Dying with Dignity In Oregon

Posted by Guest Blogger on May 24, 2011

Janice M. Van Dyck is an award-winning author and writer. Her recent novel, "Finding Frances," is a gentle, upbeat exploration of a family's love and what it means to live and die in this age of modern medicine. This article was originally published on Huffington Post.

I'm looking forward to watching Peter Richardson's controversial documentary, "How to Die in Oregon," debuting on HBO May 26. The acclaimed film took best documentary at this year's Sundance Film Festival. In it, the filmmaker offers a galvanizing exposure to real people who plan to use Oregon's Death with Dignity Law, which allows a physician-assisted death by drug overdose for patients with less than six months to live.

I'm more knowledgeable than most people on the topic of death and dying. Last year I published a novel, "Finding Frances," about a woman's end-of-life choices and the effect her decision had on her family. I wrote about different views, beliefs and emotions on ending life, wrung from my own experiences and extensive research after my mother died. Although I was sure I'd fully intellectualized the topic, seeing the reality of a dying person voluntarily ending their life on screen will surely give me more to think about.

If you plan to watch the broadcast, consider some of the broader cultural issues before figuring out how you feel about it. First consider why we're so uncomfortable thinking about death. I offer one of my fictional character's thoughts when his mother is dying:

(Excerpted from "Finding Frances") As a society, we're always trying to make certain life is happy, or that it seems to be, anyway. Sickness and death are embarrassing and ugly by our standards. Their presence in the middle of our otherwise happy lives is intolerable. If we cheat death, we['re] champions. We dodge the bullet -- life won by a quick move in the nick of time. And if we lose, we['re] death's victims, as if we had nothing to do with it when we had everything to do with it!

...[O]ur society's got us running scared; we don't know anything about death anymore. Our whole focus is on life and living. I can't tell you how many books I've read about how to have a happy life. I've never even seen one on the shelf that would tell me how to have a good death. If I knew that, maybe I wouldn't be so afraid.

As I wrote my fictional character struggling with the same issues I did when my mother refused a chance at life-sustaining treatment, I had him ruminate on whether declining a chance at life is the same as causing one's own death:

If a person isn't wealthy enough or doesn't live in a place where medical help is available, we believe it's okay for them to die unattended. No one makes much of a fuss about it....But if a person lives in a country of privilege and they happen to be sick in a hospital before dying, the rules change... That life no longer belongs to the individual or even to God. That life belongs to the doctors and nurses and hospital boards, to drug manufacturers and insurance companies and ethics committees. When did we turn over our deaths to institutions?

For thousands of years, right up until the Twentieth Century, death was a ritual of our species -- an unavoidable crossing each generation experienced and the next generations witnessed. It was treated with the respect of any significant passage, just like births, puberty and marriages were. Death was attended by neighbors, friends and relatives as a matter of course -- it was unexaggerated, unglorified. It was accepted with appropriate solemnity. It belonged to and, most times, was orchestrated by the dying person.

Any death, especially one that raises profound questions, causes strain on a family. My novel's characters each have different value systems they try to impress on each other. My fictional son considers our cultural attitudes toward extending a "pro-choice" attitude to the end of life:

People are against suicide because they believe a life doesn't belong to the person living it -- that it cannot be claimed like any other possession, and it cannot be terminated like any other contract. Religious people believe each individual life belongs to God... Non-religious people even generally believe [suicide is] wrong. It's against the human basic instinct to perpetuate, against the instinct rooted deeply in our brains and in whatever other physical mechanisms work to keep us alive despite the odds.

But people are not totally against death as a choice. Some claim martyrdom or just cause by killing others and/or themselves in the name of God....Likewise, it's okay to give up one's life for one's country--honorable even. ...Self-defense is a valid argument in a court of law. Millions believe in capital punishment...and in abortion, which terminates the beginning of a life. Yet there is a near-universal public policy of unwillingness to terminate the end of a life. The logic that dictates pro-choice at the beginning doesn't seem to cover pro-choice at the end.

One of the last issues to think about when considering the Oregon law is the spiritual life of a terminally ill person in the medical system. My fictional character speaks my own thoughts:

...[Institutionalizing] might have solved the problem of death's unpleasantness, but it has created another issue entirely....a hole into which all things spiritual fall and never find a landing. In a sterile hospital environment, with its science and protocol, there is no place left for our spiritual beliefs, no private place for religious rituals and prayer, literally no room for personal growth or understanding to occur as we learn from the evolution of an individual life. We no longer have individual participation in the natural order of life and death, or in the cycles of the universe. We have contrived in its place an institutional process for physical death that demands one-size-fits-all compliance.

...The increasing effectiveness of all this medicine and all these procedures only prolongs the inevitable. It keeps a body attached to the earth, often torturing the spirit and preventing it from being at peace.

The characters I wrote could be any one of us grappling with impending loss. Every day people die agonizing deaths from terminal illness. Every day their loved ones suffer with them. Every day the dying feel guilty for inflicting pain even while they are forced to suffer with their own. I plan to watch "How To Die In Oregon" and continue developing my own thoughts on the matter. One thing's for certain: Someday I'll need to know how I feel about it.

Posted on May 24, 2011 in Personal Stories, The Arts, “How to Die in Oregon” - A Documentary

Comments

Posted by Alyssa Hall on Tuesday, May 24 at 05:14 p.m.

Can this documentary be purchased???
If so, how do we obtain a copy???

Thank You, , Alyssa Hall
Posted by Melissa Barber on Friday, May 27 at 05:13 p.m.

