Life, at times shocks you into stunned silence….for all your misplaced claims of “been there…seen that”…..and unemotive cold-heartedness…..there are times in the practice of this wretched profession, where you are reduced to a helpless pathetic bystander…..left shaking your head at the enormity of all that we yet do not comprehend….and have no answers for.
The other day I saw an 18 year old boy stricken with Ewing’s sarcoma….a particularly aggressive malignancy of the bone, and pretty much incurable at that. Wherefore the youngster….who should have had the whole world before his feet….in an instant finds himself staring at a tumultous 6-8 months, maybe less , of life. Already stricken with the debilitating course of the disease, as the days progress, the cancer will slowly eat away into his bones, causing sustained pain of a nature that cannot be explained to one who has not felt it....and through the course of it all , he will be given chemotherapy that will drive away the appetite , cause intense nausea and wretching along with complete hair loss and a mileu of other problems.
Then there was the newborn infant, born prematurely at 30 weeks of gestation, who came through a torrid spell of nearly fatal birth asphyxia followed by sepsis, kept only by some extraordinarily heroic neonatal care – yet to what purpose??? The child is likely to have suffered irreversible hypoxic brain damage during his cataclysmic perinatal course….which in all probability shall culminate in one or all of the following: severe mental retardation, partial to complete hearing loss , severe lag in motor development ( i.e. inability to sit up , walk , grasp objects and so on)….to make matters worse , he is likely to survive to well into his 2nd decade if not further….pretty much as a human vegetable….you cant help ask yourself….is life the only thing that is sacrosanct , and does the quality of the same have no bearing whatsoever !
For a moment then, leave aside all the possible nefarious possibilities and unethical practices, but purely from the so-called humanitarian view (let aside even science) , I think there should be a provision to allow one to pull the plug…on his own , or a dear one’s inevitably wasted and traumatized existence. I can scarce fathom the inexplicable desire to clutch vainly at the flimsiest of straws.
If this is sanctity….grant me damnation!
“Death is before me today,
Like the recovery of a sick man.
Like going forth into a garden after sickness.
Death is before me today,
Like the odor of myrrh,
Like sitting under a sail in a good wind.
Death is before me today,
Like the course of a stream
Like the return of a man
From the war galley to his house.”
Walk with her , humanity….hear the gentle beating of the mighty wings.
The other day I saw an 18 year old boy stricken with Ewing’s sarcoma….a particularly aggressive malignancy of the bone, and pretty much incurable at that. Wherefore the youngster….who should have had the whole world before his feet….in an instant finds himself staring at a tumultous 6-8 months, maybe less , of life. Already stricken with the debilitating course of the disease, as the days progress, the cancer will slowly eat away into his bones, causing sustained pain of a nature that cannot be explained to one who has not felt it....and through the course of it all , he will be given chemotherapy that will drive away the appetite , cause intense nausea and wretching along with complete hair loss and a mileu of other problems.
Then there was the newborn infant, born prematurely at 30 weeks of gestation, who came through a torrid spell of nearly fatal birth asphyxia followed by sepsis, kept only by some extraordinarily heroic neonatal care – yet to what purpose??? The child is likely to have suffered irreversible hypoxic brain damage during his cataclysmic perinatal course….which in all probability shall culminate in one or all of the following: severe mental retardation, partial to complete hearing loss , severe lag in motor development ( i.e. inability to sit up , walk , grasp objects and so on)….to make matters worse , he is likely to survive to well into his 2nd decade if not further….pretty much as a human vegetable….you cant help ask yourself….is life the only thing that is sacrosanct , and does the quality of the same have no bearing whatsoever !
For a moment then, leave aside all the possible nefarious possibilities and unethical practices, but purely from the so-called humanitarian view (let aside even science) , I think there should be a provision to allow one to pull the plug…on his own , or a dear one’s inevitably wasted and traumatized existence. I can scarce fathom the inexplicable desire to clutch vainly at the flimsiest of straws.
If this is sanctity….grant me damnation!
“Death is before me today,
Like the recovery of a sick man.
Like going forth into a garden after sickness.
Death is before me today,
Like the odor of myrrh,
Like sitting under a sail in a good wind.
Death is before me today,
Like the course of a stream
Like the return of a man
From the war galley to his house.”
Walk with her , humanity….hear the gentle beating of the mighty wings.
2 comments:
I don't know what to think,don't even know if I have a right to think for those in this predicament.
Euthanesia... never foul
It is the holiest redemption of
................... the SOUL
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