Saturday, January 01, 2005

Checking Out

Death passages are like childbirth. Everyone gets a "due date," and it's utter hogwash. When a woman begins to go into labor, she has no idea whether she's going to have a baby in an hour, or the next week. No one knows how it's going to take. However, in childbirth, the medical profession is allowed to intervene... they speed things up, they schedule cesareans, they don't let the mom or baby suffer if they can help it.

In death, perversely, the doctors let you suffer because their hands are tied. By ours law and by our guilt, by our ignorance and our religious hangovers, we are making suffering a pillar of terminal disease care.
Susie Bright, her own mother recently dieing, Susie Bright talks about one of our biggest disgraces in our country - how we are allowing those in pain and/or dying no alternatives but to what can only be labeled as a cruel, long, and painful death. And it will be our turn soon enough, so all of us should be rather concerned, don't you think?