Permanently Deleted
I’m fully on board with assisted suicide. My mom fought pancreatic cancer for 4 years, and the last two weeks of her life were literal hell. We had family come from all over the country to stay at our house while we tried to keep her comfortable and surrounded by loved ones.
The dying process is not fun. It was ten days of her falling in and out of consciousness, losing her memory, not recognizing faces, not being able to tell what was real and what was a dream. The look of confusion on her face haunts me still, and the sound of her labored breathing in the bedroom next to mine won’t ever go away.
I remember thinking to myself and having conversations with my aunt and brother that went, “It’s gotta be tomorrow. I don’t see her lasting another 24 hours like this. I just want her to go as quickly and smoothly as possible, I want her misery to end.” Only to have her struggle and fight for another 6 days beyond that. Fuck, it was so rough.
I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to go through what my family went through, and assisted suicide could have made the whole ordeal much less traumatic.
Edit: Thanks for your condolences.
I appreciate answering questions about this. I haven’t been able to see a therapist yet, and it feels good to talk about it and answer any questions people have about death and cancer. I lived with my mom for the last 14 months of her life, and saw first hand the ups and downs and eventual end.
To answer your question, she was put on hospice 13 days before she died. It was in-home care, and it was pretty accommodating. I would’ve preferred the nurses stayed in longer shifts instead of just popping in for 15 minutes a couple times a day, but their care and help was appreciated.
They gave her a lot of drugs to keep her out of pain and sleepy, but it wasn’t full-proof and she still had plenty of time where she was semi-lucid and still in pain. So it wasn’t perfect. And it especially wasn’t quick. It was basically letting her go from starvation and her lungs going out, over the course of two weeks.
I think we all would have preferred she got a lethal dose of something several days sooner, and I wish that option was available to anybody in my position.
