Have we discussed Brittany Maynard yet?

[shedemei]

{L_MESSAGE_HIDDEN}:

My mother died of glioblastoma, same as Brittany Maynard, when she was 28 and I was 3. That's terrible enough, but her death caused so much destruction in my extended family. My father turned to alcohol and drugs. My mother's older sister, with whom she'd been very close, had a mental crisis resulting in her developing violent, psychotic schizophrenia—so my cousins lost their mom, too. My grandmother had to watch her daughter die at a young age. I never got to know my mother, and that has never gotten easier for me. My father remarried, slowly cut me off from my mother's family, and turned into an abusive asshole. My mother was very loved by everyone, and her death affected all of my aunts and uncles really hard.

I only remember a few things about her. I remember sitting on her lap while she read to me. And I remember the hospital bed in the living room where she spent her final time with us, being home instead of the hospital.

I can't help but wonder if end-of-life counseling and being able to choose to die with dignity at her own time would have made her passing more peaceful and less destructive by removing uncertainty, her suffering, and her loved ones having to watch her suffer. Glioblastoma's terrible.

I think it's great that Brittany Maynard was able to make that choice.

[Curious]

Slightly OT, but I am frustrated by the thought that Brittany and anyone has to suffer so much.

Is palliative care just unable to keep up with this level of pain ? I am probably not phrasing my

frustration correctly, but it bothers me that medical science is not yet able to provide a tolerable

measure of pain relief for patients like Brittany.

Oh, and the Stinking Lousewife has devoted much space to the "selfishness" of Brittany Maynard.

She says a bunch of mean stuff about her family too. Just when I think I cannot loathe the Stinking Lousewife

any more than I do, suddenly my loathing of her increases exponentially again.

I won't presume to speak for Brittany, but IMO there is more to it than just pain. Just to name a few, there is loss of function and ability to care for yourself, do things you've always done, the feeling of being a burden on your loved ones, and watching your loved ones be upset because they are watching you suffer on top of the pain which may or may not be controlled fairly well by medications. At some point, you get to where the level of medication needed to keep a person comfortable makes them relatively dysfunctional because all you do is sleep when you are heavily medicated like that.

For a person that is used to living a very active, full life the "other" things are often more difficult to deal with than the pain.

[16strong]

I don't think for one second that Brittany Maynard was pressured into doing this. Those drugs are very, very difficult to get your hands on, and you are interviewed extensively to make sure that you are of sound mind and that the decision is yours, and yours alone. I'm not sure I would be brave enough to end my life like she did, but I applaud her for finally making this issue a talking point. It is past due.

[jaelh]

I won't presume to speak for Brittany, but IMO there is more to it than just pain. Just to name a few, there is loss of function and ability to care for yourself, do things you've always done, the feeling of being a burden on your loved ones, and watching your loved ones be upset because they are watching you suffer on top of the pain which may or may not be controlled fairly well by medications. At some point, you get to where the level of medication needed to keep a person comfortable makes them relatively dysfunctional because all you do is sleep when you are heavily medicated like that.

For a person that is used to living a very active, full life the "other" things are often more difficult to deal with than the pain.

What curious said. My mother has done pal care all our lives; she's still nurses, and she bought home a number of her community and friends over the years, to pass at home.

Here are her comments on the pain:

the hospice where she is is no holds barred on the pain meds. They see some really dramatic conditions: breasts cancers that were''t treated, and so patients end up with gangrened arms; cancers were the face and throat are gone; ALS, JKD, muscular dystrophy etc.. You name it, they've nursed people through end stages.

To keep people pain free, they amp them up as high as they need to be. It's more than just pain relief though; bentos tend to be used a lot too (addictions! no one cares!) as the stress/panic can be just as bad as the physical pain. At lower doses, the meds are going to interfere with your functioning.

Towards the end of life, this will usually put the patient into a unconscious state. Opiates slow the breathing rate - the meds, in many cases, are part of the actual death, as the breathing slows so much. If you want to be conscious when you die (for some people, thats important, for both religious and personal reasons) that's negotiated *well in advance*, while you still have control of your faculties.

And that's the thing - as Curious says, you can be pain free, but you can't be pain free AND functional all the way through. Couple that with a degenerative illness: if you're losing your motor function/control over you bowls/mental capacity is deteriorating - that's a whole other kettle of fish. Even if your pain could be controlled and you kept medicated such that you would be "functional"; functional can be a disappearing possibility.

I'm glad Brittany was able to look her own death in the eyes. Would that we all die so well when we do.

[Rebelwife]

I won't presume to speak for Brittany, but IMO there is more to it than just pain. Just to name a few, there is loss of function and ability to care for yourself, do things you've always done, the feeling of being a burden on your loved ones, and watching your loved ones be upset because they are watching you suffer on top of the pain which may or may not be controlled fairly well by medications. At some point, you get to where the level of medication needed to keep a person comfortable makes them relatively dysfunctional because all you do is sleep when you are heavily medicated like that.

For a person that is used to living a very active, full life the "other" things are often more difficult to deal with than the pain.

{L_MESSAGE_HIDDEN}:

That was certainly true in my sister's case. As long as we kept the brain swelling and seizures under control with steroids, she was never in any pain. Even when she was in the hospice center during her last week the strongest meds she got was ativan because she was so restless even though she was mostly unconscious. The real devastation came from the effects of the cancer, not pain. She had a stroke which completely paralyzed her right side - that's how she was diagnosed with the cancer. She regained motor function, but also had almost complete aphasia - she had very little expressive speech although she could understand everything. Except for a couple of months in the middle, she had to have someone around her 24/7 to help take care of her. We split it up as much as it could, but the bulk of the daytime care fell on my parents since my brother-in-law had to work.

It also caused major personality changes for her; she was very angry a lot of the time and had no patience at all for her 5 children. She would make it very obvious that she found it difficult to be around them. That was the hardest part of all for all of us. She was a wonderful mother and her children were her life. It was incredibly damaging for them, and it is horrible to say, but I think it would have been less traumatic for them if she had not lived in that damaged, angry state for as long as she did. It's been 4 years and I think we all still have PTSD to some degree from the experience. My sister was in no shape to make an informed decision about ending her life because she had such drastic cognitive changes from her stroke, but I fully believe the person she was before the cancer would not have wanted to live that way.

Edited to add that my sister also had glioblastoma - the same type of brain cancer.

[cindyluvs24]

My heart goes out to all of you who had to live through this kind of hell with yr loved ones.

[cindyluvs24]

And I am sure that if any of those oh so shocked responders had to face a similar situation they would quickly find an appropriate Bible verse to support their actions, plus the whole god-given Amercian right to freedom etc.