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Physician-Assisted Suicide and Myeloma
Patients, their families, and physicians have been satisfied with a “death with dignity” physician-assisted suicide program made available to terminal cancer patients at a Seattle clinic…
If you are a myeloma survivor would you ever look to physician-assisted suicide? Under what circumstances would you want physician-assisted suicide made available to you? If you are a MM caregiver, under what circumstances would you want physician-assisted suicide made available to your charge?
I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 1994. A downside of my job as a MM survivor, blogger and director for PeopleBeatingCancer is that I have to read articles and studies about the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to MM.
And there is a lot about end-stage MM that is ugly. It turns out that fighting the good fight can be complicated.
I cannot and will not speak for anyone but myself on the issue of PAS. At this point in my life as a long-term MM survivor I hope I never have to seriously consider PAS. But knowing what I have learned about what can happen during the final stages of MM, I have decided that rather than PAS, I would undergo palliative therapies and then hospice.
I am both an MM survivor and MM cancer coach. For more information about palliative, hospice care and MM, scroll down the page, post a question and I will reply ASAP.
Thank you,
David Emerson
- MM Survivor
- MM Cancer Coach
- Director PeopleBeatingCancer
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Physician-Assisted Suicide Program Wins Praise
By John Gever, Deputy Managing Editor, MedPage Today
Published: April 10, 2013
“Patients, their families, and physicians have been satisfied with a “death with dignity” physician-assisted suicide program made available to terminal cancer patients at a Seattle clinic, clinicians there reported…
“Patients, caregivers, and family members have frequently expressed gratitude after the patient obtained the prescription, regardless of whether it was ever filled or ingested, typically referencing an important sense of control in an uncertain situation,” the authors wrote in the April 11 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine…
“Our Death with Dignity program both allows patients with cancer who wish to consider this option to do so within the context of their ongoing care and accommodates variation in clinicians’ willingness to participate,” they added. “The program ensures that patients (and families) are aware of all the options for high-quality, end-of-life care, including palliative and hospice care, with the opportunity to have any concerns or fears addressed, while also meeting state requirements.”
The authors noted that, in the debates about physician-assisted suicide in Washington and Oregon (which enacted a similar law in 1997), critics argued that “vulnerable” populations might be selectively steered into such programs. But Loggers and colleagues said their experience has not borne that out.
Loggers and colleagues indicated that, whereas all of their patients had terminal cancer, about 20% of the wider group of patients in the two states undertaking physician-assisted suicide had other diagnoses, primarily neurodegenerative diseases.”