Author Topic: regarding Assisted Suicide  (Read 9634 times)


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regarding Assisted Suicide
« on: January 26, 2015, 01:58:21 pm »
You have no idea what assisted suicide does to the families left after a terminally ill patient makes this choice. I live in Washington state and my husband had cancer and was treated with chemo and radiation for five years. He was tired and nothing worked toward the end and the cancer was winning at this point. He made the choice to do assisted suicide. He did this just over a year ago. November 19, 2013. I could not offer any opinion on the matter because nobody can put themselves in the place and mind of a dying person and possibly understand at all what they are going through daily just to stay alive and then coming to the point that they felt it would be worse to go through chemo one last time and that dying would be better than trying again. This is the hardest of all things  the loved ones of the patient has to deal with. When your husband makes this choice and he goes through with the assisted suicide , the grieving process is completely different than when a person dies without assisted suicide. It is mentally the worst thing to try to put my life back together after this. You have to imagine that after five years of watching the person you love most in this world deciding that he'd had enough and was going to take advantage of the suicide law and start the paper work that would allow him to die in 15 days. It is a dirty little secret I must always keep after his death because there is so much controversy surrounding this and I want to preserve my husbands dignity. I was also told that non supporters of this law have in the past picketed outside peoples homes and were treated horribly in their home towns because most people do not think this should be legal. The doctor that we used to exercise my husbands right to do this had not done this before and will never do it again. He saw first hand, what he was told by other medical professionals, that it destroys the  people who go on living and it makes it so much harder for the living to get their lives back on track when a spouse chooses this. I do not have any ill will towards my husband and cannot judge his choice because I watched what he went through for five years and saw how bad it was for him and couldn't imagine how bad he must have felt everyday. I was not prepared for the emotional up-evil my trying to process his death and the assisted suicide has done to me , it has been 14 months and still seems like yesterday because when you have to keep the secret you cannot talk to anyone and you cannot get help. all these feelings that need sorted out go no where, they stay inside of me and haunt me every minute of every day. I will probably never get over it. If you are not educated about this you should educate yourself before you think that it should be legal everywhere. Even the states it is legal in does not allow a person with depression to use this law to, as you say, "opt out". There's a very good reason why the law has the strict boundaries it has in place because people like yourself would use it to escape a bad day while in the throws of their depression and there is no coming back from this and as I know enough about depression to know that tomorrow will most likely be better and suicide takes away your tomorrows. You can only get the meds and the permission to use the assisted suicide law if you already have a terminally  ill diagnosis and your time is very close to being over from your illness, so this keeps people having a bad period in their lives from suicide. The worst part about the law is the ill patient has to be of sound mind  at the time of the suicide request and that is very cruel for the people who are beyond being able to sign their name on the request and do the paper work. When a person is that sick and that bad off there needs to be an exception other than going through a court, which is a lengthy process, to allow these people to exercise their rights to use this option.They are the ones who need this most and their suffering is greater because if they cannot ask for assisted suicide and sign on the dotted line they continue to suffer until a judge looks at their case and decides for them, on behalf of a request  made by their family. It makes the law so backwards that the people who are allowed this are still coherent, and talking, and watching movies, and talking on the phone, and eating three meals a day in some cases and from all outside appearances are not ready to go yet but the cancer, or whatever illness they may have  is eating away at their insides. Its very hard to wrap ones brain around it and the biggest reason, other than my husbands dignity  and our privacy that it is such huge secret is because the people who visited him and/or  talked to him on the phone or came by for dinner wouldn't understand that the law forces the ill to do this at a point where most people would be appalled that they were allowed to get approval for assisted suicide.  I am trying to find an outlet to talk about this and hopefully that will help me move on with my life. I feel stuck and feel I wasn't allowed to grieve and process my husbands death the way I may have had he gone by the hand of God instead of by the use  of Secobarbital and Pentobarbital. I had the very best husband any wife could ever dream of and we had the kind of relationship others prayed to find in their lives and I miss him terribly. I have no ill or negative feelings toward him or his decision to choose to use his right to use  Assisted Suicide. Sick or not I would have cherished any extra time I could have had with him. I was physically exhausted and I was mentally exhausted and this was partially the reason he choose this option also because he felt bad for me and what the cancer had put me through, I did all I could to make him understand I could go on for another five years if need be and asked he only make the choice for the reasons that dealt with his feelings and his not wanting to deal with the cancer and treatment anymore. I know if I would have asked him not to use assisted suicide he may not have but then I would have contributed to another day of his suffering and that I would have never asked him to do. My husband was only 56 years old when he passed away and I feel cheated that I was widowed when I was barley 50 myself and my future is derailed not only by loosing the love of my life but by the inability to deal with the Assisted suicide. Opting Out , as you so put it, is so much more than a person wanting to escape and find peace from what ever illness they have. Please realize the loved ones who are left behind have to go one from the point the assisted suicide takes place and it just doesn't allow a person to do that. Please think about this and those you love and who love you before you sentence them to a life like  I have been sentenced to forever. There is a good reason that laws should not be allowed to take the place of Gods plan because God would never make me pay the price like I am for Assisted Suicide to be legal. My husband , had he known what Assisted Suicide does to the loved ones  would have never made the choice to go forth with it and I  only hope that the law makes changes in that counseling  would be mandatory  for the patient and families of the patient to make everyone involved aware of what happens to the living. We had no counseling as it was not offered because it is doesn't exist because of the privacy part, Its a catch 22 and I cant imagine any ill person going  through with it if they only knew what their spouses lives would be like following there suicide.
« Last Edit: January 26, 2015, 06:04:17 pm by haybag »


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Re: regarding Assisted Suicide
« Reply #1 on: February 04, 2015, 05:17:39 pm »
I'm sorry you had such a bad experience with your husband's death. Counseling is available, and I urge you to get it even though it is after the fact. You are still experiencing pain and you deserve help. Privacy should not be an issue. You don't have to share the details of your husband's death with anyone you don't want to. The fact is that he died of cancer, and that's all you have to say. Getting medication from a doctor to provide a peaceful end is not suicide. Suicide is taking one's life when one would not have died otherwise. One resource for you is the non-profit end-of-life advocacy organization Compassion & Choices (website They provide consultation services to terminally ill individuals and their families, helping them through the advance planning, navigating the healthcare system, and helping everyone involved understand the options available to the patient and find peace with their choices. Aid in dying is legal only for terminally ill adults, so the doctor would not have prescribed the medications if he thought your husband could live another five years. A person has to be able to ingest the medication, but once the prescription has been filled, it is up to the patient to decide when he is ready to take it. Many people never take it at all, but find great peace of mind in knowing that it is there if they decide the time has come to take it. You are not doomed to live with this pain forever - please seek the help you need to process your grief. You do not have to suffer in silence.

Bob Shaffer

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Re: regarding Assisted Suicide
« Reply #2 on: February 05, 2015, 07:42:01 am »
Yes, so sad you are suffering due to your husband's selfish choice.   Obviously, you loved him VERY much - he should better have suffered to the very end no matter how bad it got.  How dare he make the decision regarding his own life!   He didn't even think of how would effect me reading about this!   Every man should be so lucky to have such a loving wife.


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