Merged Euthanasia

[applecorped]

 

[Shadowdweller]

We had a patient in the first hospital I worked at that blew his face off because he aimed the gun under his chin and angled it wrong. I've seen two other persons in the news who survived similar suicide attempts, one who was glad she survived even though she went from very beautiful to quite disfigured.

Helped take care of one of those as well, once. Did not improve the gentleman's standard of living Even with face blown off, he wasn't evidently interested in repeating the matter.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

DO YOU NOT HAVE ANY KIDS. who can be so heartless to say something against it. DO YOU HAVE PARROTS?

I have a grown son I raised by myself as a single parent and I have a lot of experience having been a nurse for 45 years, 35 of which were as a nurse practitioner.

Along the way I have worked in pediatrics and bone marrow transplant, and with drug users and in a psych hospital (infection control, not trying to overstate the psych hospital experience).

There are 5 murder suicides in my immediate family:
Grandfather: suicide
Two great uncles: murder suicide.

None of us know what experiences other people on the thread have had.


I merely asked Darat if he knew just how immature teen thinking was.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

could you please stop mentioning strawman all the time if you have no other arguments. I have no intentions of making strawmen. i am not directing them at you particularly, if you feel like that

I'm truly sorry kayle but I don't see that your comments show you understand why you are making straw man arguments and you don't seem to understand the immaturity of teen thinking.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

and... my friend killed himself. tied himself to a tree and poured petrol on him and then lit it up. so please continue your pos-vibe people talking about future husbands/wives. can you the ef imagine for a second and for a tenth of it, how he felt?

And this is relevant how?

I also know a fire fighter who poured gasoline on himself and lit it. This is a different statement than just, "I'm done here."

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I feel at least some comfort knowing that it was by her own will, even if it wasn't exactly the worst it could've been.

I've had close relatives contemplate suicide and they articulated their feelings quite well. Therapy helped them snap out of it, but everyone's different.

Serious depression runs in my family including self-medicating with alcoholism. I am fortunate to have been born in the era we are starting to recognize how to correct brain neurotransmitter deficiencies that play a role in depression.

 

[Checkmite]

Anorexia Nervosa can be fatal, the prognosis may not be as bad as pancreatic cancer or lung cancer but is often resistant to treatment.

I am not convinced this girl had anorexia. Logically, that seems to have been the presumption based upon her refusal to eat. However now we know that killing herself, rather than losing weight, was the point of her refusal to eat; so it would seem that anorexia is refuted by the facts.

 

[kellyb]

I am not convinced this girl had anorexia.

Anorexics don't generally ask other people to kill them.

This girl sounds like she was traumatized and depressed.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Oh goodie now we get to do the 20 page "Active vs Passive Killing" Trolley Problem debate again.

I think the distinction in this case is quite stark. I'll have to agree to disagree with you if you don't.

*Sighs* And the worms are out.

What "data" am I supposed to **** out exactly? Mind scans? Psychics readings?

It ain't hard (speaking purely on a mechanical level) to kill yourself. It isn't something you're going to mess up if you're actually serious about doing it. You seem to think I'm treating suicide attempts as a way of "asking for help" as something to be ashamed of or to look down on people for and I'm not, but it does factor into how we conceptualize it when talking about assisted suicide.

Really? After how many years in this community and you think everyone is surely knowledgeable re common sense?

If someone tries to blow their brains out and ends up blowing their face off, pretty much all bets are off what persons trying to commit suicide must surely know. Don't you think?

But, and I should have known, someone has focused on one specific detail and ignoring the larger point I was making.

We can't have two separate arbitrary kinds of suicide with two separate standards built around them where we have to start from two different starting assumptions.

Yes we can, because it's true.

If the rape victim slashing her wrists in her bathtub is tragic the rape victim asking her doctor to turn up her morphine drip can't be noble. We can see nuance to be sure but they can't be... basically diametrically opposite.

We can't expect the conversations we have like "Suicide rates against this or that demographic" or "Is X a factor in this or that demographics suicides?" or any of the other of the similar discussions we're having AND the "It's everyone's right to decide when they die" discussions to stay completely separate.

Alls I'm saying in we can't have it so when someone says "I want to commit suicide" we assume they are wrong and have to be saved AND when someone says "I want to end my life" we assume they are right and have to support them without unpacking that somewhat.

You are claiming the details of treatment when we have no idea what treatment has actually happened.

 

[kellyb]

I think the distinction in this case is quite stark. I'll have to agree to disagree with you if you don't.

It really is.

I'm with you. Adults should not sit by and allow children to kill themselves.

 

[bluesjnr]

What are you saying, that it was right your friend killed himself?

I'd take with a pinch of salt a story about someone tying themselves to a tree then pouring petrol on themselves and lighting it.

 

[ponderingturtle]

It really is.

I'm with you. Adults should not sit by and allow children to kill themselves.

How long do you tie her to a bed and force feed her though?

 

[Darat]

It really is.

I'm with you. Adults should not sit by and allow children to kill themselves.

Would a parent want their kid to remain alive even though they are suffering day in day out if the kid didn't want to suffer any longer?

Of course it is more difficult with juveniles to ensure the appropriate safeguards are in place but I find it hard to believe that a parent would want to see their kid continue to suffer when the kid wants the suffering to end.

