Comments From The Chemo Couch: 12 – No One Gets Out Of This Alive!

Religion is for people afraid of going to hell; Spirituality is for those who have already been there. ---- Said around 12-step recovery meetings

Our cat died.  Ebony, short for Ebenezer Pusscat Girl, took a couple of weeks to pass but did not seem to be suffering until the very last day.  She was about 16 years old, a feral cat we trapped when we were leaving Barrio Blue Moon in Tucson for Picture Rocks 14 years ago.  She was jet black and polydactyl, with six toes each on her front paws.  Ebony lived in our workshop and took care of invading pack rats for a long time.  It took several years for her to really adjust, but she came to love a daily routine of climbing on our laps for petting and scritches, bribed by cat treats.  We gave her a good life, and she gave us purrs and love.  We’ll miss her.

As I approach 80 years of age, with coronary artery disease and incurable cancer, I think of my own impending death often.  It’s a subject most people prefer to avoid, but, hey, none of us are getting out of this alive!  I know that I want to die at home with people that love me close by, and not in a hospital with machines creating the illusion of life.  I’ve done my Will, and Living Will and Durable Health Power of Attorney, and my cremation is prepaid at Marana Mortuary.  I have no intention of helping to enrich the Death Industry if I can help it.

I’ve been aware of the ongoing debates about ending one’s own life and did some research for this article.  Nothing here is to be construed as endorsing, recommending or assisting anyone who makes a choice to hasten their final exit; I am strictly reporting the facts as I found them.  Currently the states of Washington, Oregon, Vermont, New Mexico, California, Montana, Colorado, and the District of Columbia allow some form of physician-assisted suicide in terminal cases.  Bisbee, Arizona, passed a non-binding resolution of support.  The debate is ongoing in many other states.  It seems we’ve come a long way from the days of Jack “Doctor Death” Kevorkian.  Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands, Albania, Colombia and Japan also allow physician-assisted suicide.

In the U.S. most suicides, the 10th leading cause of death, are by older white men using guns.  That leaves a mess for others to have to clean up, as do the often-unsuccessful attempts at wrist-cutting, hanging, suicide-by-cop, drowning, self-starvation, sticking your head in an oven, or falling asleep before a fatal amount of pills are ingested.  The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention estimates that for each of the nearly 45,000 suicides each year, there are 25 failed attempts.  Many leave the person damaged in mind and/or body.

Attitudes towards suicide in cases of terminal illness began to change with the rise of the Death With Dignity movements.  The Hemlock Society published Derek Humphries’ Final Exit in 1991, an argument for the right to die and a handbook on ways to do it and not to do it.  Humphries argues, following his cancer-ill mother’s self-exit:

“So as unnatural as it may seem  to take one’s own life – some say un-Godly – is it any more natural or Godly to live hooked up to a machine – or in agony – because one’s life has been extended by science?  The real question is, does a person have a right to depart from life when he or she is nearing the end and has nothing but horror ahead?”

A national Final Exit Network is a recognized non-profit organization with regular meetings in Tucson.  They also met regularly in Green Valley until banned from public facilities there in 2015.  Their website is: www.finalexitnetwork.org.

In 1996 Australian doctor Philip Nitschke founded Exit International and later published The Peaceful Pill Handbook, co-authored by Dr. Fiona Stewart.  That organization holds conferences around the world and publishes regular updates to paid subscribers.  Their goal is to “empower people to make informed decisions about their own end-of-life circumstances…By equipping Seniors and those who are seriously ill with knowledge that empowers and returns control, these same people are more likely to stop worrying and get on with living…Fears are addressed and participants (at Exit meetings) feel back in control.”

While discussing various methods of “self-deliverance,” the Handbook focuses on the drug pentobarbital (Nembutal), and on inert gases.  Pentobarbital seems to be the drug of choice for both physician-assisted suicides, lethal injection executions – and veterinary euthanasia.  It is virtually impossible to obtain legally in the U.S. but is often sold online or across-the-counter in  Mexican veterinary supply stores.  There are many scammers online, so Exit International  offers access to test kits and provides current information to subscribers.  It takes about 100 pills to “self-deliver.”

Helium was the inert gas of choice until the American government, facing a helium shortage, had manufacturers add oxygen.  Nitrogen, available for home brewing, is the current gas of choice  It allows the user to breathe without suffocating and quickly pass out, dying within minutes.  Exit International provides information on where to obtain both the gas and necessary regulator hardware:  https://exitinternational.net/.

Exiting with gas requires a hood to contain the nitrogen without dilution by air.  A YouTube video, Doing It With Betty, has over 77,000 viewings as a demonstration of how to make an “Exit Bag” from a turkey roasting bag: http://www.veoh.com/watch/v15857852SNBFDqej.

The poet Dylan Thomas wrote about his father’s impending death:  Do not go gentle into that good night / Old age should burn and rave at close of day / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  I disagree.  We are born, we live, we die.  That’s the natural way of it.  Whether we have a choice in the way we exit this life is what is being debated around the world.

SHIFTING GEARS DUE PROCESS OR LYNCH MOBS?

Power can manifest itself in the smallest situations, and in larger ones where we, as a society, have agreed it may exist – politicians, media personalities, Hollywood moguls, bosses. As a society we’ve agreed these are people of power.  That power is often used by men against women because of the unequal relationships, and it is not a bad thing for sexual abusers to be called out, whatever their position or politics.

I expect that most men, myself included, have some incidents in their pasts they owe some amends for. But the current wave of claims, admissions, denials and punishments have taken on the tone of a lynch mob.  Whatever happened to evidence, due process, innocence until proven guilty?  That people are losing their careers and their livelihoods over unsubstantiated charges is reminiscent of the Red Hunts of the 1950s, and just as wrong.

Perhaps there should be independent – truly independent – tribunals set up at the federal state and local levels, gender-balanced, that could hear the charges, gather the evidence, and proceed with hearings under oath where the evidence warrants it.  Instead of taxpayer and consumer dollars going in payoffs to victims, maybe the perps need to do a little jail time along with loss of status – no matter if they are Roy Moore, Harvey Weinstein, Al Franken, John Conyers, Raúl Grijalva, Matt Lauer, Garrison Keillor, Charlie Rose, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush or Donald Trump.

Yeah, I know, fat chance.  After all, this is a nation that refused to adopt a simple Equal Rights Amendment.  Life-long feminists I know worry that the current media frenzy will provoke a backlash that will set back even the modest gains women have made over the past decades and embolden sexual predators.  Maybe, fellow men, it’s you and I who need to revive the movement for an Equal Rights Amendment, and get it passed this time.

About Albert Vetere Lannon 103 Articles
Albert grew up in the slums of New York, and moved to San Francisco when he was 21. He became a union official and labor educator after obtaining his high school GED in 1989 and earning three degrees at San Francisco State University – BA, Labor Studies; BA, Interdisciplinary Creative Arts; MA, History. He has published two books of history, Second String Red, a scholarly biography of my communist father (Lexington, 1999), and Fight or Be Slaves, a history of the Oakland-East Bay labor movement (University Press of America, 2000). Albert has published stories, poetry, essays and reviews in a variety of “little” magazines over the years. Albert retired to Tucson in 2001. He has won awards from the Arizona State Poetry Society and Society of Southwestern Authors.