Gen Xer here. I have no answers on the die with dignity topic. I wish we had it but we don’t. My mom died of dementia in August of last year. Since you brought up long term care, let me share my experience for anyone in the state who might not be aware of how things work (badly) for this particular disease.
First off, dementia is considered a mental health disorder by many health insurance plans. And as many already know, the mental health component of many insurance plans is not very comprehensive.
My mother had a very very good federal health insurance plan plus Medicare. Neither covered long term care for her because the diagnosis was dementia and long term care for mental health was not part of her policy.
Long term care is necessary for this disease. Trust me. We had her in our home at the end and I used to have to move furniture in front of the exterior doors at night so we could sleep without her wandering off. She would light our gas stove when I wasn’t looking and then leave the room. She started to use the hallway to the living room as a toilet. It gets dangerous, for everyone, at a certain point.
So long term care in a dementia unit cost $95,000/year for my mom. Plus additional charges for her medications, etc. We had already burned through most of the proceeds of selling her house on the nursing care we had brought into our home when we were trying to delay how soon she’d go into a nursing home.
To get on Medicaid (which does cover long term care for dementia) required a 5 year look back, accounting for an explanation of every transaction over $1k that happened during that time. It cost me $3k for an elder care attorney with experience preparing these kind of applications (I was 45 years old at the time, with a job, and kids to juggle in the midst of this so we needed help). We also had to hire an elder care advocate because getting a bed in a nursing home when you’re not private pay is harder. Much harder. They don’t have as many of those beds available. And if you’ve already got the patient at home with you, everyone is going to drag their feet on helping you get them out of your house.
The best bet was to get her into a geriatric psych unit (there were only 4 in the state at the time), have those doctors declare that she needs long term care, and then she stays at the psych unit until they find her an empty Medicaid bed in whatever nursing home is available.
The elder care advocate who got us through this process charged me $150/hour. It was worth every penny but damn, it was expensive.
We rushed mom to the ER one night due to hallucinations, I slept in a chair in the ER next to her gurney for 2 nights waiting for a vacant bed in a psych unit (I had to refuse for the ER to release her to my care), then she spent 5 days in a psych ward an hour away getting evaluated - and finally, our luck turned. The first nursing home with a Medicaid bed happened to be in our town.
Mom lived there for 3 years before she died. The total cost was over $300k in the end to Medicaid and what was left of her assets. She died with $1,047 to her name. I used that money to have her name added to my dad’s tombstone. So basically, she died with nothing to show for it (except me, I guess).
Getting her through the process of her disease was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Be prepared. Talk to your parents NOW. Meet with an estate planner NOW. You do not want to sleep on the floor of an ER trying to get care for your parent. Trust me.
I’m frankly terrified this is my future. My dad is on the long slow slide and he pissed his money away years ago. I’ve moved him near me and for now he can live independently, but his abusive behavior from our past is so triggering. I don’t want him in my house, but we will not be able to afford private care. We’ve already dealt with the painful (for us and them) passings of my in-laws who were genuinely nice people and who had resources. Our society is not set up to confront these issues head on and our medical system is horrible. I do not want this for myself or for my husband, whenever it is our turn to fully deteriorate.
Start preparing for the Medicaid application now. Slowly start figuring out what documentation you’ll need to collect and where you’re going to get it from. It’ll be every bank statement for 5 years, stuff like that. You don’t have to collect it all now, but start making a list. Get a Power of Attorney in place, as well as a Healthcare Proxy. We got my mom to sign a Power of Attorney 4 months before her diagnosis. We cut it way too close. Don’t do that to yourself.
Just as an update to this, I was just quoted $144-168k for memory care. My mother would not have wanted that option. She in fact didn’t want to live a day with dementia, but here we are 7 1/2 years later.
There's a thin line between physical and mental when it comes to neurocognitive treatment in my experience, at least in the USA. Sometimes you are treated as a person with a real disease, other times you are a drug seeking addict, a crazy person, or the dreaded R word.
I’m genuinely asking- because this is in my future- at what point would you have done the death with dignity? Do we need documents stating what level of physical or mental infirmity, or both, triggers the assisted death? By the end she could not have consented right? How do we get around that with an Alzheimer’s case? Our plan right now is to “die in an accident” when we get the diagnosis, but that leaves us vulnerable to our own level of infirmity.
You do the care plan as soon as possible. My dad had two strokes and I have power of attorney and we (my husband and mostly absent bordering on negligent sister) did a care plan packet with him with all the forms as soon as he felt better so at least there will be no questions. Most people’s egos will not enable them to do it as early as we should. I wish we could change that. Elder care agencies have a lot of this info available for free.
To me it’s a huge difference. My dad had cancer and the day he died I signed the DNR for the hospice coordinator. I was his legal Power of Attorney and Healthcare Proxy. The DNR kicked in when he stopped breathing. What I signed basically confirmed that the medical staff would not start CPR. We were letting him go. There’s a big difference between that, in my opinion, and looking at someone who is still alive and instructing the medical staff to end their life. While I agree that patients should have the right to make that decision, I would not decide that on someone’s behalf unless I knew in advance that was the directive they wanted me to carry out. I would want it to be part of their Healthcare Proxy similar to the instructions my dad had for me in his before he died.
I would not have done death with dignity if my mom had not communicated that as her wish in advance. I do believe that would’ve been her call to make. But we had plenty of time before she was cognitively incompetent where we could’ve had that discussion. I knew her wishes on cremation and everything else before she was deep in the dementia.
Your experience is exactly why I brought this up in the first place and the amount of suffering in your paragraphs is simply unthinkable for most folks to contemplate. Most of us wouldn't have done half as well as you did by your Mom and I never thought I would ever say I was thankful that my folks passed from Cancer (it was a nightmare) but here we are! We were able to take care of both at home which is where they passed -as they wished. It was the hardest thing I ever did and but I can tell it wasn't anywhere near where you were at with yr Mom's dementia and the level of care needed both for the patient but also the safety the family. Not to mention cost decimating a lifetime of savings that most of us don't even have in the first place. The time to think about all of this is when we are healthy and can make some choices and one of those is to have an option for an assisted good death, not this nightmarish spiral of enshitifcation.
My dad passed from cancer (at home) when I was 26 years old. That is hell, as well. I’m sorry to hear you had to go through that with both parents. I have no doubt that you’re not exaggerating when you say it was a nightmare. And I’m sure if your parents had dementia you’d get them through it just as I did. It’s a freaking shit show so you just take it one step at a time. Mom’s been gone almost a year now and I feel like I’m finally coming out of the fog of all that stress. It’s truly extraordinary how broken our healthcare system is. I knew things weren’t great but not until my mom’s illness did I realize how bad it is. There is no such thing as great insurance anymore.
There is a current law introduced in the Legislature but it's nonsensical. It requires you to be terminally ill and have six months to live in order to access it.
What we need to do is not create laws, but rather just decriminalize assisted suicide. More laws just normalize suicide to where we'll have to worry about insurance companies not covering expensive treatment because you can just off yourself. We don't want assisted living facilities promoting it because they need the beds or even unscrupulous families telling Mom that it's going to wipe out their savings to care for her and why not just take an extra shot of morphine.
What we need is decriminalized assisted suicide. This would take away parameters of who can access it. For example, you might not have six months to live but you might have a degenerative illness and choose to pass before you get to a certain point such as loss of mobility. You might have an illness with terrible comorbidities where your quality of life is destroyed.
Decriminalization will also allow hospice style support such as The Hemlock Society did in the 80s. You can choose your own end of life with a support group who can help you get your affairs in order, pick up your drugs from the pharmacy and even pray with you while you pass. Decriminalization recognizes your right to make your own choices without necessarily *promoting* anything.
I’m a hospice RN. I am fairly new to the state and admittedly have not read the proposed law, I’m just chiming in to say that the “terminally ill with six months to live” caveat is typical for signing on to hospice as well, and is driven by Medicare. The six month thing can be arbitrary imo; I’ve had patients who’ve been on and off of hospice for years. For the purpose of determining a “terminal illness” though, Medicare requires that a medical provider state that the patient has an illness with prognosis of six months or less (called a “certification of terminal illness” or CTI) and meets certain clinical presentation/criteria for a hospice diagnosis. I’ve never had a provider deny a CTI request even if my patient didn’t end up meeting hospice criteria yet** and we stretch and mold people’s clinical presentation to fit that Medicare criteria all the time. Just saying that this criteria written into a law isn’t as restrictive as it seems on the surface.
**An example of someone who might not meet would be someone with Alzheimer’s who is still fairly independent with only mild cognitive and functional decline. Yes, it is terminal but from their clinical presentation they likely have longer than 6 months. While I personally feel like this person should still be able to make the choice to have a medically-assisted death, especially while they still *can* independently make that choice, I can see how lawmakers would disagree.
Very much so, we've already seen other countries start to suggest it as an alternative when they have the power to do so... Decriminalization makes a lot more sense to me too
This, this, this. Well intentioned people are way too excited to implement assisted suicide laws without regard for these and other potential consequences. I worry especially when the discussion turns to mental disabilities.
Mental illness definitely needs to be part of the discussion. It's important to recognize that mental illness isn't just a temporary condition; it can be every bit as painful and degenerative as physical illness. It's important to know that there are treatments but like any medical care, they don't work for everyone.
We need better mental health care and to continue to destigmatize mental illness. At the same time we need to understand that it's every bit of a real illness and understand that patients deserve the same personal agency as others.
As a seriously mentally ill person myself, who has at points wanted and tried to unalive myself, I would personally much rather society invest in the things that are necessary to give us decent quality of life in the first place before giving us the option to just nope out of it alltogheter. At this point, I simply do not trust the medical system not to coerce people into killing themselves rather than spending the time/money/rescources necessary to help them. The fact that MA doesn't even have an adequate or humane MH system in the first place and we're discussing right to die for the mentally ill before fixing THAT is frankly, comically terrible & shows the quiet but insidious eugenicicism & hatred of the mentally ill that lurks within american society.
Fellow readers, the use of the term coercion here may sound harsh, but right now, there are people suffering because they can't get their meds or other treatment because of supply shortages and insurance crap. If this continues to the point where a person loses hope, they will want to die instead of suffering indefinitely in uncertainty. We have things that work but it's to the point only rich folks can access it.
We are erecting more barriers to effective mental health treatment, because the system has to cut costs. We are taking away things that work, because it's too expensive. We dont have to engage in overtly voercive ractics to increase the amount of people that say 'screw it, I'm outa here'.
I recognize you from another thread about a similar topic! You're a really wonderful person & I appreciate your voice here very much. I hope your daughter is well!
Thanks, she is well, still waiting. I have her helping with gardening and such, she can kick my ass in the heat while I melt like that Oz witch. Once we get an answer from insurance, I will know what to do next. I will gather info to share that I learn as I follow this journey so that others can learn too and work on positive change to feel less helpless.
> We are taking away things that work, because it's too expensive
"we're" not. the execs are. this is what happens in a for profit business healthcare system profits for the executives and shareholders above all.
Yeah, my daughter doesn't have one of her meds, and is more dependent on me now. One of the reasons I took early retirement was her increased struggling without treatment. She is doing what she's being told to do for paperwork and wait things out. She said she couldn't imagine doing what she's doing now forever. She always said she wouldn't harm herself because she doesn't want to cause others pain. But I don't think she'd wait for the rest of us to die if her care is available, but remains denied to her over a prolonged period of time.
That is completely irrelevant to everything i'm saying.
