death with dignity

2022 was just a rough year. Many deaths with one being Christmas Day. Some relationship estrangements. Just too much. Makes me wish I wasn’t here any longer. Looking for 2023 to be an improvement. #ChronicDepression #DeathWithDignity #livinglife

Death is something we all know happens, its just the way
life goes. But it’s never something we really think about, never something we
should have to think about at a young age, it’s not something that a parent
should have to worry about with a sick child. But it’s a reality.
Being in my 20’s and being faced with a life limiting illness and being told I need to have all of my affairs in order isn’t how I expected my life to go. I mean I’m 20, what affairs do I have to be in order? But I do. I need my family to know how I want things to go, when I want things to stop, how I want my life to be celebrated. How do you even approach this subject? Do you talk to them about it? Do you have everything in order so they don’t have to worry about things should anything happen, do you have things written in a notebook? 
No parent should ever have to lose their child. No matter how old their child is. You could be an adult, but to your parents, you are still their child and that pain of loosing them is something that can never be described. I see lots of parents who loose their children, with my illness it’s a lot more common then I’d like to admit. You see parents loosing babies and toddlers, one day they’re smiling and the next, they’re gone. How do you console the parents? What can you say? Nothing you do can help soften the blow of a parent losing their baby. But as an adult, I hope I can help make things easier for my parents. I just take away them few extra things for them so they know they are doing what is best for me, so they know they are doing what I want. That’s why I chose to have everything planned. 
I’m 26. I know my wishes, I have my funeral planned, well, I have my celebration of life planned because that’s what I want. I want a celebration of all of the happy things people remember of me. I don’t want a somber event; I want a celebration. I have my advanced directives planned and I just need to finalize them, at my age I never thought I would be on palliative care and have to know my end of life wishes. But I do, so to lessen the burden on my parents I just need to suck it up and get on with it, so I know that they will be 100% confident that they are doing what is best, so that they aren’t being taken to one side and having to make decisions when quite frankly they won’t be in the right head space to be making them decisions properly and it would just make the situation a whole lot harder for them. I’m doing what I can to make things easier. I can’t do much, life will take it’s own path and when the time comes I won’t be able to guide them, but at least I know that I’ve done what I can already.

Death is inevitably in all of us. But in some of us with life limiting illnesses its going to come sooner rather than later and our parents are left with unimaginable decisions. This is my choice to be proactive and make my voice heard in the times when I am most vulnerable. #ChronicIllness #DeathWithDignity

I’m so out of touch right now I can’t tell what’s real from what’s not. Why did my mother tell me the date of her death? Should I be relieved? Or morbidly confused? #Depression #Anxiety #BipolarDisorder #DeathWithDignity #Grief

My mother told us tonight that she’d be taking her life on September 18th. I’m floored. She has been in hospice in home for several months. She and her doctor decided that a Wednesday would work for her doctor- she’ll be playing the cello at my mother’s service. So a Wednesday it is. But not the first Wednesday in September as she would be missing pallbearers so the 3rd it will be. I just brought my mom sausage, pepperoni & mushroom pizza and you’re telling me she’ll be gone in less than 8 weeks? I just can’t wrap my brain around this without losing it.

Today is a hard day. I work in mental health and manage my own PTSD and depression. Today I learned that one of my clients are not going to be with us much longer. They are in hospice care. On top of that I know I’m going to have to put my dog of 15 years down soon because she has infected teeth that can’t be fixed. The pain is horrible but I know both deaths will mean something. Right now all I want to do is cry. I’m afraid if I start to cry I won’t stop. Both are so loved and will be so missed. It’s an honor to have been a part of their journey.

I don’t know exactly why I am writing this to others, but I am.

I have an incurable disease, adhesive arachnoiditis, of which high dose pain medication is all that has been keeping me alive. I would have taken my life with my parents approval. Unfortunately, I still have one of the few internists willing to keep my pain medication to where my pain can be controlled and I am no longer in 24/7 intractable pain. It took 5 years but we finally got the right level and by readjusting the fentanyl patches to every 48 hours instead of 72 hours, we have been able to reduce my pain medication from a high of 1400mg morphine equivalent (MME) down to 700MME. I had agreed to hold off taking my life, due to having no quality of life, until I had completed a full trial of medication that had helped a person’s daughter that my dad met online. So I have passed that time. A really big unfortunate event happened, my father died. If my dad was still alive, I would have taken my life early last year, when I finally realized that being basically bedridden full time and unable to handle anything more than watching TV and trying to go through my email was all my body and mind can handle. This is NO quality of life.

My mom says that she promised my dad to honor the agreement and has even half-heartedly said, if I feel I have to go, she understands. But then the next thing that might be said is, we can move to another country, as she knows that quite likely this year will be the year that insurance stops paying for my needed amounts of medication. They will likely pick up to 90-200MME, but I will not have my mom using her retirement money to pay for medication that rightfully should be paid for by insurance. But for me, that isn’t the main issue anymore. How can or would anyone want to stay alive staying in bed 16 hours a day and laying on the sofa 8 hours a day? I hope that we will be in a deadly car accident killing us both, that way Mom won’t be left alone. She says she understands my not wanting to live with no quality of life, but then she says something that makes me feel bad for not wanting to live.

I find my body burning up most of the day. It takes all my strength to shower once a week, which I can bet most people think is so gross. I do! I hate having gained 40 pounds since getting this disease, I had always hoped to be thin and pretty when I died, I will be neither now. I am so upset by how the opioid crisis has stopped many, if not most, doctors from even treating us humanely anymore. I have bought many things such as knitting, coloring and classes, but I cannot even feel up to doing those things. Even if I could, how does that make life worth living? I need help for all I do.

I really do want to stop living this life, I have the means in many different ways, none using opioids or guns. But how do I know my mom truly understands and isn’t hurt?Her family has many who have lived to be 100. I cannot possibly live this way for 5 years never mind 50!