having our own choice to take our life. Medically guided or not. Every thing that we go through in life teaches us a lesson that we are supposed to learn from and if we have the opportunity to, we grow from it. Brittany did create awareness of issue that she is passionate and I do praise her for doing so. Sharing the whole world her last few months of life and raising awareness for her cause.
I know the question that many people have that why is God only there for some people? Why does he allow suffering and cancer and all these bad people out there doing horrible things to other people. Why are people murdered and why is a 3 year old little girl with the same brain cancer as what Brittany had in Children's hospital battling harder than I could as an adult. Says she has faith in God and his plan for her. Even if it will only be three and half years of her life on this earth and with her family. We are not supposed to understand everything.
I also want to make it clear that I am not passing judgement on Brittany and her choice. I just pass judgement on the specific role of voluntarily taking your own life. I get the power of medicine and the power of God cross paths many many times. My optimism of hoping with all the advancements we made in medicine that there will be cure for all forms of cancer. The evil duplicating cells that destroy a person from the inside out. My family was lucky. My husband had Stage 4 Fast Spreading Malignant Melanoma. After surgeries, he became Cancer free by the doctors and my belief by the Grace of God.
So I guess I will end with this. Brittany, I'm so glad you are no longer suffering, may your family and friend find peace with all of this.
Signing off forever ProLife.
Her story hit the news and social media markets because of how public she made her position on "Dying with Dignity" and having that right to. It was her last wish to die on her own terms. She was granted that wish.
Just like anyone else suffering with anything terminal medically, we all want to have that option to have as many good days vs. the bad ones. Science and Medicine are constantly changing and creating outstanding advancements. Hence the reason why pharmacology is not only my specialty, but my love of work.
There are so many people that don't have the option that Brittany has, and honestly I really don't think that they should. I honestly don't understand how this law was passed in any state. No matter how you look at it, its suicide. You are taking your own life not matter how you look at it. She got a script. Some people use a gun or a knife or walk into a train. Maybe my faith is taking over here by being Catholic, but we are all gifted with a opportunity to make the best of the time we have been given on this earth. We don't have an expiration date. Only God has that for us. Doctors may give a diagnostic for 2 weeks or 4 months to live but that's just based on science analogy and how fast the terminal illness populates. No one wants to end this earth without doing everything we want to do or what we think we have to do. Let alone I highly doubt that anyone wants a long excruciating painful death either.
With Brittany's illness, she was suffering. I will never know how bad that pain was for her and I will never question her on that. We all deal with pain differently. Some have a very high tolerance to pain and a lot don't.
We have Hospice to help ease those challenges faced with certain ailments. That to me is dying with dignity. I just don't agree with the right of having our own choice to take our life. Medically guided or not. Every thing that we go through in life teaches us a lesson that we are supposed to learn from and if we have the opportunity to, we grow from it. Brittany did create awareness of issue that she is passionate and I do praise her for doing so. Sharing the whole world her last few months of life and raising awareness for her cause.
I know the question that many people have that why is God only there for some people? Why does he allow suffering and cancer and all these bad people out there doing horrible things to other people. Why are people murdered and why is a 3 year old little girl with the same brain cancer as what Brittany had in Children's hospital battling harder than I could as an adult. Says she has faith in God and his plan for her. Even if it will only be three and half years of her life on this earth and with her family. We are not supposed to understand everything.
I also want to make it clear that I am not passing judgement on Brittany and her choice. I just pass judgement on the specific role of voluntarily taking your own life. I get the power of medicine and the power of God cross paths many many times. My optimism of hoping with all the advancements we made in medicine that there will be cure for all forms of cancer. The evil duplicating cells that destroy a person from the inside out. My family was lucky. My husband had Stage 4 Fast Spreading Malignant Melanoma. After surgeries, he became Cancer free by the doctors and my belief by the Grace of God.
So I guess I will end with this. Brittany, I'm so glad you are no longer suffering, may your family and friend find peace with all of this.
Signing off forever ProLife.
I understand your position, Monica...but as God gave us feee will, we do have the choice to do whatever we want with our lives.
ReplyDeleteI do not believe the Bible is infalliblble, I believe it has always been tainted by the ages it was written in. Morality and life was much different in each time and place, horrible things ran rampant. Maybe that particular part aboit suicide was written to stop the act so families would not grieve, maybe it was used as a tool to control those that were used as slave labor or worse zo they would not end their suffering. I don't know...