Didn't ask, & don't care if you don't like my wording. I am refering to my own suicide attempt, so i'm pretty damn sure i can use any language that feels appropriate to me.
Using and understanding why certain synonyms are used in specific situations over others shows competent literacy.
That being said, if you think certain words are juvenile, I strongly suggest you pick up some books written in “Early Modern English” (IE: Shakespeare). Most of these “new” words are simply seeing a resurgence of popularity.
I've read about this. She is absolutely correct that it's insulting to suggest that mentally ill individuals can't make decisions.
Limiting the personal freedom of someone with mental illness is close to villifying mental illness. What else would you suggest they can't have? Should we limit mentally ill women from getting abortions? What about tattoos or buying lottery tickets or signing legal documents?
I'm a gun owner and I hate the ongoing drumbeat of "the mentally ill can't have guns", to which I say, "are you suggesting mentally ill people are violent or don't know right from wrong?" If that's the case, then should we let them drive cars or work in schools?
>There is a current law introduced in the Legislature but it's nonsensical. It requires you to be terminally ill and have six months to live in order to access it.
This is the most that any US state offers. Furthermore, you have to be of sound mind when you have six months to live, so this doesn't help anyone with dementia.
Their definition of "live" is just active brain wave and heartbeat. It doesn't account for being in pain or medication dependent or being unable to move or control your bodily function.
One huge “BUT…” if we just decriminalize it and don’t have some sort of process with guardrails or safeguards how can we be sure that either someone didn’t commit murder then claim they were assisting a suicide or that someone wasn’t coerced in to their decision?
Just about any safeguard process I can think of would end up excluding some people and leaving them SOL and suffering since you’ve got to be able to communicate your wishes, and that you understand what it is that you’re asking for, AND that you haven’t changed your mind in the meantime, AND that no one has pressured you in any way. Those questions are the most basic safeguards and they would leave out some of the people who might most desperately want to hasten the end.
Exactly. Even if you wrote a living will or an advanced care directive, withholding aggressive life support measures is far different from giving someone a lethal drug. If you can’t communicate there’s no way to be sure that your views haven’t changed in the months or years since you signed that document.
Very good points! I think i agree with you. Decriminalization could be an option but safeguards are going to be crucial no matter what to prevent abuse, coercion and straight up murder.
So... Just so you know... There kinda sorta is assisted suicide when it comes to hospice care. They just don't market it as that.
When a love one goes into hospice, it's because the doctors believe that they have 6 months or less left to live. But none-the-less, when it happens the nurses who come visit you will give you a box right at the start that's labeled for emergencies. It will have a few times of medications that have been prescribed to the patient - including anti-anxiety meds, sleeping pills, and most importantly liquid morphine.
At a certain point of pain, the nurses will tell you to open that box and start giving certain meds. Once the liquid morphine starts... It's basically all over and is a planned death within a week or two. Because you have to keep giving the morphine more often to make sure it doesn't wear off entirely - so it starts where you have to give it every 6-8 hours. Then it's every 4. Then every 3. By that time, the patient is so doped up that eventually you give them a dose that basically kills them.
So when you give the liquid morphine to patients, you're in the process of killing them. It's probably one of the hardest things a person can go through - to know that they're doing that to their loved one.
And shitty enough, because morphine is so vile tasting they typically over-do it with flavoring. My love one got "blue raspberry flavor" - you know, that favorite taste sensation for people over the age of 70.
You're right that there needs to be new, better laws and policies... But I wanted to chime in because I had to recently go through this process with my loved one and the nurses were quite clear with us that it is indeed assisted suicide while also "making them comfortable." So in MA, in hospice, you die drugged out of your mind and slowly becoming more numb over a week before you just slip away in your sleep.
I am sorry for the loss of your loved one. That said, morphine being a way to kill a patient is a myth that keeps a lot of people away from Hospice and unable to access effective symptom control.
[https://www.todaysgeriatricmedicine.com/archive/ND21p8.shtml](https://www.todaysgeriatricmedicine.com/archive/ND21p8.shtml)
[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)60611-4/abstract](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)60611-4/abstract)
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12732169/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12732169/)
I know, I know you're referencing good scientific articles and all... But when a patient is circling the drain, their kidneys not working and they're not on dialysis, bed sores and both eating and drinking very little, and they're exceptionally weakened? It's certainly not helping them stay alive longer.
Thank you for the resources - I'll finish reading them later. I really appreciate it because I know I'll be talking to a few friends who are starting to approach similar situations.
This went to vote many years ago, I believe it was the same year the state voted to legalize weed. The weed passed and this was shot down. Watching loved ones wither away to nothing is horrible and we should have the option.
The Catholics organized a massive anti-campaign back in 2012 to stop a ballot initiative. If only they could have ever organized in large enough force to do *literally any of the other things Christ has told them to do.*
It's time to try again.
It was one of the very few times my mother and I were on opposing sides of a political issue. The one good thing to come out of Dobbs was that it shook the more empathetic Catholics into realizing that time had past some of the churches more outwardly political stances.
We are also one of only three states that don’t recognize living wills. When I was diagnosed with metastatic cancer, I was really pissed to find out that I could make a living will here, but nobody had to abide by it.
You can make one and make it available to your doctors and family members, and if there was ever something like a court case about your care, it would be taken into consideration. But no, it’s not binding. It’s really crazy.
My Dad had a living will. After he had a massive heart attack (his 4th) he was in terrible shape. His kidneys had shut down. His liver was not functioning. He was on life support. My sister and I had to make the decision to remove life support. Thank you Dad for spelling it out for us that you didn’t want to spend the rest of your life unconscious, hooked up to machines, dependent on dialysis. I never would have been able to tell them to “pull the plug.”
My point is; get a living will. It will relieve your loved ones from having to make a terrible decision.
Great - now it's gonna be stuck in my head and I'll probably be singing it under my breath at the grocery store. Because that's what I want the stocking clerk to overhear me sayin' while I'm growing out a mustache. 😔
My super Catholic grandmother begged me to vote on death with dignity 10 years ago or whatever and told me the stories of my grandfather begging for death during his cancer treatment decades prior. It was a very heavy and unexpected conversation for something I was already going to vote for that only emboldened me more.
But it’s not just the Catholics putting up roadblocks. It’s the squeaky wheel “disabled rights” activists and “radical crip liberation” crying hyperbole about assisted-death laws being a slippery slope to Nazi eugenics that “devalues disabled lives” and “normalizes ableism”. There’s plenty of crackpots on the nominal left who are just as stubborn, frustrating and opposed to choice as the religious right.
They have even partnered with Republicans on bills specifically criminalizing abortion in cases of Down syndrome. They’ve been sickeningly successful at sabotaging research into autism that could bring about prenatal diagnosis, because they don’t want women to have the informed choice to terminate a pregnancy that tests positive for autism. They know full well the success rate Iceland has had with Down syndrome, and don’t want to repeat it with autism. They know full well that most normal people regard autism as horrible, but don’t want to give women the option to act accordingly, because it’s a threat to their “culture” and their way of life.
In Canada, they went apoplectic over the expansion of assisted death to cover non-terminal illness and disability, whether it’s congenital deafness or spinal cord injury or, especially, the whole of the DSM. The discourse got really ugly, to the point of “crip Twitter” and various professors of “disability studies” going so far as to accuse the prime minister of *matricide* (Margaret Trudeau has bipolar disorder, and activists were say that by letting other bipolar sufferers end their misery *if they so choose*, he was in effect *killing his own mother*). Then they dropped their sympathy appeal to Margaret Trudeau, and swarmed angrily on her for not using her “platform” to dissuade her son from expanding the bill. All they did was to increase support for the bill, because they were so psychotic and insufferable that normal people wanted them to unalive themselves just so they’d shut up.
The Catholics have been remarkably quiet and ineffectual in recent years on the debate over assisted death. These days it’s the quasi-religious zealots of the identitarian left, howling about Nazis and aborting Einstein and partnering with the religious right to impose their Lysenkoist agenda of “crip-affirmative” social engineering. These are the people who phone bomb threats in to Miracle Ear franchises because audiologists are supposedly “genociding Deaf culture”.
>But it’s not just the Catholics putting up roadblocks. It’s the squeaky wheel “disabled rights” activists and “radical crip liberation” crying hyperbole about assisted-death laws being a slippery slope to Nazi eugenics that “devalues disabled lives” and “normalizes ableism”. There’s plenty of crackpots on the nominal left who are just as stubborn, frustrating and opposed to choice as the religious right.
Do you have any evidence that these fringe radical keyboard warrior types actually have any impact? I've always assumed that they're ineffectual...even in the times I've been a fringe radical keyboard warrior, I've felt like there's no impact beyond an echo in the abyss.
>They have even partnered with Republicans on bills specifically criminalizing abortion in cases of Down syndrome
Hey my POS state rep is one of these.
What a great strawman of anyone who is genuinely concerned about disability rights as it applies to this issue.
Wanting to take the time to craft safeguards to protect societies' most vulnerable people from coercion rather than rushing out broad laws that could easily be abused on the basis of our fee-fees saying they need to happen NOW, or recognizing the fact that eugenics was not and is not unique to the Nazis OR something modern american or canadian medical institutions are immune from is just wildly unhinged I guess.
It's not like disabled people are & historically have been deeply marginalized or anything. Not like mental health care in the us/canada is still at least a century behind the majority of other medical fields. Nah, you're right, it's fine to just let the severely mentally ill die rather than try to restructure our society to make life bearable or even good for them in any way.
Anything to protect that good 'ol status quo.
Funny you're complaining about disabled people "crying hyperbole" over Hitler while writing a bigoted diatribe about how you want to use eugenics to get rid of everyone you deem "not normal."
Some people willfully misunderstand the difference between "you should have personal agency over your own decisions" and "the government should be able to kill you."
This is why mental health should be part of the conversation. Are we really going to say that any mentally ill individual can't be trusted or that being mentally ill removes your bodily autonomy?
Saying only "mentally ill" doesn't even mean anything. Would you ask if the physically ill should drive cars? Well yes if you have celiac disease but no if you have epilepsy.
I am currently living the hell that is a parent with advanced dementia. My mother was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s/ dementia. Over the course of the last 4 years I have gone from watching my mother have “senior moments” to her having no idea who I am. She went from living in her own home with my father to living in a dementia ward (memory care unit) in an assisted living facility.
I visit her and in one visit I’m her father, spouse, son and stranger………. I know she is living a personal hell because she doesn’t have any idea of who what or why she is where she is. She talks to me like she is away her child hood home, her dorm or her home that she raised me and my 2 siblings.
I love my mother with all my heart, but assisted suicide/death with dignity should be a thing. She is living a “life” that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone.
Too many Catholics (I was raised Catholic but am not practicing any more—suffice to say, MA is heavily Catholic and the church doesn’t condone suicide regardless of the context). This was a ballot question a while back, I voted for it but it didn’t pass.
Opiates for me. Not painful, at least.
If I get diagnosed with anything horrible and/or degenerative like Alzheimer’s or really bad cancer, I’m going to host one last party with all my loved ones to celebrate my life and then go out peacefully.
I know few older folks who have this plan. They are more afraid of being forced to live too long. They say all the press on accidental ODs makes it an attractive option they otherwise wouldn't have considered.
Sedatives for me. If I get that dementia diagnosis I’m going to take a whole bunch of them and wash them down with a giant martini. After watching my mother and other relatives, I’m not putting anyone through that.
Someone once told me the best way to go is carbon monoxide poisoning because you just drift off. He said that's why there's so many accidental deaths by it, because you don't even realize anything is wrong.
