God Might Live in Oregon

This last weekend, the beautiful 29-year-old Brittany Maynard took a pill to end her life. A life plagued with constant pain. Constant suffering.  With no cure available to her and a diagnosis of six months to live. she and her family moved to Oregon, where they could seek a doctor that would help Brittany take control of her life. Up to and including the final moments of it.

And people across the country lost their shit.

After only five minutes scanning the comment section of any one of the thousands of news articles about this amazing woman, you will see the same words crop up. Over and over.

• Dangerous
• Selfish
• Playing God
• End of Hope 

I don’t know how or why it happened, but we as a society decided to dumb down the issues at the center of important arguments. Nothing is as simple as we make it seem. And we do it in order to create a six-second sound bite. A scannable comment. A minute of internet glory. We should all be more careful about throwing around words.

“Assisted suicide is dangerous. It sets a treacherous and slippery precedence.”

People are raising the hue and cry, warning us all that, if assisted suicide was available to everyone, insurance companies would deny us life-saving treatments in order to save the costs of wildly expensive medical care with one dose of fatal medication.

You know what? I’ll grant you this one. This is a valid worry. We all should be concerned about this. But, once again, we are worried about the wrong thing.

I understand that money is the all powerful, unstoppable force that seems to be driving this argument. Why would an insurance company agree to pay thousands and thousands of dollars when they can get you a $300 pill?

But that is not why we should worry. That is not the real danger.

Is assisted suicide much less expensive than treatment of a condition? Most certainly. But why are we shouting about the ethics of assisted suicide and not screaming loudly about the ethics of the extreme cost of healthcare as a whole? It makes no sense to me. None. 

And, please excuse me for being crass, but for $300, any terminal patient without a felony conviction who wishes to end his life can buy a handgun and a bullet.  It’s not the suicide that these naysayers are trying to prevent. It is all about the Benjamins. Could it be possible that the big pharmaceutical companies realized that the ability of a patient to end her life also means ending her costly but ineffective treatments? Just asking.

People are arguing that assisted suicide endangers our society's most vulnerable people: the old, the sick, the infirm. To that, I say... 

Really?

It is very true that the elderly and infirm face great dangers and risks. But, are they really more at risk than they were before assisted suicide was an option? Dying is, with all seriousness, the least of their worries. Elder abuse can range from neglect to physical violence. Should part of the discussion about assisted suicide be that may put incapacitated elders at risk to be given medication to die against their wishes? Of course it should. We should be having conversations about all of these issues and fears.

But to believe that a caregiver of an elderly or infirm person would approach a doctor, sign an affidavit indicating that no coercion was employed, fill a prescription, then forcibly administer a fatal dose of medication? This assumes much more humanity than really exists in this world. If a caregiver wanted to end their charge’s life, all they need do is smother them with a pillow. Withhold water. Allow bedsores to fester and infect.

Palliative care will drug a person out so that they can wait out their remaining days stoned, hoping to gently slip away. This we "allow" with no question. But that is looking at too narrow of a view.  What about the lasting cost? What about the care for the families?

If you are worried that insurance companies will nudge people to choose to end their lives rather than spend thousands on treatments, I think that is a valid argument. And one that is so easily defeated. We have the power—as a society, as a country, as human beings—to do better. We need to take care of those people who need our help. The easiest way to do that? Single payer healthcare. You had to know that was coming from me.

Single payer health care is, to borrow a phrase, the alpha and omega.

We should be raising the hue and cry against our healthcare system as a whole. When we all start talking about money and not about quality of life, we—as a society—have gone off the rails.

“Assisted suicide is selfish. It doesn’t consider the feelings of others.”

First, fuck you if you are someone running around saying that. It’s Brittany’s terminal disease. You don’t get a vote. And I guarantee that, for the last year, Brittany has done nothing BUT consider the feelings of others.

UPDATE: I have had a couple people point out some things to me. Suicide can be a very selfish act. It leaves a path of destruction for everyone who loved that person who kills himself. I think we can all agree that Brittany's decision to end her life is not the same as the teenager who leaves a note and grabs his father's gun. But it was fair to point out that subtle distinction. 

