A Good Death

Dying so as to be as little a pain in the ass to your family as possible
- Henry A. Murray

Death becomes you...and me...and everyone, including my mentor Dr. Edwin Shneidman, pioneer in the study of suicide, creator of the field of suicidology and the mentee and fellow Melville Scholar of Henry A. Murray.

Ed's front page 2/28/09 Los Angeles Times story Waiting for death, alone and unafraid is an unflinching look at and confrontation of the ultimate challege and if you're up to the task, a chance for you to stop and smell the fnality of your life and how best to approach it.

It also begs the ethical question of: "Whether we should be prolonging life through technological advances if we are not equally dedicated to helping people to live a life worth loving."

What are you doing now to give your final years the quality and dignity that will make you want to live vs. finishing out your life in quiet years of desperation?

Keep the following facts (from another of my teachers, Milton Greenblatt, M.D.) in mind as you do that planning:

First we are children to our parents;
then parents to our children;
then parents to our parents;
then children to our children.

 

 

 

Follow Mark Goulston, M.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/markgoulston

Comments

[Namajera]

11:45 PM on 02/28/2009

One of my relatives had a debilitating lung disease. She was not a smoker but ended up with an emphysema type illness due to a weird bacterial infection. She was on oxygen for a while but the deterioration of her lungs did not stop. She ended up in the hospital, not being able to breath and had to refuse any help while she slowly went away, like a fish out of water. She knew it was her end, the staff knew it was her end and the only way to go about it was to die very slowly.
I wish she had been a dog and I could have taken her to the vet. And I mean this in the best sense. Pet owners are allowed to stop suffering, humans cannot. Pet owners would never allow their dogs to act like a fish out of water for over a week, human doctors did. I do not blame the doctors, I blame the system. She was a wonderful, wonderful woman - worth many posts on HP, she did not deserve , nor did she want the death she had.

[Mark Goulston, M.D.]

01:16 AM on 03/01/2009

I am sorry to hear about your relative. It's not the dying we fear, but the suffering. Something Dr. Shneidman told me early in my career in supervising me was when it comes to the very ill, "There is always treatment, sometimes cure." The treatment should always be at alleviating the pain and suffering. Sadly this falls short in too many instances as with your relative. Thank you for sharing your post.

[Mark Goulston, M.D.]

01:39 AM on 03/01/2009

My mentor Dr. Shneidman once told me many years ago that our approach to the gravely ill is that "There is always treatment (alleviation of pain of suffering), sometimes cure," but as I read his story in the LA Times article I can see how that is much easier said than lived. Thank you for sharing your sadness about your relative.

[larry278]

04:53 PM on 02/28/2009

Is commenting to HP contributing to the world? I don't know; but it's fun. Commenting, reading the blogs & the comments HP posts is fun though.