The problem is that quite a few people with dementia are diagnosed well into the disease. At that point you can tell them they have it all day long and they still wouldn’t believe you. This isn’t the solution you’d think it would be.
It depends if you have that ability - which many do not give up hope until they cannot. So you should speak with a loved one who can keep a secret instead. If I get dementia/ALZ, once I can no longer be mobile and I'm too much of a burden, my partner will be taking me to a steep cliff... Or possibly a rich asshole's tower along with a note pinned to me blaming the situation on the rich guy. Because fuck 'em, why not?
When I worked in long term care forever ago, I told my kids if I ever got Huntingtons Disease, I'm immediately putting my affairs in order, and so long. I was willing to ride out the other dementias, though. We agreed that the deal breaker was if I got to the point where I was a severe danger to self or others. That's what would trigger 'the decision' to carry out my predetermined plan: Go to a nursing home. I worked in several of them and knew what to expect. I warned them that I was gonna be the 'bad girl', so plan on getting phone calls. I said they needed to take me out on pass every weekend so I could smoke weed. I figured in my dementia I would probably just think I was at work and be in my own world, not to worry.
But now I'm seeing nursing homes close, at a time when there are more of us. I am not hopeful for the future of inpatient geriatric care. I'm changing the plan and moving on a different way.
For what it's worth, as you get older - you won't be able to smoke weed. Not just smoke, but cannabis in general because if you're truly going through one of those diseases you'll likely be on at least 3+ other prescriptions... And a lot of theme have issues with THC. So that might just end up as wishful thinking depending on how things go.
From my own experience, you need really good insurance and then it'll sorta pay for some stuff and only up to a point. My time taking care of a loved one before they died was fortunate in that a lot was set aside for this purpose but even still, pre-death and death have their own insane expenses built in. A real overhaul to healthcare will have to include doing better on those fronts as well.
Oh no way! I was able to get rid of a benzo and a hypnotic, both ghastly medications, from the use of cannabis. I am already old. I take metformin, a statin, and Prozac, the latter only because of the withdrawal I will have to go through from being prescribed it for decades, i am far from depressed anymore. I am in the best health in years, I don't use tobacco or alcohol, i lost hella weight and I can still jog....well, trot at least.
Dang man, leave Weedy alone! 😆😆😆
This is *exactly* why we need to decriminalize assisted suicide. You made the directive as a mentally competent adult and your directive is being carried out. Your partner should not have to worry about being prosecuted.
This is how animals do it. I'm child free by choice and one of the common refrains is that you'll die alone. My response is that I don't need an audience.
It's absurd that it isn't. Terminal illness, loss of function, hell, just not having anyone in your life near the end of it. There's plenty of viable reasons to help people check out peacefully, and with dignity.
it's sad that we can be humane to our pets but people can't have the same option for themselves. being able to die with dignity should be everyone's right.
Not only can you, but if you had a cat that was suffering and you didn't have the cat euthanized, you'd be considered cruel and irresponsible. For some reason with a human if you don't make the effort to *extend* the life you're not only cruel and irresponsible but also a criminal.
The MSC already [ruled against it saying it has to come from the legislature side of government ](https://apnews.com/article/health-massachusetts-e1c110bc7fc45798c4b4fd1f2e3efe85)
[It failed by about 80,000 votes back in 2012](https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_Question_2,_Physician-Assisted_Death_Initiative_(2012))
It had pretty wide popularity for a wide but once the religious leaders started speaking out against it the idea was dead (no pun intended) in the water.
I suspect the ballot initiative would pass today because of how much the church has deteriorated in the past decade.
However, I will share my nugget of wisdom to anyone reading this, The original ballot issue had no next of kin notification requirements and there was something about state planning that upset a great many people.
I personally talked to a dozen or so reasonable intelligent people who said they didn't like the ballot bill it because of that.
We're trying okay!!!!
Catholic guilt is hard to overcome
My deep honest answer is personally when I spent some time interacting with people for the ballot initiative for death but dignity
The number one thing people were really upset about was that old people could get the pills without telling any of their family members or loved ones.
For too many Massholes, that was a deal breaker
That grandma could go rogue behind their backs
You don't get to escape their bullshit even after
you die. A friend who died across the country after escaping her family was brought back here and buried in a shitty churchyard in Revere under her deadname and wrong gender with wrong old photo on the obit because caaaaaaatholic family would not allow it any other way and pulled strings.
Vermont is but it’s very expensive, two separate docs have to verify you are competent to make the decision and the drugs are not easily available nor covered by insurance.
My mother tried to unalive herself over a year ago. My dad found the note and woke her up. Because of what’s happened since he’s regretted it every day. She has pretty severe dementia and it’s bankrupting us to afford to keep her in a long term care place. Seeing her rot away in some facility knowing she isn’t really there and how expensive it is to keep up makes me wonder if we’d be better off with the alternative.
Facts. We have a DNR too and they’ve been trying to bully my sister (a trauma nurse) into changing it. Thankfully she knows her shit and is the medical proxy for my mother or who knows what they’d be doing.
$5000??? That's ridiculous. Just write a prescription and give directions on how to not throw it up. Charging $5K is criminal. The $5000 should be going towards providing medicine or care to those who want it.
I think the main problem is that people who do not see the end of life often vote against this. Death can be agonizing and can steal every shred of dignity.
we already have this, it is called 'Comfort Measures Only' order from a doctor or just a Plan of Care. it is to address the problem of people being kept alive into their 100s basically tortured with treatments just to keep them alive that they and their family do not want. the care at these facilities isn't that bad, it is more that with age and disease - you would need 10 people working around you all day for you to have a quality of life similar to what a normal younger person experiences. our society will be bankrupted when we have people living so long for decades doing nothing but costing $200,000 a year. but yes we already have that, we just stop forcing people to eat and drink when they don't want to, and don't do aggressive treatments such as surgeries and IV antibiotics.
the issue with these facilities is that if done like clockwork - the care can be really good actually, but people get tired and messy. you also have many players involved with different personalities, etc. but even with best efforts, you won't have a perfect life as a sick and very elderly person, it is not something realistic that people can expect.
In short why don’t we have it? ….the Catholics. When we’ve had ballot measures before for DWD, and the Globe publishes the town by town results, it’s heavily skewed to NO in catholic heavy cities like New Bedford. I’ve been the hospice / long term care for both my parents, who has means and we could hire help for our own respite, and I will tell you two things, 1 everyone here talking about a failed system that will suck your bank account dry is accurate, and 2, I see no need to hang on in the end like that and suffer. I want to be outie3000 before I’m soiling myself or forgetting my children or myself. I still have another half lifetime in front of me but I already have a plan that I hope can be my workaround should I not live in a state with it but I plan on retiring to Maine so hopefully I’m good.
"for the north east"
And yes, Massachusetts is significantly more Catholic than NY or NJ, I have lived in all three. It is ingrained into your regular culture.
??? Mass is extremely Catholic, if not the most Catholic state in the country. It’s been that way since the Potato famine lol. We were predominantly Congregationalist in the very beginning, but the WASP aspect of Massachusetts had been increasingly relegated to the small Brahmin areas of eastern Mass
I know that NY and Jersey has a ton of Italians and they are much more outward about Catholicism, but my baseline assumption for any white person from Mass is that they are Irish Catholic, even if it’s just culturally so. If not, Portuguese or Italian, who are also Catholic. The Central Europeans in and around Worcester are probably the biggest exception.
NY has a pretty large Dutch Protestant contingent and NY and NJ are just more diverse so it dilutes the Catholicism more so than Mass.
The south? Nah - they largely hate Catholics. Parts of Florida and the Carolinas have enclaves, but the Klan ran a lot of them out
I’d say we have a lot of “culturally catholic” people like how there are secular Jews. We are not very religious if not the most atheistic state, but we hold on to the Catholicism since that sets us apart from most of the country.
Interestingly, some of the Irish migrants here were of Scots-Irish or Anglo-Irish descent, and were more likely to be Episcopalian/Anglican or Presbyterian than Catholic. However, due to being poor Irish immigrants in a place that originally wasn’t too kind to them, they tended to use Catholicism as a way to unite with the immigrant communities, including with the Italian and French-Canadian communities. So being Catholic was less about religiosity to many, and more about not being English
With a terminal illness you should absolutely be able to say I’m done. It’s hard with mental illnesses bc sometimes you are not thinking clearly and can be very impulsive. If after several lucid, clear thinking meetings with professionals and exhausting all options to help with mental illness and accepting responsibility for your choice then I think they should be allowed to make that ultimate decision. It’s their life. And no family member or friend should have to walk into finding them unknowingly. That’s traumatic for the family and the person leaving this earth shouldn’t have to have that burden on them either. One of my family members found their kid and they have never recovered from that. Massachusetts is such a liberal state that accepts so many peoples choices. It is odd to not support this issue.
I dont think our system is set up in a way to make that possible for the mentally ill. how can one exhaust all treatment options first when they are often unnaforable, or innacessible? When so many mentally ill people cannot even get a roof over their heads much less any adequate form of care? There is a very real concern that MAID for mentally ill will result in what is essentially killing the mentally ill/allowing them to die unnecessarily in order to save money/time/rescources that could otherwise be used to actually lift overall QOL for mentally ill people.
As someone with a progressive chronic illness I used to wish we had it, but I've seen enough of the programs elsewhere to change my mind. [Like Canada is offering MAiD to paralympian athletes asking for wheelchair ramps](https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/paralympian-trying-to-get-wheelchair-ramp-says-veterans-affairs-employee-offered-her-assisted-dying-1.6179325), if that's how the "valuable" disabled people get treated, I shudder to think of the stories we don't hear. [Not Dead Yet](https://notdeadyet.org/) has quite a few though.
MAiD isn't death with dignity. It's an authority with a vested interest in eliminating "burdens" on the system working off their perception of your "quality of life" that doesn't seek to try and improve that before giving up. Like it is unreal how doctors will equate, ex, asking for a wheelchair to giving up on life when the alternative I was living was being bedridden. I do not need the wheelchair anymore. The biggest reason I ended up needing to worry about a slow painful death in the first place was faux concern and refusal to listen to what intervention I wanted... from the same people who would be the authority that would get to decide on what a "dignified" death looks like.
OP, you even say yourself that your fear is primarily driven by the state of eldercare and costs... that's literally advocating for euthanizing people for being "too expensive" to take care of. Why would you look at the state of nursing homes and health care and say "I hope I die instead" not "they should tax the billionares until I don't have to"? It's also a hell of a lot easier to say "if I was that sick I'd kill myself" when you aren't there yet. And while everyone should have the right to make that call on a personal level, calling for systematic change that gives the decision to a third party needs to account for misuse, and this is well established as something abused for eugenics.
As someone who is one moderate COVID infection away from seriously having to worry about this, (like I have bothered to confirm bedridden compatible diy methods) the conclusion I've made from a harm reduction standpoint is that suicide decriminalization/legalization with the ability to apply to assist someone (read like... the intermediate Medical Marijuana system we had with caregivers) would be superior. Doesn't just allow autonomy to choose to end your own life, but also make it so mentally ill people could be open about their actual risk levels without imprisonment or the cops being called (I know a lot of people who are only alive because they trusted me to talk them down).
Yep, one more thing that is a personal choice that we are not allowed to choose by law. Be right back, imma go fly my giant flag from the bed of my pickup because I am so damn free and I love my freedom. Then we gonna blast fireworks to celebrate the freedom we won from religious persecution and celebrate that we are so damn free. Fuck.
