This letter is in the way of a plea. I am 80 years old and have a medical condition which, when it becomes acute, will cause intense and unrelenting pain.

I have already made arrangements for palliative care when the pain begins. But palliative care can only administer so much pain medicine. In other words, hospice and palliative care give people enough pain meds to keep them semi-conscious without real life, and not enough to let us get it over with completely.

The plea is this: Why can’t elderly people, or people with painful terminal diseases, take charge of our own demise and be allowed to end our days in a calming and caring way? 

I understand that some religious faiths may be against death with dignity, but far too many patients and their family members must endure the suffering of the patient along with the skyrocketing costs of end of life care. We wear out our family members while living in a twilight of half-conciousness filled with pain that is unreachable because of political and insurance demands.

We could easily create a part of the medical world devoted to planned euthnasia that involved making arrangements in advance for when the patient says its time to go. There would also be provision for change of mind, of course. There could be a short procedure whereby a medical person could administer, much like we do for cats and dogs, a shot or a pill that would first calm, and then release us with painless and caring swiftness.

–Hope Hunt, North Platte

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