Jess' school thread made me dig out this essay I wrote a few years back. Feel free to discuss it...
Euthanasia – understanding the emotional aspect
Euthanasia: Greek word meaning easy death. It is derived from the word euthanatos, which means an easy inducement of a painless death. (Webster Dictionary,
http://www.webster.com)
The first time I heard the word euthanasia in any context was nine years back when I was talking to my father about his declining health. One of our conversations drifted towards what would happen to him in the future and that’s when he explained to me that should the situation arise where he becomes a burden to his family we are to allow him to end his life with the lethal injection. I objected and I told my dad that he was committing suicide, he said “No son it is not suicide it’s euthanasia.” Euthanasia, as he explained, was mercy killing where a person could take his life under medical supervision if he felt he was unable to live without medical support.
Euthanasia became an even more important subject in my life the same year when my father told me that the nevus on my right arm was cancerous. When I was hospitalized in 1997, due to an acute asthma attack, and had to have IV needles in my arm I almost felt like my career was over. When I came out I couldn’t lift anything with my arm because my hands were swollen to twice their size. For a moment I thought I could never play my guitar again. At the time music meant everything to me as I didn’t share a very close relationship with my family and losing the only thing I loved would have eventually killed me. That was the day that I realized how the laws of euthanasia did little to help those that had ceased to live emotionally.
Euthanasia as defined by the Webster Dictionary is “the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals (as persons or domestic animals) in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy.” (Webster Dictionary,
http://www.webster.com) Whenever one talks about euthanasia the word terminal illness comes up. Terminal illness is defined as a sickness that will eventually lead to death. Death to this date is defined as the moment that the heart physically stops pumping blood. I agree that once the heart stops pumping blood the cells in the human body die. It is said that a person whose heart has stopped pumping can be clinically dead within two minutes. It is still a physical definition; nowhere does the law state that death can also occur due to a tragic emotional loss.
In November 1998 Dr Jack Kevorkian was charged with murder for helping Thomas Youk end his life. Mr. Youk had Lou Gehrig’s disease, an irreversible crippling illness. (BBC News,
http://news.bbc.co.uk) How could a doctor be charged with murder when he was only helping another human being ease his pain? The following year Ms. Georgette Smith was allowed to get off her ventilator; she was paralyzed from the neck down after being shot by a bullet. (CNN News,
http://www.cnn.com) The two cases were very similar yet the law took two different stances. Both were cases of potential physical death; yet it the former case the doctor that provided the lethal injection was charged with murder. It almost seems like the law about physical death is nothing but a fallacy.
In May 2001 James Lawson was charged with murder for allowing his 22 year old daughter, Sarah, to commit suicide because she felt she couldn’t live her life anymore. (BBC News,
http://news.bbc.co.uk) Sarah’s brain had reached a point where she couldn’t control the thoughts of suicide and her family felt that the only way to help her was to allow her to end her life. The human brain is very intriguing; we know so little about it and yet it is what controls what we do everyday. If my brain didn’t ask me to type this next line this paper wouldn’t progress. The brain is the central control unit for the whole human body, if the brain decided to stop pumping blood to our heart we would die. Human emotions come from the brain, there are sections within it that control what are known as the basic feelings: hate, love, anger, passion, etc. These feelings are converted into different impulses and sent to different parts of the body. For instance, when we feel very angry our face turns red. Why does that happen? It is very simple; the brain sends the message that it has sensed anger and the pigments in the skin respond by turning red. When we suffer a devastating loss, like losing someone we love the body reacts in many extreme ways. Some people quit talking because their brain cannot send the impulse to their mouth. Others quit eating because the impulse never reaches the hand.
When a person loves something dearly their feelings generate from the brain. They must consciously realize the feeling of love otherwise their body cannot project it into the outer world. Everybody in this world has a thing they love; for some it may be their partner, for others it could be music, or art, etc. Tragedy often strikes and we lose this object of desire; it is desire because when we think about what we want at the end of the day it is this person/object that we think about. When my father told me the nevus in my arm could be cancerous and I might have to undergo surgery I was devastated. At the time my guitar meant the world to me. It was a feeling of love and the highlight of my day was coming home to play my guitar. When such an incident takes place the part of the brain that controls the feelings we have for this object simply dies. It is almost as if someone physically removed the sensory organs that controlled the feelings we had. At that point in time the person usually ceases to function like a normal human being. One of the words that keep popping into their head is suicide. Why? It is because life has devalued to them and they have no reason to be alive. Suicide is a very strong word; we incorporate it with people with unstable mental health. But, what if this person had another option; what if this person could still end his life without all the melodrama that surrounds those that attempted suicide. This is where euthanasia comes in; euthanasia usually involves the patient being given a lethal dose of some form of anaesthetic that stops the heart from beating. Does this person not deserve the right to die? In my mind he does, but unfortunately society feels that since this person is still physically alive he must live on to tomorrow. It doesn’t matter if he is no longer emotionally capable of being a human being.
In the last nine years I have tried to find an instance where a person was allowed to end his life because the emotional scars were too deep to bear. I found a single case, it was the Sarah Lawson case, but her father was eventually charged with murder. This is when I realized the law needed to be changed. If only we could add the clause that terminal illness is both physical and emotional then euthanasia would make more sense. Does euthanasia not state that it permits death to the hopelessly sick? That is reasoning enough for us to rewrite the medical ethics book. Suicide is very common in cases where a person has suffered a severe emotional loss. The most common forms of suicide are either shooting oneself or overdosing on pills. The former results in the bullet imploding in the brain and leaving the person unrecognizable. Imagine the horror of having to identify a person who has no face. The latter relaxes the spinchter muscles in the body and the body is covered in excreta. Again imagine the horror of being the one to discover the body. Euthanasia on the other hand employs more humane methods and the body is allowed to die peacefully.
With this small change we will bring about a larger change in society today. The rate of suicide is at its highest among teenagers because they are unable to cope with sudden emotional loss. Should these teens indeed have no reason to live they can seek a more painless way to die. That leaves their family clean from the ugly scars of suicide, as society still looks down upon the families of those that even attempt suicide.
I finally regained the relationship I once had with my family and friends. The reason I decided to love others is because I don’t want to die. I am too young to die and I have a whole life ahead of me. If tomorrow I had to have my arm amputated because the nevus had become malignant I would be hurt; but I could carry on with my life because I now have family and friends that I care about. But, some people don’t have such good fortune. They seek a single goal and when they reach it they devote their whole life to it. I think of these people and the kind of burden that they have to bear when the love of their life is gone.
Iced Earth wrote a song called “I died for you” and part of the lyrics went like this: “Oh how I love you/The pain won't go away/Oh when I need you/You're always so far away/I cry for you/Leaving myself to blame/I died for you/I gave up everything.” (Iced Earth,
http://www.icedearth.com) Now I realize what Matt Barlowe was singing about. Unless you walk in the shoes of someone who has lost the one thing they loved the most; you will never know how excruciating the pain is.