Readers React: Even in hospice care, a ‘good death’ can be agonizing

To the editor: Dr. Ann Marie Chiasson states that physician-assisted suicide is an unnecessary defense against fear and suffering. As the primary caregivers for our son who recently died at the age of 35 from a brain tumor, we disagree. (“Why many hospice doctors like me won’t participate in legal physician assisted suicide,” Opinion, May 12)

Our son did undergo the “natural process of dying,” but it was far from a “pleasant way to go.” Even with the help of hospice, steroids for the constant headaches and analgesics for the horrific pain that came with partial paralysis, our son’s process of dying was not peaceful. He suffered extreme anxiety and often times would ask, “Why can’t I just die?”

If we hadn’t gone through this experience, it would have been easy to agree with Chiasson.

California’s impending right-to-die law is important to help those who don’t want to go through the agony that we and our son experienced. Those last horrific weeks will be with us forever.

Jack and Jan Reisdorf, Mission Viejo

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To the editor: Chiasson presents a thoughtful, rational perspective on the right-to-die issue.

My husband was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which causes scarring on the lungs and eventually the inability to breathe. His biggest fear was gasping for breath and suffering at the end.

As a physician, he knew exactly how he wanted to be treated in his final days and expressed this to his physician numerous times. When his patients asked him about help with dying, he would counsel them about not eating and drinking when the time came.

Toward the end, my husband’s appetite dwindled. Per his and his physician’s agreement, the day before he died, we transported him to the hospital. After visiting and saying our goodbyes, he was placed on a morphine drip and dozed off. I stayed with him until the next morning, when he took his last breath.

I am grateful to his physician for allowing him to die comfortably and without suffering, and to my husband for the honor of caring for him and sharing his life and death with him.

Sharon Westafer, Long Beach

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To the editor: Chiasson is opposed to California’s new law giving terminal patients the right to die sooner than nature would allow. Given her medical specialty of hospice and palliative care, her position is not surprising. However, two statements she made are.

First, in a discussion of withholding food and drink, she says that “patients drift off into a coma over the course of a few weeks.” Later, she writes that she “can prescribe palliative sedation — a medical coma.” These two alternatives both leave the patient in a coma.

Where is any discussion of quality of life? Also, who is helped by this medical coma? Surely not the patient or the family watching their loved one neither living nor dying day after day.

California is offering an alternative. Isn’t that what we should all want? Give us all the options and let us make our own decisions.

Judith A. Bernstein, Newport Beach

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