Isabelle+M's+OpEd+Article

Euthenasia
By: Isabelle M.

media type="file" key="isabellem-muckraker-2011.mp3" width="240" height="20"

I hope to die in a freak accident doing the things I love. Whether it is getting hit on a dirtbike, drowning in a lake, or an avalanche on the slopes, at least I know I went out with a bang and did it with dignity. My fear for the future is dying in a hospital setting consumed in the scent of antiseptics with tubes crawling all over my body. My fear is that I won’t be given the choice to let myself go… that I will endure the rest of my life on life support, or I will live with a disease that will end up controlling my life. I would like to be reassured that when the time comes that I will need someone to help me fulfill my last request, they will listen to me. But the truth is no one, not even a doctor, is allowed to help in a suicide, no matter the severity of the issue. You could be experiencing the final stages of ASL, enduring pain that will never subside no matter how many Vicodans are ingested, or experiencing Alzheimer's disease to the point where you don’t know where you are and how you got there and physician-assisted suicide is not a patient’s right. This is wrong, unjustifed, ignorant. As Jack Kevorkian once voiced, “Dying is not a crime.”