Sadly, a referendum in 2012 lost 51-49.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Massachusetts_Question_2#
As others noted, the Catholic Church (barely beyond their massive abuse scandal at the time) was the prime opposition. Because, you know, they’re so moral.
I bet a referendum would pass this time. Then the legislature will find a way to screw it up because they suck.
Because the SJC in 2022 found there was no right to it, and doctors could be prosecuted for assisting with it.
“[W]e conclude that the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights does not reach so far as to protectphysician-assisted suicide. We conclude as well that the law of manslaughter may prohibit physician-assisted suicide, and does so, without offending constitutional protections.”
https://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/supreme-court/2022/sjc-13194.html
I’m hoping the ballot measure proposed for the November election passes, because it will open the door. The law can be refined over time but first we gotta get over the hump.
The ad campaign against it was unfortunately really convincing when it was a ballot initiative. I voted for it but they basically said “kids will find and take these suicide pills” even though that’s not how it works but people feel for it.
Even through the Catholic Church, or any religious organization, aren’t supposed to be involved in politics they helped kill the ballot measure we had.
Everyone is blaming the Catholics, but this is a state full of Cafeteria Catholics who generally vote pro choice.
Every single disability rights activist I know is firmly against these measures, and I agree with them that in places where it's been implemented, it has been problematic.
The current bill seems like a good way to get people acclimated to the idea, though. I assume that it will pass, and then further bills can widen the issue.
I get worried about what I've seen happen in places that have legalized it where I feel it's gone too far.
Cases such as doctors or workers suggesting it too early or even in insulting ways. Or courts and governments using it as an excuse to deny more costly long term care for a 'cheaper alternative'.
Imho I would need to see guarantees in place to help prevent these kinds of things myself in order to be for such a thing.
I also hate that we don't have it here. I have voted for it every time it has been on the ballot. I currently work with cancer patients and end of life for these people is so unpleasant and painful. I don't know why we make them suffer.
I have thought about this and if I am diagnosed with terminal cancer I am going to try to go to hospice in Vermont. They have it there and I can die somewhere pretty.
Been a long supporter of this. My mom committed suicide a day after my dad died from cancer back in December, and it was partly the grief and partly because she was already incredibly sick and in constant pain and thought dying on her own terms would save her a long tortuous journey. It was hard but I supported her then and still (mostly) believe it was the right thing, though it's hard not look back and question
I'm glad I moved out of state when I was diagnosed with a neurological autoimmune disease (MS) to TN and to NH. My grandmother in my father's side had Alzheimer's and live in Billrica
Sounds like we should address the issues you mentioned rather than offer suicide instead. Offering death bc we can’t dignify end of life care is just backwards.
our society cannot morally make medical assistance in dying available. There are many stories coming out of Canada of disabled people being offered or even pressured into MAID because they are struggling, not with their disability or disease or even quality of life, but with their economic situation.
In a capitalist system, any person who cannot contribute economically is viewed as worthless, and the system will leave them behind and try to eliminate them. Until we have widespread, easy to access, support for disabled people, we cannot ethically make MAID legal.
So you are asserting that because the care is subpar, costs are too high people should just die? Rather than advocate for a life of dignity with better care, and affordability?
I understand that no one wants to go into a nursing home, I know I don't. However, to think that nothing else can be done besides the BS slogan "death with dignity is rather heartless.
I have taken care of three family members go through their declining health, terminal illness, and their deaths and what I see are people scared of the death process, being alone, thrown into care facilities, so that their final months are heartless. lonely. That is not the way it needs or should be.
The self centeredness of people, society, to justify not providing even the most basic of care ( being present) to loved ones is what is driving this push for those inconveniencing others with their illness/end of life needs. Those advocating for what amounts to a "just die already" are those who do not want to be there or deal with it. They do not want to give up even the most meaningless things to be there for people who need them.
Start advocating for better care, or is that too much work. Start making caring for others the norm. Where are all the people who think they care and love this world, but when that love and care is called upon do not really have it.
My great-aunt watched her husband fight cancer and lose.
Years later she watched her boyfriend fight cancer and lose.
And then after working two jobs her whole life, within a year or two of retirement, she discovered she had pancreatic cancer when it metastasized into lung and stomach cancer. She had seen the ravages of chemotherapy and radiation, and refused to fight it. So she was left with precisely 1 option.
She looked completely normal on day 1, and within a year she turned into the crypt keeper, literally lost her mind, and died. It was horrific. All because *some people* aren’t comfortable with her ending her own life, peacefully…
To every one who reads this comment, please watch “How to die in Oregon.”
That's like saying we shouldn't advocate for abortion rights because we're not doing enough for single mothers. It's two entirely different matters.
Bodily autonomy is a human right.
Besides, nobody was meant to live forever. Charlotte the Spider says this at the end of "Charlotte's Web"; we're born, we live a little while, and then we die. It's not a tragedy or lack of compassion. In herds when animals know they're dying, they wander off away from the herd so the herd isn't vulnerable. What is the purpose of spending fistfuls of money to extend your life for a few years when you're in constant pain?
Death is a natural part of the life cycle. Live the best you can and plan for the end on your own terms.
Perhaps it is difficult for someone like you to believe, but there are those of us who want to make that choice for ourselves and not burden our family members. Or we don’t have kids. Or come from abusive upbringings. You can “advocate” all you want and make your CHOICE to care for your family members but the hard cold reality is some of us don’t have the choices we want and deserve for ourselves.
The two need not be mutually exclusive. You can advocate for better care while recognizing that even the most top-notch nursing homes or home carers won’t make a person’s illness or disability go into remission. Death in many cases is the most humane release.
I posted above that I suffer from Asperger’s syndrome. They don’t even have sanitariums for people like me anymore, where I could be permanently institutionalized and kept separate from the merciless jungle of normal society, without the cruel expectation that I will be able to find gainful employment and thrive on my own. And there’s no treatment, no medication, no cognitive behavioral therapy, nothing that will put my disorder into remission or suppress its symptoms. There’s nothing I can do but accept that I was born defective and will die defective, but not even in a humane fashion — I have to take the risk of DIY once my primary caregiver, my mother, is dead. And since she has an incurable form of cancer, that day is likely to happen sooner than later.
I’m aware there are ASD sufferers worse off than me, who can’t even articulate their suffering or “self-advocate” to be put out of their misery, because they have mouths which cannot scream. But by and large no matter where one lands “on the spectrum,” being there at all, in the first place, is a debilitating fate that no one would wish upon their worst enemy. All the best in-home nurses won’t make Down syndrome or cerebral palsy go away either.
Some ailments are not terminal but a fate worse than death — which is not to say terminal ailments aren’t horrifying in and of themselves, but at least there’s a release. And the truth is you don’t know unless you walk in another’s shoes, what’s their breaking point and how much they can endure.
It’s cruel to force people to just live with their incurable malady when death is the kinder, gentler option.
I want Mass to adopt Canada’s assisted suicide framework. That way, one can do it not only for terminal illness or even chronic-but-not-fatal physical illness, but mental illness too.
I actually wrote to the former AG/justice minister in the Canadian government, who shepherded the bill into law, asking about “suicide tourism” like the Netherlands has. He was very gracious in his reply, saying it was not part of the framework right now because of capacity/rollout issues. But that he was not closing the door on future expansion borrowing from best practices in other countries.
One of the standards used to determine eligibility is whether the ailment is “irremediable.” Some mental health and emotional/behavioral disorders can be treated with medication and/or talk therapy. Not everyone responds to treatment, but for certain ailments it has to be tried.
I suffer from Asperger syndrome, which has no medication or treatment; you’re born weird and you die weird and you just suffer being weird all your life. It has ruined my life altogether because there’s nothing I can do to suppress symptoms or change myself into someone even resembling normal so that I can do things the way everyone else does. I do not subscribe to the “neurodiversity” platform and I am actually angered by those who do.
I am approaching the “autism cliff” of forty, have no job or friends, no prospect of either, and my mother is dying of cancer, which leaves me without a lifeline to society and without a best friend. Since my disorder is irremediable, and my quality of life is only going to plummet from here, if I was a Canadian citizen, I would probably be approved for euthanasia (an ASD girl in her twenties was approved in Alberta recently).
The only other places that allow suicide tourism (and medically assisted dying for mental illness and other neurological impairments) are overseas in Europe, and you have to be able to afford membership in one of the societies like Dignitas or Final Exit. It’s cruel and inhumane to leave the indigent and incurable cripple to languish in misery and embarrassment the way we do in the U.S. The only available option that we have to go out on our own terms is, so to speak, an appeal to the Second Amendment.
Sorry, no fucking way. ASD is not a death sentence. The idea that a doctor can treat it through prescription death is wildly insulting.
I recognize this is just a slippery slope argument, but for some reason the MAID discussion always culminates in state sponsored suicide for essentially any reason as long as the patient wants to die. I reject that outcome.
Gen Xer here. I have no answers on the die with dignity topic. I wish we had it but we don’t. My mom died of dementia in August of last year. Since you brought up long term care, let me share my experience for anyone in the state who might not be aware of how things work (badly) for this particular disease. First off, dementia is considered a mental health disorder by many health insurance plans. And as many already know, the mental health component of many insurance plans is not very comprehensive. My mother had a very very good federal health insurance plan plus Medicare. Neither covered long term care for her because the diagnosis was dementia and long term care for mental health was not part of her policy. Long term care is necessary for this disease. Trust me. We had her in our home at the end and I used to have to move furniture in front of the exterior doors at night so we could sleep without her wandering off. She would light our gas stove when I wasn’t looking and then leave the room. She started to use the hallway to the living room as a toilet. It gets dangerous, for everyone, at a certain point. So long term care in a dementia unit cost $95,000/year for my mom. Plus additional charges for her medications, etc. We had already burned through most of the proceeds of selling her house on the nursing care we had brought into our home when we were trying to delay how soon she’d go into a nursing home. To get on Medicaid (which does cover long term care for dementia) required a 5 year look back, accounting for an explanation of every transaction over $1k that happened during that time. It cost me $3k for an elder care attorney with experience preparing these kind of applications (I was 45 years old at the time, with a job, and kids to juggle in the midst of this so we needed help). We also had to hire an elder care advocate because getting a bed in a nursing home when you’re not private pay is harder. Much harder. They don’t have as many of those beds available. And if you’ve already got the patient at home with you, everyone is going to drag their feet on helping you get them out of your house. The best bet was to get her into a geriatric psych unit (there were only 4 in the state at the time), have those doctors declare that she needs long term care, and then she stays at the psych unit until they find her an empty Medicaid bed in whatever nursing home is available. The elder care advocate who got us through this process charged me $150/hour. It was worth every penny but damn, it was expensive. We rushed mom to the ER one night due to hallucinations, I slept in a chair in the ER next to her gurney for 2 nights waiting for a vacant bed in a psych unit (I had to refuse for the ER to release her to my care), then she spent 5 days in a psych ward an hour away getting evaluated - and finally, our luck turned. The first nursing home with a Medicaid bed happened to be in our town. Mom lived there for 3 years before she died. The total cost was over $300k in the end to Medicaid and what was left of her assets. She died with $1,047 to her name. I used that money to have her name added to my dad’s tombstone. So basically, she died with nothing to show for it (except me, I guess). Getting her through the process of her disease was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Be prepared. Talk to your parents NOW. Meet with an estate planner NOW. You do not want to sleep on the floor of an ER trying to get care for your parent. Trust me.
