Assisted suicide. This is widely debated and I have even written a paper discussing the pros and cons and the politics and reality of assisted suicide in medicine. There are only 10 states that explicitly allow physician assisted suicide. I think that number should be 50. Picture this: you are 35 years old, have a teenage son that you raised alone and through hardship, and the bond you have with him is a life-and-purpose-defining bond. You finally just met the love of your life and got married a year ago. You've always wanted to work as a high ranking nurse in medicine, but the pay wall and lack of a degree held you back until 7 years ago when you made the move to get your PhD in nursing. This month you are going to defend your dissertation and graduate. You'll have the work and career you always wanted and the family you always wanted and life will be PERFECT. Then you have a seizure. You don't know why it happened, and it scares you. You recover. Then a month later, another one happens. You black out and wake up in an emergency room. A day in the hospital later, and you know why you have seizures: glioblastoma, or in other terms, the most deadly brain cancer. The next year of your life now looks very different from how you pictured it. Hospital visits, bills and costs, trials and placebos, etc. Eventually, you know there is just no hope, you're given a month to live and all your effort is just in elongating dying. The cancer starts to impact your speech, your motor control, your bladder control. Everything is deteriorating and you are wondering if you're even still you anymore. Why should it be in the hands of a vote in a court room hundreds of miles away to decide the you must suffer to the end as your family, your cherished son who has always loved you, watches you fade into a hospital bed unable to talk, walk, communicate, or even understand whats going on for the last week of your life? Instead, gracefully and debilberately ending the pain, suffering, and torture that bares down on you as you begin to question, am I even percieving the world as it is or is the cancer making me see that, is a more humane way to be in control of your life and experiences in living. Why should a jury decide that for you?
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