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Lifeâor perhaps I should say deathâwas so much easier in the old days.
As end-of-life researcher Joanne Lynn puts it, life-threatening illness would âstrike without warning and you get through it or you donât.â
Effective treatments were few. Doctors would often prescribe âremediesâ such as bloodletting, purges, enemas and blistering, and âmedicinesâ such as mercury, lead and arsenic that did more harm than good. Many were positively horrific.
George Washington died after he was treated with blister beetle extract applied to his throat and he was drained of about 40 percent of his blood volume.
There were guides like Ars moriendi (âThe Art of Dyingâ), a popular work originally published at the time of the Black Death, that encouraged acceptance, and told you how to die gracefully, without succumbing to lack of faith, despair, impatience, spiritual pride or avarice.
When Patients Choose to End Their Lives
For some, the decision to die is more complicated than a wish to reduce pain.
Credit.Gracia Lam
April 5, 2021
At a time when so many are dying against their will, it may seem out of sync to discuss the option of having a doctor help people end their lives when they face intolerable suffering that no treatment can relieve.
It’s less a question of uncontrollable physical pain, which prompts only a minority of requests for medical aid in dying, than it is a loss of autonomy, a loss of dignity, a loss of quality of life and an inability to engage in what makes people’s lives meaningful.
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The Big Idea
THE PANDEMIC S NEWEST HURDLE: Anyone who’s ever wrangled RSVPs for a potluck and tried to figure out who’s bringing what might appreciate that scheduling millions of patients for coronavirus vaccines isn’t so simple.
“It’s fine,” Eldredge said, before heading back indoors.
The Dec. 24 visit with her children was brief, but Kenny Eldredge and Christine Skidmore said they were thrilled they got to see their mother in person the day before Christmas.
“Even if it’s only a half-hour, it’s great,” Skidmore said.
As the spiraling cases of COVID-19 shut Cape nursing homes including Liberty Commons to indoor visitors, fears of a return to the social isolation experienced during the spring pandemic peak loom in the minds of residents and their families.
Social isolation can be a threat to physical and mental well-being, according to experts in elder health care.