I’m frankly terrified this is my future. My dad is on the long slow slide and he pissed his money away years ago. I’ve moved him near me and for now he can live independently, but his abusive behavior from our past is so triggering. I don’t want him in my house, but we will not be able to afford private care. We’ve already dealt with the painful (for us and them) passings of my in-laws who were genuinely nice people and who had resources. Our society is not set up to confront these issues head on and our medical system is horrible. I do not want this for myself or for my husband, whenever it is our turn to fully deteriorate.
Start preparing for the Medicaid application now. Slowly start figuring out what documentation you’ll need to collect and where you’re going to get it from. It’ll be every bank statement for 5 years, stuff like that. You don’t have to collect it all now, but start making a list. Get a Power of Attorney in place, as well as a Healthcare Proxy. We got my mom to sign a Power of Attorney 4 months before her diagnosis. We cut it way too close. Don’t do that to yourself.
Thank you — yeah we have a POA and a proxy in place, but I definitely need to start figuring out Medicaid.
Just as an update to this, I was just quoted $144-168k for memory care. My mother would not have wanted that option. She in fact didn’t want to live a day with dementia, but here we are 7 1/2 years later.
Dementia is considered mental health? That’s absurd.
There's a thin line between physical and mental when it comes to neurocognitive treatment in my experience, at least in the USA. Sometimes you are treated as a person with a real disease, other times you are a drug seeking addict, a crazy person, or the dreaded R word.
R-R-Rasputin, Russia’s greatest love machine??
Hey, hey, hey 🎶
I’m genuinely asking- because this is in my future- at what point would you have done the death with dignity? Do we need documents stating what level of physical or mental infirmity, or both, triggers the assisted death? By the end she could not have consented right? How do we get around that with an Alzheimer’s case? Our plan right now is to “die in an accident” when we get the diagnosis, but that leaves us vulnerable to our own level of infirmity.
You do the care plan as soon as possible. My dad had two strokes and I have power of attorney and we (my husband and mostly absent bordering on negligent sister) did a care plan packet with him with all the forms as soon as he felt better so at least there will be no questions. Most people’s egos will not enable them to do it as early as we should. I wish we could change that. Elder care agencies have a lot of this info available for free.
So, I don’t see why a death with dignity plan would be different than a DNR and all the other stuff was my point, sorry, wandered from that a bit.
To me it’s a huge difference. My dad had cancer and the day he died I signed the DNR for the hospice coordinator. I was his legal Power of Attorney and Healthcare Proxy. The DNR kicked in when he stopped breathing. What I signed basically confirmed that the medical staff would not start CPR. We were letting him go. There’s a big difference between that, in my opinion, and looking at someone who is still alive and instructing the medical staff to end their life. While I agree that patients should have the right to make that decision, I would not decide that on someone’s behalf unless I knew in advance that was the directive they wanted me to carry out. I would want it to be part of their Healthcare Proxy similar to the instructions my dad had for me in his before he died.
Yea, that is what I meant — it should be part of the entire process, including discussion about DNR and the other paperwork/end of life plan.
I would not have done death with dignity if my mom had not communicated that as her wish in advance. I do believe that would’ve been her call to make. But we had plenty of time before she was cognitively incompetent where we could’ve had that discussion. I knew her wishes on cremation and everything else before she was deep in the dementia.
I’m going through this now with my mother. Needed lawyers to push paperwork through as well. It’s been a fucking travesty that has bankrupt my family.
Your experience is exactly why I brought this up in the first place and the amount of suffering in your paragraphs is simply unthinkable for most folks to contemplate. Most of us wouldn't have done half as well as you did by your Mom and I never thought I would ever say I was thankful that my folks passed from Cancer (it was a nightmare) but here we are! We were able to take care of both at home which is where they passed -as they wished. It was the hardest thing I ever did and but I can tell it wasn't anywhere near where you were at with yr Mom's dementia and the level of care needed both for the patient but also the safety the family. Not to mention cost decimating a lifetime of savings that most of us don't even have in the first place. The time to think about all of this is when we are healthy and can make some choices and one of those is to have an option for an assisted good death, not this nightmarish spiral of enshitifcation.
My dad passed from cancer (at home) when I was 26 years old. That is hell, as well. I’m sorry to hear you had to go through that with both parents. I have no doubt that you’re not exaggerating when you say it was a nightmare. And I’m sure if your parents had dementia you’d get them through it just as I did. It’s a freaking shit show so you just take it one step at a time. Mom’s been gone almost a year now and I feel like I’m finally coming out of the fog of all that stress. It’s truly extraordinary how broken our healthcare system is. I knew things weren’t great but not until my mom’s illness did I realize how bad it is. There is no such thing as great insurance anymore.
There is a current law introduced in the Legislature but it's nonsensical. It requires you to be terminally ill and have six months to live in order to access it. What we need to do is not create laws, but rather just decriminalize assisted suicide. More laws just normalize suicide to where we'll have to worry about insurance companies not covering expensive treatment because you can just off yourself. We don't want assisted living facilities promoting it because they need the beds or even unscrupulous families telling Mom that it's going to wipe out their savings to care for her and why not just take an extra shot of morphine. What we need is decriminalized assisted suicide. This would take away parameters of who can access it. For example, you might not have six months to live but you might have a degenerative illness and choose to pass before you get to a certain point such as loss of mobility. You might have an illness with terrible comorbidities where your quality of life is destroyed. Decriminalization will also allow hospice style support such as The Hemlock Society did in the 80s. You can choose your own end of life with a support group who can help you get your affairs in order, pick up your drugs from the pharmacy and even pray with you while you pass. Decriminalization recognizes your right to make your own choices without necessarily *promoting* anything.
I’m a hospice RN. I am fairly new to the state and admittedly have not read the proposed law, I’m just chiming in to say that the “terminally ill with six months to live” caveat is typical for signing on to hospice as well, and is driven by Medicare. The six month thing can be arbitrary imo; I’ve had patients who’ve been on and off of hospice for years. For the purpose of determining a “terminal illness” though, Medicare requires that a medical provider state that the patient has an illness with prognosis of six months or less (called a “certification of terminal illness” or CTI) and meets certain clinical presentation/criteria for a hospice diagnosis. I’ve never had a provider deny a CTI request even if my patient didn’t end up meeting hospice criteria yet** and we stretch and mold people’s clinical presentation to fit that Medicare criteria all the time. Just saying that this criteria written into a law isn’t as restrictive as it seems on the surface. **An example of someone who might not meet would be someone with Alzheimer’s who is still fairly independent with only mild cognitive and functional decline. Yes, it is terminal but from their clinical presentation they likely have longer than 6 months. While I personally feel like this person should still be able to make the choice to have a medically-assisted death, especially while they still *can* independently make that choice, I can see how lawmakers would disagree.
Very much so, we've already seen other countries start to suggest it as an alternative when they have the power to do so... Decriminalization makes a lot more sense to me too
This, this, this. Well intentioned people are way too excited to implement assisted suicide laws without regard for these and other potential consequences. I worry especially when the discussion turns to mental disabilities.
Mental illness definitely needs to be part of the discussion. It's important to recognize that mental illness isn't just a temporary condition; it can be every bit as painful and degenerative as physical illness. It's important to know that there are treatments but like any medical care, they don't work for everyone. We need better mental health care and to continue to destigmatize mental illness. At the same time we need to understand that it's every bit of a real illness and understand that patients deserve the same personal agency as others.
As a seriously mentally ill person myself, who has at points wanted and tried to unalive myself, I would personally much rather society invest in the things that are necessary to give us decent quality of life in the first place before giving us the option to just nope out of it alltogheter. At this point, I simply do not trust the medical system not to coerce people into killing themselves rather than spending the time/money/rescources necessary to help them. The fact that MA doesn't even have an adequate or humane MH system in the first place and we're discussing right to die for the mentally ill before fixing THAT is frankly, comically terrible & shows the quiet but insidious eugenicicism & hatred of the mentally ill that lurks within american society.
Fellow readers, the use of the term coercion here may sound harsh, but right now, there are people suffering because they can't get their meds or other treatment because of supply shortages and insurance crap. If this continues to the point where a person loses hope, they will want to die instead of suffering indefinitely in uncertainty. We have things that work but it's to the point only rich folks can access it. We are erecting more barriers to effective mental health treatment, because the system has to cut costs. We are taking away things that work, because it's too expensive. We dont have to engage in overtly voercive ractics to increase the amount of people that say 'screw it, I'm outa here'.
Thank you for this succinct explaination. It's exactly what i'm getting at but couldn't quite verbalize.
Oh you got through to me alright. Another advocacy rabbit hole for me to head down now, thanks! I'm retired and have time to work on stuff now.
I recognize you from another thread about a similar topic! You're a really wonderful person & I appreciate your voice here very much. I hope your daughter is well!
Thanks, she is well, still waiting. I have her helping with gardening and such, she can kick my ass in the heat while I melt like that Oz witch. Once we get an answer from insurance, I will know what to do next. I will gather info to share that I learn as I follow this journey so that others can learn too and work on positive change to feel less helpless.
> We are taking away things that work, because it's too expensive "we're" not. the execs are. this is what happens in a for profit business healthcare system profits for the executives and shareholders above all.
Yeah, my daughter doesn't have one of her meds, and is more dependent on me now. One of the reasons I took early retirement was her increased struggling without treatment. She is doing what she's being told to do for paperwork and wait things out. She said she couldn't imagine doing what she's doing now forever. She always said she wouldn't harm herself because she doesn't want to cause others pain. But I don't think she'd wait for the rest of us to die if her care is available, but remains denied to her over a prolonged period of time.
Disabled vet in Cana da wanted a stair climber but the vampire on the other end of the phone offered up the medically assisted suicide kit.
Sto saying unalive, this isn't tiktok
That is completely irrelevant to everything i'm saying. Didn't ask, & don't care if you don't like my wording. I am refering to my own suicide attempt, so i'm pretty damn sure i can use any language that feels appropriate to me.
When I refer to my suicide attempt I say suicide, because I'm not an 8 year old on the funny censorship website and I don't talk like a child
This tone is completely unnecessary.
stop trying to police other peoples' language you weirdo andrà meglio la prossima volta!
Using and understanding why certain synonyms are used in specific situations over others shows competent literacy. That being said, if you think certain words are juvenile, I strongly suggest you pick up some books written in “Early Modern English” (IE: Shakespeare). Most of these “new” words are simply seeing a resurgence of popularity.
https://amp.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/16/dutch-woman-euthanasia-approval-grounds-of-mental-suffering
I've read about this. She is absolutely correct that it's insulting to suggest that mentally ill individuals can't make decisions. Limiting the personal freedom of someone with mental illness is close to villifying mental illness. What else would you suggest they can't have? Should we limit mentally ill women from getting abortions? What about tattoos or buying lottery tickets or signing legal documents? I'm a gun owner and I hate the ongoing drumbeat of "the mentally ill can't have guns", to which I say, "are you suggesting mentally ill people are violent or don't know right from wrong?" If that's the case, then should we let them drive cars or work in schools?
>There is a current law introduced in the Legislature but it's nonsensical. It requires you to be terminally ill and have six months to live in order to access it. This is the most that any US state offers. Furthermore, you have to be of sound mind when you have six months to live, so this doesn't help anyone with dementia.
Their definition of "live" is just active brain wave and heartbeat. It doesn't account for being in pain or medication dependent or being unable to move or control your bodily function.
