I LIKE ALL KINDS OF MACHINES---I JUST DONT WANT TO BE HOOKED-UP TO ONE ! Wednesday. A few things I need to find resolution to. With me things have a habit of working themselves out. Perhaps its the positive Karma reward of jettisoning that loser - lifestyle that kept me jogging in place for so many years. I could be wrong but I am probably right. Death and taxes seem to still be our inescapable inevitabilities. And today the two are melding into an amalgamous gel of interlocking definition. We are being taxed to death ! Im looking for a ship to throw MY quantum of tea from ! Death isnt what most fear, its the manner in which we take our leave. No one wants to suffer--unless they are extremely masochistic. Who wants to be wracked by possible extended excruciating and unimaginable pain ? Not me! Humans arent designed for that. On the otherside beyond our tolerance threshold lies blessed relief ! Death waits for us to relieve our suffering. We are not born to die as many insist. Its true that the journey along the road to death begins at our conception. But we are born to live, and every cell within us is designed to function toward that end. At the end of a long life weve passed a hypothetical parabolic half-way mark in which we begin the inevitable appointment with our final moment in this life. The hope will always be a peaceful release in the tender embrace of sleep. KEEP THAT MACHINE AWAY FROM ME! But there are many things in life over which we have little or no control. A car accident or a bullet to the head from some low-life could land anyone of us into the local emergency room. It happens enough to be a probability for some unlucky soul. Hanging onto life is the bodys programmed response to severe trauma--to a point. Blood wants to keep pumping oxygen to the brain and other vital organs--least valuable tissue is sacrificed so that life--to whatever degree--remains a possibility. But when the body loses its ability to conduct its most basic of functions and starts shutting down, where reasonable, steps have to be made to save the individuals life. When hands can no longer give hope--enter the machine ! Beyond the moral issue of saving and preserving life, what is the responsibility of healthcare and medical professionals to those hospitalized and the families who are stuggling with the decision of fighting topreserve to life of that loved one or to let them go. If a body has ceased to function on its own, and a machine is doing the work, is the person actually alive--or dead ? And who or what is it that will be returned to you after months of death held off by a clicking, blinking, never-sleeping artificial heart, lungs, cell preserver and feeding source ? You might be willing to accept the new stranger into the family--but will that person thank you for bringing them back home ? My friends mother, who was in and out of consciousness, BEGGED to be taken off the machine. She said, It hurts. There is a young woman who has been on one for over a decade! She has become a sort of cause celebre for opposing factions who think that she is actually alive and should remain hooked-up to the machine indefinitely and those who believe she really died over a decade ago and has been turned into a modern Frankenstein monster by greedy and immoral doctors who are playing on the familys hopes and milking insurance carriers for all they can get. Those who think there is a chance were last hanging their hopes on the suggestion of some brain activity on a screen hiccup after years of machine monotony. I dont know about the rest of you, I have no desire to be fed, flushed, aerated and preserved by a machine. And I do not wish to return in a new personage who will be a stranger to everyone including myself. Sorry. I died once before and transitioned so smoothly I almost liked it. I came back after a few minutes with my discriminating palete and eye for controversy still intact. I dont want to lose any part of what I am through the scrubbing and detoxification of a soulless piece of hospital hardware. Im not judging others who think differently--I am only speaking for myself. Just remember me the way I was and let go of my hand.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 11:02:16 +0000