The tentative DVD release date is sometime this fall. You can sign up for emailed updated from "How to Die in Oregon" on their website and be the first to hear:
http://www.howtodieinoregon.com/

Best,
Melissa
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Melissa Barber
Electronic Communications Specialist
Death with Dignity National Center
Posted by seashelle on Saturday, June 04 at 08:30 p.m.

i watched it today and i got to say much support coming from me
Posted by Sabrina on Thursday, June 09 at 08:42 a.m.

I watched the show the other day. I really felt for those people and really believe in the Right to Die. I cried. I was sad. It hurt. But I knew they were doing the right thing. I wish my state would have a law like Oregon. I would support this law 100% and do what I could to get it passed.
Posted by Diane on Monday, June 13 at 12:23 p.m.

I watched this documentary with interest several times and was especially moved by the story of Cody Curtis. I have always believed in the right of a person to choose, and that includes a person's right to choose his or her time of death if the illness is painful and terminal. In these cases, to force a person to continue to live until the body naturally gives up is absurd. Let's work to pass laws in every state for Death with Dignity!
Posted by Kristi Christensen on Thursday, June 16 at 04:52 p.m.

I just watched this amazing documentary the other day. I watched it with my Aunt who has just completed 6 months of chemotherapy for breast cancer. Imagine how hard it was for her to watch this documentary knowing if her cancer comes back and she can no lobger fight there is no law on her side.

Cody's story reminded me of my mom, who I lost in February 2010, to liver disease (non-alcoholic). I wish my mom would have had the chance to end her life and her suffering. She lived 5 years with the type of liver disease she had and her final year was debilitating, depressing and very painful. She was in and out of the hospital many many times. Her life basically stopped because the medication she needed to prolong her life was agonizing. Funny thing is that my mom had a DNR and that was a choice made by her when she was first diagnosed. That was her choice, as much as I did not agree with it, at the time. Honestly, I am having a hard time deciphering the difference between a DNR and the right to die. Isn't that almost the same thing? In the case of your heart stopping a doctor has the ability to try and start it again. If a person has instructed a doctor not to do that and the doctor backs away and lets ther person die what is the difference between that and making medication available to end someones life? The doctor isn't admninistering any medication, just like the doctor would not be administering CPR to make a heart beat again.

I reside California and I am going to begin the task of getting a right to die law passed in California. I would really love to speak with the lady from Washington who was able to pass I-1000 for her husband, Randy. I am so in awe of her and am so very proud of her determination and courage to take on the task of having this law passed.

From the time we are children we are given choices from the foods we eat to the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the jobs we work. We should have a law that enables someone the right to end their life to avoid excrutiating pain and suffering. Keep in mind that pain and suffering is not limited to the person effected by a terminal illness, it is shared with those who love them. It is not about being a burden or a financial drain it is about watching someone you love dying in pain and hallucinating due to toxins in their body effecting their brain and finally going into a coma and finally dying after a week.

If all it takes is a law granting a dying person the right to end thier own suffering, then why hasn't that law been written?

For my mom (Michele Beckett) and countless other loved ones, I am beginning my fight to have a right to die with dignity in California. Let's get the law in the state of California. I can use as much help since I am the least political person I know and I have no idea what I am doing.
Posted by Melissa Barber on Friday, June 17 at 01:50 p.m.

Thank you so much for contributing your voice to the conversation, Kristi.

Advance directives and hastened death which is allowed under Death with Dignity laws are a bit different. An advance directive allows people put into writing what they want to have happen for their end-of-life care if they're unable to express for themselves.

Death with Dignity Acts, on the other hand, allow terminally-ill, mentally-competent individuals to request medication from their doctors to hasten their deaths. Every step of the request process for the prescription is patient-driven, and the patent may change his or her mind at any time. In addition, a person who receives medication under the Oregon or Washington law must be able to self-administer and ingest the medication.

After careful research and polling, we've found the next likely state to pass a Death with Dignity law will be in New England, and that's where we're currently focusing our efforts. As we work to pass more and more Death with Dignity laws throughout the US, our hope is enough states will tip the scales and states which have been resistant in the past will finally listen to the will of the people.

Best,
Melissa
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Melissa Barber
Electronic Communications Specialist
Death with Dignity National Center
Posted by Mary on Tuesday, November 01 at 10:43 p.m.

Wow. I just watched "How to Die in Oregon" and I must say that death with dignity should be available in every state of the union. I watched it twice it was that moving, especially Cody Curtis. What a brave individual she was as well as amazing in allowing the world to share in such a personal experience. If more individuals who don't agree with such a law watched this documentary and walked in the shoes of Cody and her family they may reconsider. I watched another documentary not long ago where a terminal patient from the US traveled to another country that allows for patients to end their life after their cases are reviewed by a physician. Very moving documentary. Anyway thank you for all this organization does on behalf of those who wish to die with dignity.
Posted by Melissa Barber on Wednesday, November 02 at 12:59 p.m.

I'm so glad you were able to catch "How to Die in Oregon", Mary. It really is an amazing documentary. I'm not sure anyone could walk away from watching Cody's journey and still deny anyone's ability to decide what's best for them when facing a terminal illness. It's not about whether or not a person agrees with Death with Dignity Acts or if s/he would use the law; it's about allowing those who want the option the right to have it.

Thank you for your support as we work to help others learn more about Death with Dignity laws!

Best,
Melissa
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Melissa Barber
Electronic Communications Specialist
Death with Dignity National Center