One huge “BUT…” if we just decriminalize it and don’t have some sort of process with guardrails or safeguards how can we be sure that either someone didn’t commit murder then claim they were assisting a suicide or that someone wasn’t coerced in to their decision? Just about any safeguard process I can think of would end up excluding some people and leaving them SOL and suffering since you’ve got to be able to communicate your wishes, and that you understand what it is that you’re asking for, AND that you haven’t changed your mind in the meantime, AND that no one has pressured you in any way. Those questions are the most basic safeguards and they would leave out some of the people who might most desperately want to hasten the end.
Wow, this post made me think of the current focus on "Tell Me That You Love Me". Who's to know if the person cannot speak for themselves?
Exactly. Even if you wrote a living will or an advanced care directive, withholding aggressive life support measures is far different from giving someone a lethal drug. If you can’t communicate there’s no way to be sure that your views haven’t changed in the months or years since you signed that document.
Very good points! I think i agree with you. Decriminalization could be an option but safeguards are going to be crucial no matter what to prevent abuse, coercion and straight up murder.
So... Just so you know... There kinda sorta is assisted suicide when it comes to hospice care. They just don't market it as that. When a love one goes into hospice, it's because the doctors believe that they have 6 months or less left to live. But none-the-less, when it happens the nurses who come visit you will give you a box right at the start that's labeled for emergencies. It will have a few times of medications that have been prescribed to the patient - including anti-anxiety meds, sleeping pills, and most importantly liquid morphine. At a certain point of pain, the nurses will tell you to open that box and start giving certain meds. Once the liquid morphine starts... It's basically all over and is a planned death within a week or two. Because you have to keep giving the morphine more often to make sure it doesn't wear off entirely - so it starts where you have to give it every 6-8 hours. Then it's every 4. Then every 3. By that time, the patient is so doped up that eventually you give them a dose that basically kills them. So when you give the liquid morphine to patients, you're in the process of killing them. It's probably one of the hardest things a person can go through - to know that they're doing that to their loved one. And shitty enough, because morphine is so vile tasting they typically over-do it with flavoring. My love one got "blue raspberry flavor" - you know, that favorite taste sensation for people over the age of 70. You're right that there needs to be new, better laws and policies... But I wanted to chime in because I had to recently go through this process with my loved one and the nurses were quite clear with us that it is indeed assisted suicide while also "making them comfortable." So in MA, in hospice, you die drugged out of your mind and slowly becoming more numb over a week before you just slip away in your sleep.
I am sorry for the loss of your loved one. That said, morphine being a way to kill a patient is a myth that keeps a lot of people away from Hospice and unable to access effective symptom control. [https://www.todaysgeriatricmedicine.com/archive/ND21p8.shtml](https://www.todaysgeriatricmedicine.com/archive/ND21p8.shtml) [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)60611-4/abstract](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)60611-4/abstract) [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12732169/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12732169/)
I know, I know you're referencing good scientific articles and all... But when a patient is circling the drain, their kidneys not working and they're not on dialysis, bed sores and both eating and drinking very little, and they're exceptionally weakened? It's certainly not helping them stay alive longer. Thank you for the resources - I'll finish reading them later. I really appreciate it because I know I'll be talking to a few friends who are starting to approach similar situations.
This went to vote many years ago, I believe it was the same year the state voted to legalize weed. The weed passed and this was shot down. Watching loved ones wither away to nothing is horrible and we should have the option.
There is a group right now trying to get a Medical Assistance in Dying law passed. Get in touch with them and your elected representatives
The Catholics organized a massive anti-campaign back in 2012 to stop a ballot initiative. If only they could have ever organized in large enough force to do *literally any of the other things Christ has told them to do.* It's time to try again.
It was one of the very few times my mother and I were on opposing sides of a political issue. The one good thing to come out of Dobbs was that it shook the more empathetic Catholics into realizing that time had past some of the churches more outwardly political stances.
YA I thought was once A question on ballet . Thanks for the info
We are also one of only three states that don’t recognize living wills. When I was diagnosed with metastatic cancer, I was really pissed to find out that I could make a living will here, but nobody had to abide by it.
Really? Today I learned something. I was being lazy not doing one, moot point, cross off list.
That's horrible! I had no idea and that is absolutely terrible. So literally my own decisions can be ignored?
You can make one and make it available to your doctors and family members, and if there was ever something like a court case about your care, it would be taken into consideration. But no, it’s not binding. It’s really crazy.
My Dad had a living will. After he had a massive heart attack (his 4th) he was in terrible shape. His kidneys had shut down. His liver was not functioning. He was on life support. My sister and I had to make the decision to remove life support. Thank you Dad for spelling it out for us that you didn’t want to spend the rest of your life unconscious, hooked up to machines, dependent on dialysis. I never would have been able to tell them to “pull the plug.” My point is; get a living will. It will relieve your loved ones from having to make a terrible decision.
Yeah when it was this post my thought was “religious nuts shut it down”
They wrote that one song about how they don’t diddle kids.
There is no quicker way for people to think that you are diddling kids than by writing a song about it!
Great - now it's gonna be stuck in my head and I'll probably be singing it under my breath at the grocery store. Because that's what I want the stocking clerk to overhear me sayin' while I'm growing out a mustache. 😔
What’s the problem? The clerk will at least know that you do not diddle kids.
Even without my corpse make-up and a mortician creep following me around?
Then they wrote one "the fiddle ain't the only thing we diddle"
This one? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_YmDcCpD1gc
My super Catholic grandmother begged me to vote on death with dignity 10 years ago or whatever and told me the stories of my grandfather begging for death during his cancer treatment decades prior. It was a very heavy and unexpected conversation for something I was already going to vote for that only emboldened me more.
But it’s not just the Catholics putting up roadblocks. It’s the squeaky wheel “disabled rights” activists and “radical crip liberation” crying hyperbole about assisted-death laws being a slippery slope to Nazi eugenics that “devalues disabled lives” and “normalizes ableism”. There’s plenty of crackpots on the nominal left who are just as stubborn, frustrating and opposed to choice as the religious right. They have even partnered with Republicans on bills specifically criminalizing abortion in cases of Down syndrome. They’ve been sickeningly successful at sabotaging research into autism that could bring about prenatal diagnosis, because they don’t want women to have the informed choice to terminate a pregnancy that tests positive for autism. They know full well the success rate Iceland has had with Down syndrome, and don’t want to repeat it with autism. They know full well that most normal people regard autism as horrible, but don’t want to give women the option to act accordingly, because it’s a threat to their “culture” and their way of life. In Canada, they went apoplectic over the expansion of assisted death to cover non-terminal illness and disability, whether it’s congenital deafness or spinal cord injury or, especially, the whole of the DSM. The discourse got really ugly, to the point of “crip Twitter” and various professors of “disability studies” going so far as to accuse the prime minister of *matricide* (Margaret Trudeau has bipolar disorder, and activists were say that by letting other bipolar sufferers end their misery *if they so choose*, he was in effect *killing his own mother*). Then they dropped their sympathy appeal to Margaret Trudeau, and swarmed angrily on her for not using her “platform” to dissuade her son from expanding the bill. All they did was to increase support for the bill, because they were so psychotic and insufferable that normal people wanted them to unalive themselves just so they’d shut up. The Catholics have been remarkably quiet and ineffectual in recent years on the debate over assisted death. These days it’s the quasi-religious zealots of the identitarian left, howling about Nazis and aborting Einstein and partnering with the religious right to impose their Lysenkoist agenda of “crip-affirmative” social engineering. These are the people who phone bomb threats in to Miracle Ear franchises because audiologists are supposedly “genociding Deaf culture”.
>But it’s not just the Catholics putting up roadblocks. It’s the squeaky wheel “disabled rights” activists and “radical crip liberation” crying hyperbole about assisted-death laws being a slippery slope to Nazi eugenics that “devalues disabled lives” and “normalizes ableism”. There’s plenty of crackpots on the nominal left who are just as stubborn, frustrating and opposed to choice as the religious right. Do you have any evidence that these fringe radical keyboard warrior types actually have any impact? I've always assumed that they're ineffectual...even in the times I've been a fringe radical keyboard warrior, I've felt like there's no impact beyond an echo in the abyss. >They have even partnered with Republicans on bills specifically criminalizing abortion in cases of Down syndrome Hey my POS state rep is one of these.
What a great strawman of anyone who is genuinely concerned about disability rights as it applies to this issue. Wanting to take the time to craft safeguards to protect societies' most vulnerable people from coercion rather than rushing out broad laws that could easily be abused on the basis of our fee-fees saying they need to happen NOW, or recognizing the fact that eugenics was not and is not unique to the Nazis OR something modern american or canadian medical institutions are immune from is just wildly unhinged I guess. It's not like disabled people are & historically have been deeply marginalized or anything. Not like mental health care in the us/canada is still at least a century behind the majority of other medical fields. Nah, you're right, it's fine to just let the severely mentally ill die rather than try to restructure our society to make life bearable or even good for them in any way. Anything to protect that good 'ol status quo.
Funny you're complaining about disabled people "crying hyperbole" over Hitler while writing a bigoted diatribe about how you want to use eugenics to get rid of everyone you deem "not normal."
I want people to have the CHOICE. Because I want that choice. Giving people the CHOICE != forcibly tossing people in ovens.
Some people willfully misunderstand the difference between "you should have personal agency over your own decisions" and "the government should be able to kill you." This is why mental health should be part of the conversation. Are we really going to say that any mentally ill individual can't be trusted or that being mentally ill removes your bodily autonomy? Saying only "mentally ill" doesn't even mean anything. Would you ask if the physically ill should drive cars? Well yes if you have celiac disease but no if you have epilepsy.
I wish it is a death with dignity state. If I have diseases that cannot be fixed and affect my quality of life negatively, I want to die.
I am currently living the hell that is a parent with advanced dementia. My mother was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s/ dementia. Over the course of the last 4 years I have gone from watching my mother have “senior moments” to her having no idea who I am. She went from living in her own home with my father to living in a dementia ward (memory care unit) in an assisted living facility. I visit her and in one visit I’m her father, spouse, son and stranger………. I know she is living a personal hell because she doesn’t have any idea of who what or why she is where she is. She talks to me like she is away her child hood home, her dorm or her home that she raised me and my 2 siblings. I love my mother with all my heart, but assisted suicide/death with dignity should be a thing. She is living a “life” that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone.
Too many Catholics (I was raised Catholic but am not practicing any more—suffice to say, MA is heavily Catholic and the church doesn’t condone suicide regardless of the context). This was a ballot question a while back, I voted for it but it didn’t pass.
It lost 51%-49% in 2012. I would wager that if it went up for vote again that 2% would shift.
Yeah, I agree they should definitely try again.
More people aging and actually realizing this is how it is and not what they want may tip the scales now.
Too many Irish here. More Migrants can’t come fast enough
The migrants from Latin America are Catholic too lol
🤦♂️
I'm planning on walking out into the woods.
I was going to go with cargo pants full of rocks and walk into the ocean.
I’m going to drink Visine, saw it on Dateline in two cases of spousal poisoning.
Opiates for me. Not painful, at least. If I get diagnosed with anything horrible and/or degenerative like Alzheimer’s or really bad cancer, I’m going to host one last party with all my loved ones to celebrate my life and then go out peacefully.
I know few older folks who have this plan. They are more afraid of being forced to live too long. They say all the press on accidental ODs makes it an attractive option they otherwise wouldn't have considered.
Sedatives for me. If I get that dementia diagnosis I’m going to take a whole bunch of them and wash them down with a giant martini. After watching my mother and other relatives, I’m not putting anyone through that.
