Montana board forced to remove position statement. Help us make it permanent & overturn Baxter

For the last three years, Montanans Against Assisted Suicide (MAAS) has been an integral player in keeping assisted suicide from becoming legal in Montana.  Most recently, MAAS has been prosecuting a lawsuit against the Montana Board of Medical Examiners.  The suit has already caused the Board to remove a position statement implying that assisted suicide "may" be legal in Montana.

The lawsuit, however, has also been dismissed due to the Board's removal of the position statement.  See court order here.  If MAAS does not appeal by February 11, 2014 , there will be nothing to stop the Board from re-issuing its statement, or a worse statement, the very next day.  Appeal will also allow MAAS to challenge the Baxter decision, which proponents claim legalized assisted suicide in Montana.  A MTN News article describes the situation, as follows:

 [The] position paper - in response to the lawsuit - has since been rescinded by the Board and scrubbed from its website. But [MAAS's attorney, Margaret] Dore said court action was still needed to prevent the Board from reinstating such a position.

She repeatedly asked District Judge Mike Menahan to weigh in on a Montana Supreme Court ruling known as Baxter, that envisions potential defenses to doctors charged with homicide for assisting with suicide.

Sanjay Talwani, "Montana judge hears assisted suicide arguments," MTN News, December 11, 2013.

Problems with legal assisted suicide include that it encourages people with years to live, to throw away their lives.  Legalization also creates new opportunities for elder abuse, for example, when there is an inheritance involved.  In Oregon, legalization has enabled Oregon's Medicaid program to offer the "treatment" of suicide in lieu of desired treatments (to improve the quality of life, to extend life or to cure). 

For more information, please click here.

MAAS's attorney, Margaret Dore, who is also President of Choice is an Illusion, is donating her time. Choice is an Illusion has also provided financial support for the MAAS lawsuit.  Ongoing funds are, however, needed to pay for the rest of MAAS's legal team including the Charlton Law Firm and for out of pocket expenses such as transcripts, computer research and court fees.   We are asking for your support as your finances allow.  Any amount is appreciated.
                                                                                
Choice is an Illusion is proud to have been part of MAAS' victory to force this action by the Board.  Please donate directly to MAAS, or to Choice is an Illusion as set forth below:

Please make checks payable to: MAAS, 610 North 1st St. Suite 5-285, Hamilton, MT  59840, or to Choice is an Illusion, 1001 4^th Avenue, 44^th Floor, Seattle, WA 98154

Please donate online by clicking here or here.

Thank you for your support.

New Board Member Kate Kelly!

Welcome to our newest Board member, Kate Kelly!

Kate Kelly, B.Ed., B.A.

Kate Kelly grew up in Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada.  She is the daughter of self-educated working-class parents, who instilled in her a love of books, music, nature, old movies, and compassion for "the average Joe" and all vulnerable creatures. Kate dropped out of high-school, becoming well-acquainted with minimum-wage jobs. She eventually attended university as a mature student, graduating with a B.Ed. in English and a B.A. in Drama.  

Kate has been a travel  agent, salesclerk, child care worker, actress, cab driver, art model, gas jockey, reporter, cleaning woman, teacher, jazz singer and office clerk. She has lived and worked in 6 Canadian provinces and 1 territory, and travels extensively. Kate is passionate about seniors' rights, rescuing dogs, and singing. She hopes to live to at least 100, and die without being "pushed along."  

Kate's publications include "Mild Stroke Led to Mother's Forced Starvation."

Board Member William Reichel, M.D.

Below is an updated biography for Choice is an Illusion Board Member, William Reichel MD.

As noted below, he was recently named as one of five Pioneers in Geriatric Medicine.  Thank you for your work Dr. Reichel!


William Reichel, M.D.

William Reichel, M.D. is Vice President and a Board member of Choice is an Illusion.  He is also an Affiliated Scholar with the Center for Clinical Bioethics, Georgetown University School of Medicine. Dr. Reichel received his M.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1961. His residency in Internal Medicine was at Stanford Medical Center. He provided leadership in Geriatrics, serving 13 years on the Board of Directors of the American Geriatrics Society, including serving as its President. He was recently named as one of five Pioneers in Geriatric Medicine.  The 6th Edition of a Cambridge University Press text, "Reichel's Care of the Elderly: Clinical Aspects of Aging," was released in February 2009, and the 7th Edition is in preparation.

