A father’s request.
The March Reflections essay in AJN is by a nurse whose terminally ill 92-year-old father asked her to help him legally end his own life under the requirements of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. The short essay is intimate, informative, and honest. Here’s a brief excerpt from near the end:
Although I miss my father terribly, I have no regrets. Mostly, I am thankful for his strength and courage, his clear-mindedness, and his willingness to work with me to repair our relationship. I am also thankful that nursing prepared me for the role of nurse advocate and taught me how to ‘be with’ a person at the end of life, even when that person was my father.
By Barbara Hranilovich for AJN.
Death With Dignity laws.
It can’t be easy for a nurse, whose job usually focuses on restoring patients’ health and preserving their lives, to help a family member die in this way. Nor is the process without challenges: the requirements of Death with Dignity laws are rigorous, layered with checks and double-checks to guard against potential abuses.
Death with Dignity Laws permitting “aid-in-dying” or “physician-assisted dying”—terms now preferred by advocates to the older “assisted suicide,” since the word suicide has powerful negative connotations—now exist in five states and Washington, D.C.
We hope you’ll read “Death with Dignity (and Love),” which will be free until the end of March, and let us know your thoughts or related experiences.
Thank you, Laurie, for sharing your father’s special story, and for advocating for him. You mention he dismissed the option of hospice, hating the idea of being dependent. Just to clarify, he didn’t have to be wait until he was “dependent” to be elgible for hospice. He could have chosen to use the Death with Dignity option in Oregon, AND had hospice services, as nearly all hospices will provide care and support for a person (who is planning to use DWD) along with supporting their family. Hospices take a “neutral” stance on the use of DWD while also helping families (such as: assisting with symptom management should there be any problems after ingesting the medication; not having to involve the coronor at the time of death; and bereavement support for the year following a death) As a hospice nurse in Washington and Oregon, I have cared for many patients who took legal, lethal medication to end their life, who also remained fiercely independent until the end.