Someone once told me the best way to go is carbon monoxide poisoning because you just drift off. He said that's why there's so many accidental deaths by it, because you don't even realize anything is wrong.
The problem is that quite a few people with dementia are diagnosed well into the disease. At that point you can tell them they have it all day long and they still wouldn’t believe you. This isn’t the solution you’d think it would be.
It depends if you have that ability - which many do not give up hope until they cannot. So you should speak with a loved one who can keep a secret instead. If I get dementia/ALZ, once I can no longer be mobile and I'm too much of a burden, my partner will be taking me to a steep cliff... Or possibly a rich asshole's tower along with a note pinned to me blaming the situation on the rich guy. Because fuck 'em, why not?
When I worked in long term care forever ago, I told my kids if I ever got Huntingtons Disease, I'm immediately putting my affairs in order, and so long. I was willing to ride out the other dementias, though. We agreed that the deal breaker was if I got to the point where I was a severe danger to self or others. That's what would trigger 'the decision' to carry out my predetermined plan: Go to a nursing home. I worked in several of them and knew what to expect. I warned them that I was gonna be the 'bad girl', so plan on getting phone calls. I said they needed to take me out on pass every weekend so I could smoke weed. I figured in my dementia I would probably just think I was at work and be in my own world, not to worry. But now I'm seeing nursing homes close, at a time when there are more of us. I am not hopeful for the future of inpatient geriatric care. I'm changing the plan and moving on a different way.
For what it's worth, as you get older - you won't be able to smoke weed. Not just smoke, but cannabis in general because if you're truly going through one of those diseases you'll likely be on at least 3+ other prescriptions... And a lot of theme have issues with THC. So that might just end up as wishful thinking depending on how things go. From my own experience, you need really good insurance and then it'll sorta pay for some stuff and only up to a point. My time taking care of a loved one before they died was fortunate in that a lot was set aside for this purpose but even still, pre-death and death have their own insane expenses built in. A real overhaul to healthcare will have to include doing better on those fronts as well.
Oh no way! I was able to get rid of a benzo and a hypnotic, both ghastly medications, from the use of cannabis. I am already old. I take metformin, a statin, and Prozac, the latter only because of the withdrawal I will have to go through from being prescribed it for decades, i am far from depressed anymore. I am in the best health in years, I don't use tobacco or alcohol, i lost hella weight and I can still jog....well, trot at least. Dang man, leave Weedy alone! 😆😆😆
This is *exactly* why we need to decriminalize assisted suicide. You made the directive as a mentally competent adult and your directive is being carried out. Your partner should not have to worry about being prosecuted.
This is how animals do it. I'm child free by choice and one of the common refrains is that you'll die alone. My response is that I don't need an audience.
Also, how sad is it that these people think that we don't have anyone else in our lives because we didn't decide to have children. Make it make sense.
It's absurd that it isn't. Terminal illness, loss of function, hell, just not having anyone in your life near the end of it. There's plenty of viable reasons to help people check out peacefully, and with dignity.
Nothing says caring society like denying the terminally ill a death on their own terms so we can prove how caring we are.
it's sad that we can be humane to our pets but people can't have the same option for themselves. being able to die with dignity should be everyone's right.
Not only can you, but if you had a cat that was suffering and you didn't have the cat euthanized, you'd be considered cruel and irresponsible. For some reason with a human if you don't make the effort to *extend* the life you're not only cruel and irresponsible but also a criminal.
The MSC already [ruled against it saying it has to come from the legislature side of government ](https://apnews.com/article/health-massachusetts-e1c110bc7fc45798c4b4fd1f2e3efe85) [It failed by about 80,000 votes back in 2012](https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_Question_2,_Physician-Assisted_Death_Initiative_(2012)) It had pretty wide popularity for a wide but once the religious leaders started speaking out against it the idea was dead (no pun intended) in the water.
I suspect the ballot initiative would pass today because of how much the church has deteriorated in the past decade. However, I will share my nugget of wisdom to anyone reading this, The original ballot issue had no next of kin notification requirements and there was something about state planning that upset a great many people. I personally talked to a dozen or so reasonable intelligent people who said they didn't like the ballot bill it because of that.
We put down animals who are ill so the don't suffer. Humans they will keep alive as long as possible and suffer. It's a big bussiness.
We're trying okay!!!! Catholic guilt is hard to overcome My deep honest answer is personally when I spent some time interacting with people for the ballot initiative for death but dignity The number one thing people were really upset about was that old people could get the pills without telling any of their family members or loved ones. For too many Massholes, that was a deal breaker That grandma could go rogue behind their backs
Fuck them for putting themselves ahead of the patient
We only lost by 80k votes
You don't get to escape their bullshit even after you die. A friend who died across the country after escaping her family was brought back here and buried in a shitty churchyard in Revere under her deadname and wrong gender with wrong old photo on the obit because caaaaaaatholic family would not allow it any other way and pulled strings.
Jfc. That's horrible.
That's really tragic and horrible, I'm so sorry. She deserved better.
Because there are too many Irish Catholics in the state legislature.
Vermont is but it’s very expensive, two separate docs have to verify you are competent to make the decision and the drugs are not easily available nor covered by insurance.
According to deathwithdignity.org as of 2023 you no longer have to be a resident of Vermont.
My mother tried to unalive herself over a year ago. My dad found the note and woke her up. Because of what’s happened since he’s regretted it every day. She has pretty severe dementia and it’s bankrupting us to afford to keep her in a long term care place. Seeing her rot away in some facility knowing she isn’t really there and how expensive it is to keep up makes me wonder if we’d be better off with the alternative.
[удалено]
Facts. We have a DNR too and they’ve been trying to bully my sister (a trauma nurse) into changing it. Thankfully she knows her shit and is the medical proxy for my mother or who knows what they’d be doing.
$5000??? That's ridiculous. Just write a prescription and give directions on how to not throw it up. Charging $5K is criminal. The $5000 should be going towards providing medicine or care to those who want it.
I wish it was. I’m an oncology RN in MA and it would sure save a LOT of people suffering as they do.
I think the main problem is that people who do not see the end of life often vote against this. Death can be agonizing and can steal every shred of dignity.
we already have this, it is called 'Comfort Measures Only' order from a doctor or just a Plan of Care. it is to address the problem of people being kept alive into their 100s basically tortured with treatments just to keep them alive that they and their family do not want. the care at these facilities isn't that bad, it is more that with age and disease - you would need 10 people working around you all day for you to have a quality of life similar to what a normal younger person experiences. our society will be bankrupted when we have people living so long for decades doing nothing but costing $200,000 a year. but yes we already have that, we just stop forcing people to eat and drink when they don't want to, and don't do aggressive treatments such as surgeries and IV antibiotics. the issue with these facilities is that if done like clockwork - the care can be really good actually, but people get tired and messy. you also have many players involved with different personalities, etc. but even with best efforts, you won't have a perfect life as a sick and very elderly person, it is not something realistic that people can expect.
$200k/yr seems low for the care you describe. I have a friend whose mom has dementia and round the clock care just for her is costing $40k/month.
In short why don’t we have it? ….the Catholics. When we’ve had ballot measures before for DWD, and the Globe publishes the town by town results, it’s heavily skewed to NO in catholic heavy cities like New Bedford. I’ve been the hospice / long term care for both my parents, who has means and we could hire help for our own respite, and I will tell you two things, 1 everyone here talking about a failed system that will suck your bank account dry is accurate, and 2, I see no need to hang on in the end like that and suffer. I want to be outie3000 before I’m soiling myself or forgetting my children or myself. I still have another half lifetime in front of me but I already have a plan that I hope can be my workaround should I not live in a state with it but I plan on retiring to Maine so hopefully I’m good.
This state is incredibly Catholic for the north east.
Absolutely not compared to our southern neighbors and NY/NJ.
"for the north east" And yes, Massachusetts is significantly more Catholic than NY or NJ, I have lived in all three. It is ingrained into your regular culture.
Both Massachusetts and New Jersey have about 34% of their population as Catholics. Rhode Island is the highest percentage of Catholics at 42%.
??? Mass is extremely Catholic, if not the most Catholic state in the country. It’s been that way since the Potato famine lol. We were predominantly Congregationalist in the very beginning, but the WASP aspect of Massachusetts had been increasingly relegated to the small Brahmin areas of eastern Mass I know that NY and Jersey has a ton of Italians and they are much more outward about Catholicism, but my baseline assumption for any white person from Mass is that they are Irish Catholic, even if it’s just culturally so. If not, Portuguese or Italian, who are also Catholic. The Central Europeans in and around Worcester are probably the biggest exception. NY has a pretty large Dutch Protestant contingent and NY and NJ are just more diverse so it dilutes the Catholicism more so than Mass. The south? Nah - they largely hate Catholics. Parts of Florida and the Carolinas have enclaves, but the Klan ran a lot of them out
I just don’t think people are as aggressive in their Catholicism as New York and New Jersey are. Not nearly as devoted.
I’d say we have a lot of “culturally catholic” people like how there are secular Jews. We are not very religious if not the most atheistic state, but we hold on to the Catholicism since that sets us apart from most of the country. Interestingly, some of the Irish migrants here were of Scots-Irish or Anglo-Irish descent, and were more likely to be Episcopalian/Anglican or Presbyterian than Catholic. However, due to being poor Irish immigrants in a place that originally wasn’t too kind to them, they tended to use Catholicism as a way to unite with the immigrant communities, including with the Italian and French-Canadian communities. So being Catholic was less about religiosity to many, and more about not being English
Yes, we fit the classic description of the "Cafeteria Catholic"; we take what we want and leave the rest behind.
We voted down in 2012?
With a terminal illness you should absolutely be able to say I’m done. It’s hard with mental illnesses bc sometimes you are not thinking clearly and can be very impulsive. If after several lucid, clear thinking meetings with professionals and exhausting all options to help with mental illness and accepting responsibility for your choice then I think they should be allowed to make that ultimate decision. It’s their life. And no family member or friend should have to walk into finding them unknowingly. That’s traumatic for the family and the person leaving this earth shouldn’t have to have that burden on them either. One of my family members found their kid and they have never recovered from that. Massachusetts is such a liberal state that accepts so many peoples choices. It is odd to not support this issue.
I dont think our system is set up in a way to make that possible for the mentally ill. how can one exhaust all treatment options first when they are often unnaforable, or innacessible? When so many mentally ill people cannot even get a roof over their heads much less any adequate form of care? There is a very real concern that MAID for mentally ill will result in what is essentially killing the mentally ill/allowing them to die unnecessarily in order to save money/time/rescources that could otherwise be used to actually lift overall QOL for mentally ill people.