 

[Belz...]

I guess for me a lot of this is the disparage between suicide and assisted suicide / euthanasia where the two actions carry such radically different standards.

If this girl (at least within the way the situation was first presented to us) had killed herself in the traditional sense/usage of the term it would have been a tragedy.

A tragedy, but at least it's her life to take.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I love this thread! We went from expressing emotions over something that didn't happen to mindreading the dead and speculating what various others were thinking after reading hearsay anecdotes. The scanter the material the stronger the opinion!

 

[JoeMorgue]

I love this thread! We went from expressing emotions over something that didn't happen to mindreading the dead and speculating what various others were thinking after reading hearsay anecdotes. The scanter the material the stronger the opinion!

As long as we're clear with what we are doing and don't conflate the two we can use a nothingburger to talk about a burger that might have been honestly.

 

[Butter!]

I'd take with a pinch of salt a story about someone tying themselves to a tree then pouring petrol on themselves and lighting it.

I actually had a close friend who died that way in 2011. (There are a few local news articles about it, but I'd rather not link them. I'm pretty open about where I live, and it should be easy to google if anyone doesn't believe me.) He did not tie himself to a tree (which does sound odd), but he did douse himself in gas and light it. I'd been the last person to see him alive before he disappeared and did this horrible thing, which sucked, because it really haunted me nonstop for years.

I'm afraid I can't understand kayle's point, though. My friend having done this thing did not make me more supportive of suicide. It instead made me furious about the lack of sufficient healthcare for mentally ill veterans. (My friend was a Gulf War veteran with very serious psychiatric issues.) My friend fell through the cracks, long story short.

If I'd only seen it somehow that last time we hung out. He hid it well, I assume because he'd made his decision and didn't want to be stopped. He was saying goodbye, I just didn't know it.

We could have maybe saved him.


EDIT: I should clarify one thing. I was the last person that he knew to see him alive or speak to him. There were a few random people who said they saw him filling up soda bottles with gas at a station close to where his body was found in his car. They had no reason to suspect what he was up to, they just remembered a big guy buying a lot of gas when the cops were asking questions later. I was the last mofo with a chance to really talk him down. I just didn't know to do it until it was too late.

 

[bluesjnr]

I actually had a close friend who died that way in 2011. (There are a few local news articles about it, but I'd rather not link them. I'm pretty open about where I live, and it should be easy to google if anyone doesn't believe me.) He did not tie himself to a tree (which does sound odd), but he did douse himself in gas and light it. I'd been the last person to see him alive before he disappeared and did this horrible thing, which sucked, because it really haunted me nonstop for years.

I'm afraid I can't understand kayle's point, though. My friend having done this thing did not make me more supportive of suicide. It instead made me furious about the lack of sufficient healthcare for mentally ill veterans. (My friend was a Gulf War veteran with very serious psychiatric issues.) My friend fell through the cracks, long story short.

If I'd only seen it somehow that last time we hung out. He hid it well, I assume because he'd made his decision and didn't want to be stopped. He was saying goodbye, I just didn't know it.

We could have maybe saved him.

It's the tying himself up part I can't understand.

I've known two people who elected to end their life early. One, when I was in my late teens and so was he, completely out of the blue no-one saw it coming. Hosepipe to the exhaust. Another friend bought his car later... life goes on eh!

The other was third times the charm. Two previous attempts gave me a chance to speak to him about it and he'd always insist that he felt it was such a stupid action to take after the event, but at the time.......

It was overdose.

I've just realised that they were both called Brian.

EDIT - Just seen your edit. You should never shoulder any blame for anothers suicide.

 

[DragonLady]

I actually had a close friend who died that way in 2011. (There are a few local news articles about it, but I'd rather not link them. I'm pretty open about where I live, and it should be easy to google if anyone doesn't believe me.) He did not tie himself to a tree (which does sound odd), but he did douse himself in gas and light it. I'd been the last person to see him alive before he disappeared and did this horrible thing, which sucked, because it really haunted me nonstop for years.

I'm afraid I can't understand kayle's point, though. My friend having done this thing did not make me more supportive of suicide. It instead made me furious about the lack of sufficient healthcare for mentally ill veterans. (My friend was a Gulf War veteran with very serious psychiatric issues.) My friend fell through the cracks, long story short.

If I'd only seen it somehow that last time we hung out. He hid it well, I assume because he'd made his decision and didn't want to be stopped. He was saying goodbye, I just didn't know it.

We could have maybe saved him.


EDIT: I should clarify one thing. I was the last person that he knew to see him alive or speak to him. There were a few random people who said they saw him filling up soda bottles with gas at a station close to where his body was found in his car. They had no reason to suspect what he was up to, they just remembered a big guy buying a lot of gas when the cops were asking questions later. I was the last mofo with a chance to really talk him down. I just didn't know to do it until it was too late.

I'm sorry you had to go through that.

 

[Butter!]

The tying part struck me as odd as well. I figured that was what you meant.

Just seeing all this pro-suicide stuff in this thread dug up those dreadful memories, and my tale came pouring out. I sent emails to my friend's account for years after he was dead, just telling him I was sorry and saying what was going on in my life. Not very much like my usual skeptical self. Grief makes you wacky. Guilt too.

I don't expect it will change anyone's mind, but it's a perspective.