I've been absent for a few months. No excuses really just a general disgust for just about everything going on relative to our current administration. The latest impropriety is the Bushies attempt to interfere, once again, in judicial processes, like he's not doing enough legacy work with the supreme court already.
The Terry Schiavo case has particular significance to me since I watched my mother die, by similar means, of lung cancer. By this I mean that she was starved of food and water until the cancer ravaged her and ultimately took her life. It was a grisly experience that I suspect is repeated hundreds of times each day here in the US. The significant difference in our case is that my mother had a written living will and the didn't have some idiots blathering about in some vain pretense that she would make a miraculous recovery. She died within four days of being in hospice instead of 16 years!
One anecdote I need to relate has to do with the young doctor's reluctance to administer more morphine to my mom. He said something like, "I don't want to give her too much." I recall looking him in the eyes and replying something like, "Oh, is there such a thing at this stage of the game? Just give her what's needed so she doesn't know where the hell she is or what's happening to here for god's sake!" He was actually worrying about killing her. My news for him was that faster is better in these situations and, hey, my late cat suffered less.
We are no more enlightened today, with all of our medicines, machinery and treatments than our forefathers were. We've always been able to shoot the horse to prevent its suffering but insist on dragging out our own. Social change has been very slow and, I'm afraid, its getting slower. The death of the current Pope has brought out a few interesting points. One is that the papal term is for life but none of the cardinals like it so they endeavor to consistently pick someone who's old and may not live long. Hmmmmm....is there a supreme court nomination strategy in there somewhere? If its good enough for the Catholics, it ought be good enough for the feds eh? John Paul died in two to three days. I keep wondering how he, and his constituents, would have behaved if he had hung on for sixteen years! Good god, can't anyone see the irony in that?
This is my living will: This place isn't as much fun as you all would make it out to be so, if I show the slightest signs of being terminal, vegetative or just drooly, I would like to have immediately administered, a cocktail of whatever works best to kill me fast and painlessly! I exonerate any doctor or other practitioner from legal harm. And yes, I did write this because I'm the only one with the damn password.
Get it together America.
