DO OR DIE?

Life is one of the most precious gifts that were given by God, but what if it is destined to be taken away from the person that is very special to you?  Would you have the guts to set him free or see him suffering from the pain?

           

We all know that one of the hardest things in life is loosing someone very close to your heart, especially if they are one of your friends or relatives.  No one in this world can ever tell what time your loved-one will bid his goodbye unless his sickness is intolerable and only depends on machines and medicine that was given to them by their physicians. Once this machines that support the dying patient was taken away you deprive the patient in having a chance to live again and it is called euthanasia.

              

Euthanasia is the practice of painlessly putting to death persons who have incurable, painful, or distressing diseases or handicaps. It is considered one of the most controversial issues today and some define it as mercy-killing, others as assisted suicide, and some refer to it as plain murder.

We believe that physicians should use every means to maintain a person's life as long as possible. But others argue that dying patients and their physicians have the right to choose whether life-maintaining treatments should be continued. Some people also feel that this decision should be left to the family and physician if the patient is no longer capable of expressing his or her wishes.

For me, all of us have a right to die with dignity. Nobody wants to end up plugged into machines and wired to tubes.

Who wants to spend their last days lying in a hospital bed wasting away to something that's hardly recognizable as a human being? Nobody right? The very thought insults the whole concept of what it means to be human. People are entitled to dignity, in life and in death. Just as we respect people's right to live with dignity, so we must respect their right to die with dignity. In the case of the terminally ill, that means people have the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment when it's obvious to them that all that treatment is doing is destroy their dignity.

I even experienced the ache and pain to see a person dying when my grandmother was confined in the hospital last year.  She suffered from a cervical cancer almost a month.  We fought for her recovery but we saw her suffering from the pain.  We really love her so much, but we can not take to see her suffering.  The whole family talked about the situation deeply. The time is running and our hospital bills become bigger and we all aware that only our prayers can heal to my grandmother.   And we decided to let her go to lessen the pain she feels. This is one of the hardest decisions that our family decide.   Let us admit we cannot help to see the person we love suffering from illness. And the pain they feel is the same pain that the family is suffering from. 

The case of my grandmother is bearable compare to the patients that is under a state of comatose for almost a year.  The family of the patient in didn’t think that their love ones suffer even though it is just a comatose.  I understand that they really love the patient but they need to think the consequences of their decisions, if they will continue fighting for the illness that in the first place they don’t know if it has an answer or solution.

I am pro-life but I am still in favor that mercy-killing is the best solution to stop the patient from suffering.  As a human we have the right to live freely and no one have the right to take the life from us except God, since we only borrowed it from him. Medicine and medical apparatuses help lengthen life, but it does not mean it can be a remedy or it can prevent dying.

Euthanasia is still under the process of legalization. Whether it becomes legal or not, it is still the family’s decision that will prevail.

Since life is one the most valuable treasures, we need to live a healthy and happy life.  Live your life to the fullest so that you don’t have to undergo being a subject for a family debate. This may cause the family to decide on something they would not want to happen but the bottom line is, a dying person should experience a dignified death.

As they have called this process, mercy killing, I say it simply means giving a suffering person a chance to retain his dignity and die naturally without painstakingly undergo the hurt that illness brings.