“You’ve got multiple myeloma.” It’s a bone marrow cancer and there’s no cure. You also have amyloidosis. One of the effects of this bone marrow cancer is that it releases a paraprotein called amyloid. The cancer eats your bones away and the amyloidosis forms bands around your organs until they can’t function. It’s a rare cancer and according to the Internet, I should be a 65-year-old black male, a farmer probably working with chemicals. I’m really a 55-year-old white female. My body is giving up and fighting itself and I don`t have a lot of years ahead of me.
The hot topic is the right to die with dignity. The whole point is to be able to die while there is still some quality in my life.
There’s never a time in life until death comes knocking and you start losing all your money trying to live; it’s the biggest payout ever at the end of life. In reality, most people just can’t afford it and are forced into re-mortgaging just to be able to pay for medication, operations and help with everything from cooking to pulling up your pants. How long before the bank takes the house? This is not what the end should be like.
Perhaps my view is more focused on the end of my life and what it means to go through countless doctor’s appointments, testing and having to take drugs for the rest of my life. It means losing your money faster than you can make it. It means being addicted to chemicals that you never dreamed of. It means losing all your faculties one by one and becoming more and more dependent. It also means becoming part of the medical system and using traditional Western medicine which leaves little choice other than chemotherapy and radiation.
It’s cruel to let people suffer. It’s really about belief systems and control over what should be a personal choice. The point of that is that you can’t control anyone but yourself. Controlling others is ultimately futile because we all grow up and eventually leave home no matter how much our parents try to control us.
The end should really be a peaceful letting go, a deliverance from pain and suffering. It means being free to choose how, when and where to die. This should be in our rights as humane people.
I know that my death should be a peaceful experience with my loved ones. Just letting go is a big thing when you don’t know what’s beyond the veil but when you’ve lived long enough you’re more willing to go. How long is too long? It’s too long when you’ve in constant pain and/or can’t function on your own. You really have to ask yourself how much and at what cost do you want to live? Is it going to cost you everything you’re worked hard for all your life? It really boils down to belief systems. Are you for humane ways of dying or are you not?
We can’t imagine where we’re going after we die and we can’t remember who we were. How odd we are as humans, cruel, arrogant, destroying our natural world and yet there’s that spark of brilliance, the divine with a choice to do good or not. Time to let go.
Danielle BourbeauDashwood