In his practice, Dr. Reichel saw the many ethical dilemmas that occur in patient care. He thus pursued a study of ethics, at first at Georgetown in 1984, and then as a Visiting Scholar in Medical Ethics at Harvard Divinity School, 1988-1990. At Harvard Divinity School, he concentrated on euthanasia, both in Germany before and during World War II, and in the Netherlands, publishing on assisted suicide and euthanasia. In 1998, Dr. Reichel was appointed to the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown where he continued his scholarly work that included the study of assisted suicide and euthanasia. Now retired from practice, Dr. Reichel continues as an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for Clinical Bioethics and he continues to participate in the public debate against legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia. His commentaries in letters to the editor have been published throughout the United States, in Canada, the UK and New Zealand. For example, click here.

William Reichel MD: Dutch law allows euthanasia

Originally published in The Advocate, the Official Publication of the Idaho State Bar, October 2010.
http://www.margaretdore.com/info/October_Letters.pdf
        
I am a physician who has studied assisted-suicide and euthanasia since 1988, especially in the Netherlands.  I respond to Margaret Dore's article, which quotes me for the proposition that those who believe that legal euthanasia and/or assisted suicide will assure their "choice," are naive.  ("Aid in Dying: Not Legal in Idaho; Not About Choice").  The quote is accurate....

In the Netherlands, Dutch law calls for performing euthanasia and assisted suicide with the patient's consent.  This is not, however, always done.  Indeed, over time, assisted-suicide on a strictly voluntary basis evolved into allowing euthanasia on an involuntary basis.  Euthanasia is also performed on infants and children, who are not capable of giving consent.

2005 is the most recent year for which we have an official report from the Dutch government.  The report is "spun" to defend its law, but nonetheless concedes that 550 patients (an average of 1.5 per day) were actively killed by Dutch doctors "without an explicit request."  The report also concedes that an additional 20% of deaths were not reported to the authorities as required by Dutch law.
        
 [Proponents of assisted suicide and euthanasia] hold . . . out the carrot of  "choice" to induce the public into believing that [these practices] are somehow benign.  Do not be misled.

William Reichel, M.D.
Affiliated Scholar
Center for Clinical Bioethics
Georgetown University School of Medicine
Washington DC

Mild stroke led to mother's forced starvation

By Kate Kelly

I watched an old woman die of hunger and thirst.  She had Alzheimer's, this old woman, and was child-like, trusting, vulnerable, with a child's delight at treats of chocolate and ice cream, and a child's fear and frustration when tired or ill.

Kate Kelly with a
photo of her mother.

I watched her die for six days and nights.

I watched her suffer, and I listened to the medical practitioners, to a son who legally decided her fate, and to an eldest daughter who advised him and told me that the old woman, my mother, was "comfortable," except when she was "in distress," at which times the nurses medicated her to make her "comfortable" again.

I watched the old woman develop ulcerations inside her mouth as she became more and more dehydrated; the caregivers assured me these were not painful.

I listened to her breathing become more and more laboured, as her lungs became congested from the morphine administered every three to four hours, and later every hour.

That is what morphine does, you see.  It relieves pain, but its cumulative effect is that eventually it shuts down the respiratory system.

No one explained why the old woman was given morphine in the first place, since she was conscious and trying to speak.  It is normal that a mild stroke causes temporary inability to swallow, slurred speech, and a severe headache, but all of these are often reversed when the stroke victim is treated and the treatment includes nourishment and water.

The explanation for not giving nourishment and water - a feeding tube and IV (intravenous) - is that these were "extraordinary measures" for keeping someone alive.

I watched the old woman day and night for six days.  The first night, after the first shot of morphine, her mouth hung open and her tongue started to roll and flutter.  At the same time, her jaw trembled continuously.