But I do know that I am for assissted suicide and being able to take your own life with medical help in dire situations. I would rather the choice be there that she dies legally and painlessly of her own free will than live in a state of suffering.
It is a difficult issue for everyone. I reapect that you did not pas judgement on her, and who knows...God supposedly works inysterious ways. Maybe even He breaks his own rules once in awhile. Our suposed place is to not pretend to know theind or will of God regardless of what information we have.
For all we know, this was Him calling her Home.
<3
Definition of Free Will is the power of making free choices unconstrained by external agencies. Definition of External agents is Entities such as customers, suppliers, partners, government regulators, and the society , which interact with an organization and may influence its performance, but not under its direct control.
DeleteIn English Free Will really isn't Free Will when you break down its Diction. We live in a Free Country but we have rules and regulations to abide by. Freedom of choice of religious beliefs. Any religion has a rulebook besides the bible.
Being Catholic gives me a lot to live by and hopefully not break the rules that are alligned for the rest of my life based on my faith. That is where when I sit back and look at everything with this story and then comparing with my relationship with God, there is no Free Will. We are free as in our choices as in a faith we practice or what we want to eat today. But who really decides what is right and what is wrong? Most religions look at suicide as one of the major sins to take your own life. No ride to heaven there. Then there is me on the side of people born with certain ailments of depression or some sort of mental disorder that makes them out of control and really not understand what they are doing. Then we have this situation in Oregon that allows medicine to interfere with when to die. When you study medicine in any form, they make it very clear its all science and not God's hands doing the work. Is this Brittany's way of being called home to God? Nobody really knows. We are in control and we are not in control of our free will.
So I don't really know either. We have Hospice like I said before to help ease the suffering of the paths of those. Medicine is involved to help take away those pains and often giving families more time with that loved one. To see last week when Brittany did an on air interview sitting, walking and talking and now she is gone due to a prescription that is legal just doesn't make sense. If we were all allowed to chose our own death, would we? How and when? There is no set timeline that anyone of us know when and where and how we will go. We are not even given a guidebook on how we are supposed to be the contribute to the society and world we live it? We don't know what our purpose is? We just have to figure it out and hope we are right? This whole thing just bothers me. I'm definitely the type of person that hates being told NO when I personally know it will be in the best interest of myself but all this "dying with dignity?" Not everyone will ever have that. It almost sounds like someone saying, "My death is better than yours because I chose it". I know that isn't what Brittany was trying to do but what about all the others that have been murdered or died terminally or died by a fluke accident? I had a friend die by choking on an icecube. People chuckle when they her her story on how she died but it is the truth. So is her death less than one that chooses the path of "Dying with Dignity?"
The questions were posted by Stephen Baldwin on FB, and I wrote a pretty long answer to them. One of the questions asked was comparing Robin Williams' suicide to her's. This is what I wrote-
ReplyDeleteWhat Robin did was not right, any more than Brittany, but his actions were not planned, were done out of the pain and anguish of a life spent in emotional pain. His "funny" was self-medication, and unfortunately, self-medication doesn't last.
The culture is reacting differently because Robin was so very ALIVE, no matter his pain. We mourn the loss of the life he shared with us. She had decided that she was dead before she took the drugs to end her body function. Are we supposed to celebrate the fact of her death?
I think the laws against Suicide are right and good. I think that making some suicides alright, and others WRONG!! is an enormous mistake. It opens doors that are far better left closed. It gives an excuse for society to NOT treat people that could be helped to prevent them taking this drastic step. Will these laws be used that way? Maybe not right away, but someday, you can count on it.
Does God's word play into this? Of course it does. Does it influence my opinions? Not as much as one would think. But God's word is FOR LIFE. In favor of. This mortal coil, as poets have called it, may be ours to LIVE, but it is also HIS, and even though we live it, it is NOT ours to end. I have sympathy and compassion for those who end it at the end of their ropes, unable to maintain perspective in this world any longer. I have no sympathy, no compassion for one who looks at the possibility of a worsening condition, and out of fear, gives up at the outset. I know a young man who is dying of osteosarcoma, a very rare form of cancer. I've heard of kids beating it, but he isn't. He's in the last stages, taking life one day at a time. But he trusts God, and he has the support of not only his family, but uncounted, at least hundreds, of people all over the country praying for him and loving on him and his family. Maybe I'm bitter, but WHO is SHE to react in more fear, and with far less grace, than a 17 year old kid who should be out LIVING his life, not laying in a bed losing it?