No Code – I couldn’t have said it better.

I find my blog post inspirations from many sources.  Sometimes, an AIH buddy will send me  a news article link or a blog follower will suggest a topic.  Today, my husband sent me an article link that speaks to my heart.  Since being diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis (AIH), I have been on a never-ending soapbox for medical reform and medical awareness.

You might have gleamed from my posts that I am a Democrat, and I support health care reform in our country.  With the mounting costs of medical bills and insurance premiums, it seems more affordable to die than to continue living.  Thanks to Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, I formed some very strong ideas about death and dying as a young college junior in the late 1980s.  Over the years, my ideas have only gotten stronger.  I’ve witnessed the long, agonizing death of my father with lung cancer.  My mother rarely knew any peace at all during her tumultuous life due to several mental illnesses that were still being treated quite archaically during the 1950s and even through the 1990s when families were embarrassed to admit that a child was mentally ill.  My mom’s poor health included several autoimmune disorders which I inherited, too.

I researched and wrote my personal Death with Dignity statement and composed my Living Will  in November, 2010 when I decided to stop taking the standard combination of Prednisone and an immunosuppressant (generic Cellcept for me, mycophen0late mofetil).  I had reached a point when I truly felt that I couldn’t function any longer living in a mind-befuddling haze of generic Cellcept and a low dose of Prednisone.  I have never been able to tolerate medications, well.  Both Prednisone and generic Cellcept can trigger medicatation-induced anxiety atttacks, as they did in my case.

I had never experienced a panic attack or anxiety until I had been taking Prednisone and an immunosuppressant for about 3 months.  These panic attacks increased as time went by until I was experiencing several panic attacks, daily.  These feelings were unbearable for me.  I wrote my Death with Dignity and Living Will statement, and I told my husband that I intended to stop taking the AIH medications as they had become really toxic for me.  He honored my wishes and vowed to honor my Death with Dignity statement no matter what happened next.

Miraculously, I was able to stay in biological remission for almost a year without taking a corticosteroid or an immunosuppressant.  But, I had a recent flare in the fall, and I am once more back on Prednisone.  However, I am not as troubled by taking the meds or fearing the anxiety/panic attacks, this time around.  I found a state of peace when I wrote my Living Will and my Death with Dignity statement.  I know my husband will stand by me until the end and defend my right to die with dignity.  Do you have that peace of mind?

Here’s a link to the inspiration article written by a medical doctor, and I hope you find it as inspiring as me.

http://zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die/read/nexus/

Nexus – How Doctors Die – It’s Not Like the Rest of Us, But It Should Be

Author:  Ken Murray, MD, is Clinical Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at USC.

Excerpt from the post from January 4, 2012:

“It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.”

Happy 2012 and namaste, my friends,

Mags

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Tags: death with dignity, end of life, hospice, living will, no code