This went on all night and into the early hours of the morning.  Her mouth never closed again, except to clamp tightly on wet cloths placed on her lips.  Her eyes were partially closed, but they moved back and forth, back and forth, becoming small slits after seven or eight hours, not closing fully until that long first night was over.

She opened her eyes only once after that, when the nurse was late with the morphine, on the third, or maybe the fourth, day.

The old woman started to moan.

Not moaning, said the nurses and the old woman's eldest daughter.  Just air escaping from the lungs.  Not moaning at all.

The old woman's eyes started to open, and the air escaping from the lungs sounded exactly like a moan of agony, as the old woman's face twisted in horrible contortions.  I screamed, "Her eyes are opening! Oh, God. Oh, God!"

Even as the morphine, quickly injected by a disconcerted nurse, caused the old woman's eyes to close and her face to relax, I doubted its efficacy.  I thought back to the night before, when I, in tears at the old woman's slow dying, had been confronted by a delegation of four of the nursing staff, each of them in turn trying to convince me that the old woman was not suffering in any way at all.  The morphine, they said, takes away all pain.

But, I answered them, she can feel: she's squeezing my hand, and if I try to take my hand out of hers, she squeezes tighter, and when I hold a little piece of gauze to her lips, she tries to suck the water out of it.  She's thirsty!  This is a horror; this is cruelty!

No, they said.  She's not thirsty.  It's just reflex.  But, I tell them, I watched her clamp her lips on the gauze so tightly that I had to pull to get it out of her mouth.

She reacts when you touch her feet, her legs, and her hair. If she can feel that she can feel thirst, I plead with them.

It's not the same, they tell me.  She's not in pain.

I look at her.  But what if you're wrong? I say.  What if you're wrong?

They stand there, saying nothing.  Then one looks at the old woman and says, we'd better turn her now.  She and another care worker go about the business of repositioning the old woman, to keep her “comfortable" and the other two leave.

The days and nights went in and out of focus.  I sat in a chair at the side of the old woman's bed, one hand grasped tightly by her hand.  I slept an hour or two, here and there, waking always with a start.

"I'm here," I murmured, so the old woman would know I was keeping the promise I made to her on the first night, after her son and eldest daughter left to get some food, drink, and rest.  I promised her then, "I will not leave here until you do.

The old woman was fading by the fourth day.  Her eldest daughter had been visiting for an hour or so each day, usually mid-morning.  This daughter, a former hospital worker, lightly stroked her mother's face and hair and timed the length of her mother's "breath apnea," the length of time her mother

stopped breathing.

She announced the number of seconds, and then counted the number of breaths between each stopped breath.  Seven breaths, she said, 11 breaths.

Sometimes she described the progress of her mother's death, She's probably down to about 60 pounds now, she pronounced.

Sometimes - I'm not sure when I noticed it first - the nurses asked us to leave while they attended to the old woman.  Other times they didn't.  Once, perhaps on the fourth day, I told them I didn't have to leave: I had watched them turn her, I had seen her tiny naked body as they gently washed her.  I didn't even flinch anymore when they injected the syringe of morphine.

We have to give her a suppository, they said.

A suppository?  Why?

For anxiety, they said.

Anxiety.  So that she would appear to die with dignity.  The morphine was no longer enough.  This courageous old woman, who could face, who had faced, unimaginable hardships with nothing but her faith and her dignity, she could teach you about dignity, I thought to myself.

On the fifth day the eldest daughter visited twice.  On her second visit, several staff members entered the room with her.   They were all talking loudly, about nothing in particular, except for one care worker, fond of the old woman, who walked over to the bed and called the old woman's name loudly enough to interrupt the others' light conversation.  She examined the old woman's hands, lifted the sheet covering her and looked at her legs and feet.  She called the old woman's name again, and the care worker's face showed alarm.

How long has it been? she asked.  She's not even mottling! (Mottling is the term given to describe the blackening of the feet and hands as the body, dehydrating, tries to preserve the vital organs by stopping the flow of blood to the limbs).

