If a patient want to commit suicide, there are plenty of texts on that subject, but don't ask an ethical physician to participate.
I understand your disagreement. It's a difficult subject.
My biggest concern, Cage, is somehow botching the effort if attempting it alone.
My personal plan would be to breathe pure nitrogen if it ever came to that.
As you probably know, nitrogen is an odorless gas that comprises ~78 percent of the atmospheric air we breathe. One's body would not have a panic attack that would cause one to rip the mask off his/her face. One would simply pass out from oxygen deprivation and die shortly thereafter.
My concerns are many. What if the mask slips off when I pass out? What if I have an unexpected seizure and knock the mask off? What if the nitrogen runs out before I am dead? What if I botch the effort in some other unexpected way and I survive? Would I be severely mentally impaired in addition to having the illness that prompted me to attempt to take my own life to begin with? What a horrible thought!
If I ever faced the painful decision to end my own life, I would feel much more comfortable in paying a skilled physician to intravenously administer a painless sleeping drug to me, to render me completely unconscious, and then to administer a lethal drug cocktail intravenously to stop my heart and respiration functions very quickly and painlessly.
Before I received the intravenous drug to render me unconscious, I would already want to be uber-high with no worries in the world.
There are two or three states in the U.S. that have legalized doctor-assisted suicide. Oregon comes immediately to mind.
It's a gruesome subject, but death is a commonality that we all share; one that is inevitable.
Let's hope we check out, peacefully, in our sleep when the time comes, my friend. -g- |
