Terminally Ill Patients

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Visualize one sitting next to a hospital bed while a patient is hooked up to assorted tubes and machines. The nursing staff keeps steadily coming in to check up on the patient. The whole time the patient is trying to get through pain and the weakness of their body that is deteriorating. Furthermore, they are suffering from the side effects given by the numerous drugs they must take to stay alive. The patient has no desire for nourishment due to throwing up any sustenance that they do put in their body. The doctors have given them a small amount of survival. Death is at hand; it is just a matter of when the time comes. Goodbyes have been said, and the patient has come to terms with dying. If one had the opportunity to decide how and when that …show more content…
For example; a respirator can support a patient’s failing lungs and medicines can maintain a patient’s physiological processes. For those patients who have a realistic chance of surviving an illness or accident, medical technology is science’s greatest gift to mankind. For the terminally ill, it may be just a means of prolonging suffering. Medicine is supposed to alleviate the suffering that a patient undergoes. Yet the only thing that medical technology does for a dying patient is to give that patient more pain and agony day after day. Terminally ill patients should have the right to Physician-Assisted Suicide since it is the best resource for them to end the pain caused by an illness which no drug can cure. A dying person’s physical suffering is not only unbearable for them but also for their family. Friends and family of the dying often suffer as much or if not more pain as the dying themselves. Pain and agony of the patient's family and friends can be reduced, and they can say their final goodbyes. Some people believe as well as myself that with Physician Assisted Suicide the right to die in peace and without pain, it is not only appropriate but it is more of a needed choice for today’s medical …show more content…
Physician Assisted Suicide should become a legal option for those who request it, it is their freedom of choice. It would give the patient a chance to say their final goodbyes and end their life with dignity. Choosing the right to have the option of Physician Assisted Suicide could be a final option of autonomy for dying. It is the act of empathy that respects a patient’s choice and can achieve an acknowledgement of no abandonment, it can emphasize the patient’s autonomy. They would not be seen as people who are waiting to die and giving up on their lives, but a human being that it making one last final choice in their lives. Physician Assisted Suicide to the dying is a liberty and a right that should not be denied because those that are dying choose to use the liberty as a way to pursue their happiness. (According to Physician-assisted suicide: What are the issues? By L.M. Kopelman) When patients are suffering from a terminal illness and slowly dying, a person’s body slowly degrades, and they lose all ability to take care of themselves. As this happens the person becomes more reliant on others around them. This dependency on others can be very difficult on the person. The dying may feel that they are no longer in control of their own self. Virtually all people want their last memory of them to be how they formerly were, not what they ended up being. We should let people die
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