How to Die in Oregon (death with dignity)

I so agree Holly. Teddy was able to have the time to leave, his way. Every thing was in order. He had even made up his precious packets for all the kids and Grandkids. He had a ton of pins and stuff from the Shrine beside golf equipment and everytime one of the kids came over things got dispersed. He had a Christmas Village that was on a long table and it had grown from 4 feet to 5 X 8 with layers. That went to his daughter. She saw to it that the kids got their favorite pieces. We always laughed. After we got the final prognosis we went to the lake in Milwaukee and one of his goals was to bring packets for the Milwaukee bunch, his and mine. So he went into a back bedroom and our son-in -law led eveyone one by one for a short visit. All of a sudden the son-in=law starts laughing and says, “Wow, I feel like everyone was paying their respects to the Godfather” and we all cracked up as he was not far off base with that one. Then after his Memorial we had a dessert table and for dinner 28 of just family went to Dinner. We were getting ready and his 30 yr old Grandaughter said, I know, lets all wear something of Grandpa’s to dinner. SO all converged in our bedroom and we all went to dinner each of us wearing an item of Teddys. It was so neat and just what he would expect from us! What I am trying to say is we really all did it his way! Yes, Teddy, attitude is everything you left us missing you but happy. I am sorry didn’t realize I was reminising so long.

Interesting topic and great to hear everyone’s points of view on this. Saw this piece on the news today and thought about this discussion and thought I’d post the link here –

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22191059

In Scotland, one of the MSP’s in the Scottish Parliament is attempting to bring a Bill on right to die. The MSP, Margo MacDonald has Parkinsons and has been very vocal on this subject for a few years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margo_MacDonald

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-19646868

THis is the Bill that she tried to bring forward in 2012 and I think she will be bringing a new Bill forward in 2013.

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/S4_MembersBills/Final_version_as_lodged.pdf

Just thought I’d post these in case anyone is interested.

Gavin

Hi, everyone,
My answer to this topic is, if you and your caregiver can wait for 5-7 more years and you(the patient him/herself) wants to fight it out and will endure the side effects that the treatments dish out for you; then please keep up with the current knowledge to decide when to give in or give up.

The “5-7 years” time frame is given by Dr. Hahn who is a medical oncologist and runs the The Center For Cancer Genome Discovery Lab, one of the largest 24/7 genetic lab in the States, and is the Deputy Chief Scientific Officer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He said his lab has discovered several new oncogenes as well as targets that will pave the way for new therapeutic approaches.The approaches ,the models and the tools that his lab had pioneered and developed have already become widely used worldwide to discover and validate molecularly targeted cancer therapies.
Dr. Hahn indicated that 5-7 years from now, the field of chemotherapy and targeted therapy will be a lot more precise and the treatment approach will be much more specific and less adverse drug reaction cause by the new crops of new drugs that will be on the markets soon.

The same sentiment was also echoed by Peter Smith,PhD, the executive director of Drug Discovery Biology at H3 BioMedicine where he is responsible for overseeing drug discovery and translational medicine efforts of lead projects. He also works on identifying novel mechanisms of resistance that impacted clinical trial design and involved in additional drug discovery effort. His research efforts resulted in the design and initiation of several clinical trials . But he also suggested if all the labs can share each lab’s data as an open source with each other , and bring the patients , researchers, clinicians and scientists to work together then things will go much faster and sooner.

In short, cooperation among different groups and patient education are the keys for speedy new drug development in targeted therapy and biomarker development.

So, just try to give all of you an up- date development and/or difficulties on the frontier of new drug development and you decide what you will do with this information in the future if needed.

The above information was from the CanLiv symposium that I had attended on April 5, 2013 in Washington DC.

Personally,the above information somewhat changed my mind about what I had decided . And I will keep an open eye on both the new drug development and the new interest in immunology related treatment for cancer to make my final decision on my condition at that moment when the time is come.
God bless.

Susie, a very interesting topic. I have and will always be in favor of DDA. I feel we have a right to determine our own destiny. BUT, only in the case of a catastrophic disease. I also think in a living will it could be stated at what point one would qualify. I think Oregon got it right. Let’s keep this cool, it’s a hot topic! Dignity, yes.