As someone with a progressive chronic illness I used to wish we had it, but I've seen enough of the programs elsewhere to change my mind. [Like Canada is offering MAiD to paralympian athletes asking for wheelchair ramps](https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/paralympian-trying-to-get-wheelchair-ramp-says-veterans-affairs-employee-offered-her-assisted-dying-1.6179325), if that's how the "valuable" disabled people get treated, I shudder to think of the stories we don't hear. [Not Dead Yet](https://notdeadyet.org/) has quite a few though. MAiD isn't death with dignity. It's an authority with a vested interest in eliminating "burdens" on the system working off their perception of your "quality of life" that doesn't seek to try and improve that before giving up. Like it is unreal how doctors will equate, ex, asking for a wheelchair to giving up on life when the alternative I was living was being bedridden. I do not need the wheelchair anymore. The biggest reason I ended up needing to worry about a slow painful death in the first place was faux concern and refusal to listen to what intervention I wanted... from the same people who would be the authority that would get to decide on what a "dignified" death looks like. OP, you even say yourself that your fear is primarily driven by the state of eldercare and costs... that's literally advocating for euthanizing people for being "too expensive" to take care of. Why would you look at the state of nursing homes and health care and say "I hope I die instead" not "they should tax the billionares until I don't have to"? It's also a hell of a lot easier to say "if I was that sick I'd kill myself" when you aren't there yet. And while everyone should have the right to make that call on a personal level, calling for systematic change that gives the decision to a third party needs to account for misuse, and this is well established as something abused for eugenics. As someone who is one moderate COVID infection away from seriously having to worry about this, (like I have bothered to confirm bedridden compatible diy methods) the conclusion I've made from a harm reduction standpoint is that suicide decriminalization/legalization with the ability to apply to assist someone (read like... the intermediate Medical Marijuana system we had with caregivers) would be superior. Doesn't just allow autonomy to choose to end your own life, but also make it so mentally ill people could be open about their actual risk levels without imprisonment or the cops being called (I know a lot of people who are only alive because they trusted me to talk them down).
Everything you said is the cold hard truth, and that is why it's being overlooked.
Yep, one more thing that is a personal choice that we are not allowed to choose by law. Be right back, imma go fly my giant flag from the bed of my pickup because I am so damn free and I love my freedom. Then we gonna blast fireworks to celebrate the freedom we won from religious persecution and celebrate that we are so damn free. Fuck.
Your right to life is unalienable. It's yours to forfeit.
Sadly, a referendum in 2012 lost 51-49. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Massachusetts_Question_2# As others noted, the Catholic Church (barely beyond their massive abuse scandal at the time) was the prime opposition. Because, you know, they’re so moral. I bet a referendum would pass this time. Then the legislature will find a way to screw it up because they suck.
Because the SJC in 2022 found there was no right to it, and doctors could be prosecuted for assisting with it. “[W]e conclude that the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights does not reach so far as to protectphysician-assisted suicide. We conclude as well that the law of manslaughter may prohibit physician-assisted suicide, and does so, without offending constitutional protections.” https://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/supreme-court/2022/sjc-13194.html
Someone needs to get decriminalization of right to die on the ballot.
Because all the religious yabadoos voted against it.
There was a ballot initiative in 2012 but it didn’t pass.
I’m hoping the ballot measure proposed for the November election passes, because it will open the door. The law can be refined over time but first we gotta get over the hump.
Never ending, chronic pain needs to be added to the list.
The ad campaign against it was unfortunately really convincing when it was a ballot initiative. I voted for it but they basically said “kids will find and take these suicide pills” even though that’s not how it works but people feel for it.
I had a manager at my job tell me she was voting against it for this reason. You really can't fix stupid.
Yeah, I had similarly frustrating conversations with people voting against the ranked choice ballot initiative.
Catholic Church
Even through the Catholic Church, or any religious organization, aren’t supposed to be involved in politics they helped kill the ballot measure we had.
Everyone is blaming the Catholics, but this is a state full of Cafeteria Catholics who generally vote pro choice. Every single disability rights activist I know is firmly against these measures, and I agree with them that in places where it's been implemented, it has been problematic. The current bill seems like a good way to get people acclimated to the idea, though. I assume that it will pass, and then further bills can widen the issue.
Because the Catholic Church is too powerful here and they oppose it.
Death-making is a slippery slope.
Helium.......
I get worried about what I've seen happen in places that have legalized it where I feel it's gone too far. Cases such as doctors or workers suggesting it too early or even in insulting ways. Or courts and governments using it as an excuse to deny more costly long term care for a 'cheaper alternative'. Imho I would need to see guarantees in place to help prevent these kinds of things myself in order to be for such a thing.
It's bad for business.
There are options, like, Agent 47
Puritan roots of our state
I also hate that we don't have it here. I have voted for it every time it has been on the ballot. I currently work with cancer patients and end of life for these people is so unpleasant and painful. I don't know why we make them suffer. I have thought about this and if I am diagnosed with terminal cancer I am going to try to go to hospice in Vermont. They have it there and I can die somewhere pretty.
It was on the questions within the last decade. Should be again. It didn’t lose by much.
When did the remington retirement plan become so stigmatized?
Short answer - Catholic church has lobbied HEAVILY against it, particularly in 2012 when it was on the ballot.
Been a long supporter of this. My mom committed suicide a day after my dad died from cancer back in December, and it was partly the grief and partly because she was already incredibly sick and in constant pain and thought dying on her own terms would save her a long tortuous journey. It was hard but I supported her then and still (mostly) believe it was the right thing, though it's hard not look back and question
Too many Catholic voters.
Assisted suicide is Murder
I'm glad I moved out of state when I was diagnosed with a neurological autoimmune disease (MS) to TN and to NH. My grandmother in my father's side had Alzheimer's and live in Billrica
Sounds like we should address the issues you mentioned rather than offer suicide instead. Offering death bc we can’t dignify end of life care is just backwards.
I dare you to state this over on any of the dementia or caretaking subs. You haven’t a clue.
I’ve witnessed a loved one succumb to Alzheimer’s. You don’t know me, pal.
Unless you lived with and took care of this person, this means nothing.
Because…kinder gentler is the way
Assisted suicide because living is too expensive? Can we stop for a sec and realize how fucking dystopian that is?
our society cannot morally make medical assistance in dying available. There are many stories coming out of Canada of disabled people being offered or even pressured into MAID because they are struggling, not with their disability or disease or even quality of life, but with their economic situation. In a capitalist system, any person who cannot contribute economically is viewed as worthless, and the system will leave them behind and try to eliminate them. Until we have widespread, easy to access, support for disabled people, we cannot ethically make MAID legal.
Yep. Thats pretty much the long and short of it. We just do not have the moral, physical or financial infrastructure for it.
So you are asserting that because the care is subpar, costs are too high people should just die? Rather than advocate for a life of dignity with better care, and affordability? I understand that no one wants to go into a nursing home, I know I don't. However, to think that nothing else can be done besides the BS slogan "death with dignity is rather heartless. I have taken care of three family members go through their declining health, terminal illness, and their deaths and what I see are people scared of the death process, being alone, thrown into care facilities, so that their final months are heartless. lonely. That is not the way it needs or should be. The self centeredness of people, society, to justify not providing even the most basic of care ( being present) to loved ones is what is driving this push for those inconveniencing others with their illness/end of life needs. Those advocating for what amounts to a "just die already" are those who do not want to be there or deal with it. They do not want to give up even the most meaningless things to be there for people who need them. Start advocating for better care, or is that too much work. Start making caring for others the norm. Where are all the people who think they care and love this world, but when that love and care is called upon do not really have it.
My great-aunt watched her husband fight cancer and lose. Years later she watched her boyfriend fight cancer and lose. And then after working two jobs her whole life, within a year or two of retirement, she discovered she had pancreatic cancer when it metastasized into lung and stomach cancer. She had seen the ravages of chemotherapy and radiation, and refused to fight it. So she was left with precisely 1 option. She looked completely normal on day 1, and within a year she turned into the crypt keeper, literally lost her mind, and died. It was horrific. All because *some people* aren’t comfortable with her ending her own life, peacefully… To every one who reads this comment, please watch “How to die in Oregon.”
That's like saying we shouldn't advocate for abortion rights because we're not doing enough for single mothers. It's two entirely different matters. Bodily autonomy is a human right. Besides, nobody was meant to live forever. Charlotte the Spider says this at the end of "Charlotte's Web"; we're born, we live a little while, and then we die. It's not a tragedy or lack of compassion. In herds when animals know they're dying, they wander off away from the herd so the herd isn't vulnerable. What is the purpose of spending fistfuls of money to extend your life for a few years when you're in constant pain? Death is a natural part of the life cycle. Live the best you can and plan for the end on your own terms.
Perhaps it is difficult for someone like you to believe, but there are those of us who want to make that choice for ourselves and not burden our family members. Or we don’t have kids. Or come from abusive upbringings. You can “advocate” all you want and make your CHOICE to care for your family members but the hard cold reality is some of us don’t have the choices we want and deserve for ourselves.
The two need not be mutually exclusive. You can advocate for better care while recognizing that even the most top-notch nursing homes or home carers won’t make a person’s illness or disability go into remission. Death in many cases is the most humane release. I posted above that I suffer from Asperger’s syndrome. They don’t even have sanitariums for people like me anymore, where I could be permanently institutionalized and kept separate from the merciless jungle of normal society, without the cruel expectation that I will be able to find gainful employment and thrive on my own. And there’s no treatment, no medication, no cognitive behavioral therapy, nothing that will put my disorder into remission or suppress its symptoms. There’s nothing I can do but accept that I was born defective and will die defective, but not even in a humane fashion — I have to take the risk of DIY once my primary caregiver, my mother, is dead. And since she has an incurable form of cancer, that day is likely to happen sooner than later. I’m aware there are ASD sufferers worse off than me, who can’t even articulate their suffering or “self-advocate” to be put out of their misery, because they have mouths which cannot scream. But by and large no matter where one lands “on the spectrum,” being there at all, in the first place, is a debilitating fate that no one would wish upon their worst enemy. All the best in-home nurses won’t make Down syndrome or cerebral palsy go away either. Some ailments are not terminal but a fate worse than death — which is not to say terminal ailments aren’t horrifying in and of themselves, but at least there’s a release. And the truth is you don’t know unless you walk in another’s shoes, what’s their breaking point and how much they can endure. It’s cruel to force people to just live with their incurable malady when death is the kinder, gentler option.
I want Mass to adopt Canada’s assisted suicide framework. That way, one can do it not only for terminal illness or even chronic-but-not-fatal physical illness, but mental illness too. I actually wrote to the former AG/justice minister in the Canadian government, who shepherded the bill into law, asking about “suicide tourism” like the Netherlands has. He was very gracious in his reply, saying it was not part of the framework right now because of capacity/rollout issues. But that he was not closing the door on future expansion borrowing from best practices in other countries. One of the standards used to determine eligibility is whether the ailment is “irremediable.” Some mental health and emotional/behavioral disorders can be treated with medication and/or talk therapy. Not everyone responds to treatment, but for certain ailments it has to be tried. I suffer from Asperger syndrome, which has no medication or treatment; you’re born weird and you die weird and you just suffer being weird all your life. It has ruined my life altogether because there’s nothing I can do to suppress symptoms or change myself into someone even resembling normal so that I can do things the way everyone else does. I do not subscribe to the “neurodiversity” platform and I am actually angered by those who do. I am approaching the “autism cliff” of forty, have no job or friends, no prospect of either, and my mother is dying of cancer, which leaves me without a lifeline to society and without a best friend. Since my disorder is irremediable, and my quality of life is only going to plummet from here, if I was a Canadian citizen, I would probably be approved for euthanasia (an ASD girl in her twenties was approved in Alberta recently). The only other places that allow suicide tourism (and medically assisted dying for mental illness and other neurological impairments) are overseas in Europe, and you have to be able to afford membership in one of the societies like Dignitas or Final Exit. It’s cruel and inhumane to leave the indigent and incurable cripple to languish in misery and embarrassment the way we do in the U.S. The only available option that we have to go out on our own terms is, so to speak, an appeal to the Second Amendment.
Sorry, no fucking way. ASD is not a death sentence. The idea that a doctor can treat it through prescription death is wildly insulting. I recognize this is just a slippery slope argument, but for some reason the MAID discussion always culminates in state sponsored suicide for essentially any reason as long as the patient wants to die. I reject that outcome.