You know, continued the care worker, I don't think it's her time.  It's been, what, five days?  If she had been ready to go, she'd have gone in 24 hours.

The room went quiet.  The care worker and I looked at each other.  You're right, I said.  The eldest daughter and one of the nurses began to tell her she was wrong, and a nurse hustled her out of the room.

By the sixth night I was not sure I could go on.  I slept for an hour or so every four or five hours. I still sat in the chair by her bed, but now I slept with my head on bed, near her stomach.

The old woman's breathing was laboured, her will to live defying the system and the foolish young doctor who, on that first night, gave her 24 hours to live, as though he were God Himself.

My heart was breaking for her.  I could do nothing to save her, could do nothing but suffer with her.  I cried much of the time, but softly, so she would not know.  I didn't want to add to her agony.

I had been there six days.  She could no longer hold my hand, so I slipped my hand gently under hers.  I felt an anguish so profound that I began to wonder if I could survive it.

The old woman's breathing was suddenly no longer laboured.  Her breath eased from her, and her face - oh, her face had become the colour of pearls.

In a split second, the frown that had creased the line between her brows was smoothed away.  Her head rested gently to one side.  Two care workers entered the room.  I saw them in my peripheral vision, but I kept my gaze on the old woman.

We're just going to turn her, one of the workers said.

No, I said, my mother is dying.

One of them left to get a nurse, and then the old woman - my dear mother, my little, child-like, beautiful mother - died.

I put my arms round her, kissed her poor, closed eyes and her now relaxed mouth, and held her limp, tiny body, no more struggling for breath.

I watched an old woman die of hunger and thirst.  I watched her die for six days and nights.  I watched her suffer, and struggle, and hold onto life.

She had not often found life easy, but she had always found it worthwhile.  She was 94 years old.  She had been born and had lived all her life in Canada.  She had worked hard all her life, married, raised three children, voted, paid taxes, saved enough money to buy her own home, obeyed the laws, donated to charity, done volunteer work, paid her bills, and given much love and brought much joy to many, many people in her 94 years.

In return, in the spring of 2009, her son and her eldest daughter, with the permission and assistance of the law, because this old woman had had a mild stroke, refused her food and water.  She could not swallow, so she would have needed the food and water administered artificially.

And the youngest daughter could do nothing except watch her mother die slowly, and write this, in the hope that my mother's death, like her life, will have made a difference.

* * *

Kate Kelly is a member of the Board of Choice is an Illusion.  She is also a teacher, a jazz singer and a former newspaper reporter.  To read more about Kate, click here.

"He made the mistake of asking for information about assisted suicide"

http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/mailbag/legalizing-assisted-suicide-allows-physicians-to-pressure-patients/article_5726f258-84fb-11e2-9707-001a4bcf887a.html

Last year, my brother, Wes Olfert, died in Washington state, where assisted suicide is legal.
When he was first admitted to the hospital, he made the mistake of asking for information about assisted suicide. I say a mistake, because this set off a chain of events that interfered with his care and caused him unnecessary stress in what turned out to be the last months of his life.

By asking the question, he was given a “palliative care” consult by a doctor who heavily and continually pressured him to give up on treatment before he was ready to do so. It got so bad that Wes actually became fearful of this doctor and asked me and a friend to not leave him alone with her. Justified or not, Wes was afraid that the doctor would do something to him or have him sign something if she would find him alone.

In fact, even though he was on heavy doses of narcotic pain medications and not in a clear state of mind to sign documents without someone to advocate for him, this palliative care MD actually did try to get him to sign a DNR or “Do Not Resuscitate” form without his Durable POA or any family member present. Fortunately, his close friend/POA arrived at that moment to stop this from happening. Some of the other doctors and staff members seemed to also write Wes off once they learned that he had asked about assisted suicide.

I am writing to urge your readers to prevent assisted suicide in Montana. I do this on behalf of myself and my other brother, Ron Olfert, of Sanders County, who also died last year. He was strongly opposed to assisted suicide.

Please contact your legislators and ask them to vote “yes” on House Bill 505.

Marlene Deakins, RN
Tuscon, Arizona