And my amazing future doctor friend told me that he just had an interesting discussion on physician assisted suicide during a class. While some were for it, not a single student would feel comfortable prescribing the pill. He pointed out that the toll on the physician often gets overlooked in this debate. Which I thought was a very fair point. Now back to our regularly-scheduled rant.

She could have done this all very quietly. No one needed to know that she asked her doctor for a way to end her quickly-expiring life. But in her final, selfless act, she chose to share her story so that the world could see why the issue of assisted suicide was such an important one.

And I know—I just know—that Brittany Maynard was not ending her life because she was suffering. She ended her life so she could end the suffering of the people that love her.  So her husband didn’t have to sit at her hospital bedside holding the hand of the shell of his former wife. So her parents can begin to mourn instead of grasping for false hope.

And again, let’s be honest. She did it in part so her family wouldn’t have to figure out how to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills for procedures that were only ever meant to delay her inevitable death.

Her entire final chapter was a lesson to all of us. A lesson of strength, beauty, and selflessness.

“Assisted suicide is playing God. We don’t get to decide when to end our life.”

Why are we so afraid to die? Why do we shy away from the business of death?

We would rather keep a terminally ill patient in a medically-induced vegetative state within the confines of an industrialized hospital than let them die in their own bed by their own hand. Why?

The playing God argument frustrates me beyond rational thought. Because people use this argument to bolster an opinion that is otherwise irrational. It is an insane argument.

Are we playing God when the ambulance arrives to take you to the hospital after a car accident? Are we playing God when we build that car that crashed and the airbags that saved our life? Are we playing God when we put on our seatbelt?

We cherry pick when we use the playing God argument, trotting it out when it supports our already-formed opinion.

You want to argue about playing God? The minute we humans get diagnosed with a disease—a disease that, based on this thinking, was deemed appropriate by God himself—we try to treat it. Cure it. Eliminate it. The God play begins. But when shit gets real, when difficult decisions must be made, when the game is already lost because there will be a checkmate in ten moves? Oh no, we can’t possibly make that decision. That would be playing God.

 “Assisted suicide means the end of hope. We all need to continue to hope.”

This is the most insidious one of all.

You have no idea what Brittany was hoping for. None of you. You have no idea what she believed would happen after she died. Maybe her hope was to be reunited in a pain-free afterlife with her husband and her dog.

You have no idea about her hope. Let alone if she was ending them.

I think Brittany had nothing but hope. She hoped that her death would start the discussion about assisted suicide. She hoped to slip peacefully away on her own timeline and under her own power. And she hoped that her loved ones were able to find closure and begin to heal. She hoped that they would find the joy in life and remember the joy in hers.

Pursuit and Happiness

Kidlet is making out his December gift list. He has the unfortunate luck of having a birthday smack dab in the middle of the Holiday Season. One of the things he asked for was the new Skylanders video game. (Let’s not tell him he won’t be getting it. We are trying to cut down on screen time. He’s getting books.)

But, knowing me well, he sweetened his sales pitch for this game with the following bit of information:

“Mom, they have a character named Roller Brawl!”

Yeah, I’m going to need to paint my helmet like that.

Kidlet has also pointed out other places he has found Derby Girls. One place was in my favorite kid’s show Phineas and Ferb. If you haven’t had the great pleasure of watching this Disney animation, you should make some time to do so. I won’t even tell anyone if you don’t have kids. It’s a great show.

In an episode called “Crack That Whip,” (See, right out of the gate. Great title.) Betty Jo Flynn and Hildegard Johnson rekindle their roller derby rivalry. Betty Jo, grandmother of the titular characters, and Hildegard draft their grandkids to skate with them, pitting the smitten Candace against the boy she is crushing on. Skating ensues.

I am a little surprised—but tickled pink—that Kidlet is enjoying my Derby journey. But he sincerely is loving it. He writes about it in school. He talks about it to his friend. He throws around terms like “derby tough” and “hip check.” And I smile every time.

