Euthanasia Coaster
This whole post is going to be about the Euthanasia Coaster. Go and at least peruse it a little bit before you read further.
So, where it was originally posted, I said I'm oddly intrigued, which I think came off as a bit creepy (apologies to beebers). I figure there's no way to put all of this into a Facebook comment, but I've got a lot of thoughts about this too.
I think my perspective on death has a lot to do with that intrigue. As I said in previous posts, Death and I are well acquainted, in the metaphorical sense as well as the literal sense. In a lot of different contexts, I've actually watched how people die. And while even when it's made as comfortable as possible, that qualifier "as comfortable as possible," is still important.
Dying is not comfortable. That's why doctors and hospice nurses give pretty big doses of morphine to people who aren't going to live. Becoming an opiate addict isn't a problem when your body is shutting down. And the mind-altering effects of morphine make the process of dying "as comfortable as possible."
I'm not a hospice nurse. I'm not a medical doctor. But on more occasions than I have fingers, I've been present for watching someone go from cognizant human being to taking his or her last breath, and that is usually a course of weeks to at the very least days. And at least several times in that course, that person is fearful and terrified of what is going to happen, and depending on what is going wrong with his or her body, there's also a lot of pain, that sometimes even extreme doses of morphine can't touch. If you've ever seen someone with cancer that's metastasised into his bones, you'd understand that it's a pain you don't want to ever experience. I've got a high pain threshold, and I don't ever want that.
Give me the choice of that or about 60 seconds of amazing euphoria akin to a ride on a jet fighter, and the choice isn't a hard one.
So, where it was originally posted, I said I'm oddly intrigued, which I think came off as a bit creepy (apologies to beebers). I figure there's no way to put all of this into a Facebook comment, but I've got a lot of thoughts about this too.
I think my perspective on death has a lot to do with that intrigue. As I said in previous posts, Death and I are well acquainted, in the metaphorical sense as well as the literal sense. In a lot of different contexts, I've actually watched how people die. And while even when it's made as comfortable as possible, that qualifier "as comfortable as possible," is still important.
Dying is not comfortable. That's why doctors and hospice nurses give pretty big doses of morphine to people who aren't going to live. Becoming an opiate addict isn't a problem when your body is shutting down. And the mind-altering effects of morphine make the process of dying "as comfortable as possible."
I'm not a hospice nurse. I'm not a medical doctor. But on more occasions than I have fingers, I've been present for watching someone go from cognizant human being to taking his or her last breath, and that is usually a course of weeks to at the very least days. And at least several times in that course, that person is fearful and terrified of what is going to happen, and depending on what is going wrong with his or her body, there's also a lot of pain, that sometimes even extreme doses of morphine can't touch. If you've ever seen someone with cancer that's metastasised into his bones, you'd understand that it's a pain you don't want to ever experience. I've got a high pain threshold, and I don't ever want that.
Give me the choice of that or about 60 seconds of amazing euphoria akin to a ride on a jet fighter, and the choice isn't a hard one.