I like that he is seeing his mom as determined, strong, and daring. When he watches me give myself my shot, he is thinking that I am tough, not that I am sick. He loves to see bruises on my legs because I let him believe that they are from derby, not from Avonex.

I’ve said it before, but Kidlet is the reason I can never, never quit. He has too much faith in me, and I cannot disappoint him. I cannot let him see me stop something because it got hard. He knows that I am strong and fierce. And he knows that I will always stand by him, behind him, and, if necessary, in front of him.

But, more importantly, he will see that the coolest things are often the hardest things. The most amazing experiences are often the scariest. Being brave does not mean never being scared. It means doing it anyway.

When our family was in Mexico, one of the activities that Kidlet tried out was the trapeze. He got into the harness, climbed the ladder, and swung on a bar that was 30 feet in the air. I asked him about it later. He said, “I’m really glad I tried it. Now I never have to do it again.” He tried it. He is so brave.

I dig that kid. So, in the immortal words of Candace, see you on the track, chump!

Hidden Heroes

These last few days, I have been given a glimpse of what true bravery is.

There are some moments in our lives that require grand, super hero levels of bravery. Thankfully, we are very rarely called to lift something impossibly heavy, walk through something unimaginably hot, or rescue someone completely helpless.

For most of our lives, the bravery needed to survive the day-to-day struggle is subtle to the point of being lost on most people and completely unrecognized in ourselves.

There are two incredibly important people in my life that have very recently been amazingly heroic. And I had the wonderful privilege of witnessing it. One act of heroism involved stepping out of everything comfortable and safe in order to find happiness and truth. The other involved sacrificing stability and quiet to create balance and justice.

The most amazing thing about witnessing the bravery of others is how it can fuel your own. We all are called on to be brave from time to time. I had my own call to bravery not to long ago.

Bravery is a tool that most people don’t seek to utilize. Being brave usually means that the wheels are off the wagon. I’m not sure that being in a position where you need to be brave is ever really a good thing. The situation is never positive, but the results sure can be.

You find strength you never knew you had. You discover an army of people willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with you. You realize that you are actually going to get through this, whatever “this” is.

You start to think that you can do anything when you see people you love do everything.

Nervous Systems

I can’t do a crossover. I know the mechanics. I know that falling really doesn’t hurt. I know it is an issue of mind over matter. But right now, I don’t trust my mind. So pushing through that fear and distrust is difficult for me.

I’m skating so much better than when I first started. I’ve had help from the veteran skaters, who tuned my skates to my skating style. Who knew you can tune your skates to get them to perform the way you want them too. My coaches have observed my skills and given me very specific and helpful pointers to help my form. Improving my form improves both my strength and my endurance. I’m not spending all my energy compensating for my lack of ability.

But I can’t get myself to do a crossover. I get close, and I chicken out. I ramp up my speed on the straightaway, get to the turn, and pick up my right leg for one brief second. Then my brain overrides the vote of my legs. Cowardly brain.

Nerves are obviously not my strong suit. Literally and metaphorically. It’s funny, though… If it wasn’t for my traitorous nervous system, I would never have set out to find courage. My rebellious brain has not only triggered optic neuritis. It has triggered this determination to test my courage.

You know who is one of the bravest people I know? My niece, who is starting kindergarten in a couple weeks. It’s not that she is incredibly tough. She isn’t especially daring. She just never lets anything get in between her and what she wants.

When she got her ears pierced last year, we warned her that it might hurt for a minute. She said that she didn’t care if she cried. She got the first one done, and it did cause a couple tears. But she just powered through and got the other one pierced.

Her first loose tooth was ready to come out, and she let me try to pull it. We got it most of the way. She got upset (I think more because it was bleeding a little, than because it hurt). Then she marched into the bathroom and finished the job herself.

That girl, she is brave. She is my great reminder that bravery does not mean never crying. It’s not about pretending something doesn’t hurt. It’s about doing it anyway, even if it does hurt.

The incredibly brilliant and talented J.K. Rowling once said, “You sort of start to think anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.” I need to find that nerve within myself. I need to do a crossover. I’m sort of starting to think it’s possible.