Please read the note at the end of this post before commenting. This is NOT a thread for euthanasia-law debate.
I’ve been trying and trying for many days to write about the Christian Rossiter “right to die” case, and I just haven’t managed more than an incoherent wargle. A chat with rb has convinced me that that’s better than nothing, so here it is.
If you haven’t been following along, that’s probably because all of this has been happening in Western Australia. Christian Rossiter is a forty-something year old bloke who used to climb rocks and cycle and do all sorts of physically active stuff. He now has a high spinal injury, and can no longer do those things.
So what have we, as a society, done for him? Set him up with communication devices such as a internet-enabled computer he can operate (he has talked about not being able to turn the pages of a newspaper)? Offered him opportunities for social inclusion, to the fullest extent that he can manage it? Equipped his home and supplied home nursing care so that he could live in his community and retain his social context? Provided any sort of life enrichment whatsoever?
No. We shoved him in a nursing room, in front of a television set. Oh, but it’s cable, so that’s alright, eh? We did all we could!
Now he wants to die. He’s been fighting for his right to refuse nutrition, because he can’t handle being shoved in a bed in a nursing home with nothing but Foxtel for company. Today, he won that right.
Everyone’s talking about this being a “good outcome”, a “win”. Apart from the folks who say that it’s not that great, because hey, we should be knocking him off quicker. They’re all talking about how obviously they would choose euthanasia too, if they couldn’t walk or eat or blow their nose. Because such a life could never be worth living. Because such a person is valueless.
All I can come up with is gurgles of rage and horror.
I have not yet seen ONE PERSON question his treatment, question the way we as a society have failed him – NOT in our lack of provision of a way to quickly bow out, but in our COMPLETE failure to support him in finding out whether maybe, just maybe his life could be worth living.
NOT ONE.
And I am PISSED. And sad. And horrified.
Now, perhaps if all of that equipment and opportunity and support had been offered, he might still decide to die. And that should be his right.
Or maybe he wouldn’t have made that decision.
Why haven’t we so much as given him a chance?
~~~
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[Note, if you hadn't figured this out already: I am going to moderate the fuck out of this thread. If all you have to talk about is whether or not advance directives or euthanasia should be legalised, go do it somewhere else. If you can't figure out that this is not what this post is about, read it again till you do.
There's no shortage of places to talk about the right to die, pro and con. There's a critical shortage of places talking about the right to have a life.]
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I apologise publicly to the PWD who haven’t found this conversation a safer space to be.
I think other people than you owe the apologies there; including me.
Nursing homes are funded by the federal government. If you are in a nursing home you are not eligible to access local government HACC services that provide support to PWD in getting out into the community, such as social support and transport and physio etc. And they don’t always provide those in nursing homes.
What the hell rationale do they give for that?
Thank you Lauredhel for taking this on. Once upon a time I would not have been able to see the issues with the LP post. But thanks to you, tigtog and this blog I now understand a little. There is plenty of room for improvement. I don’t think it is patronising to offer suggestions that could improve someone’s quality of life (as suggested @ 45 on LP), and for relatively little cost . Shouldn’t we at least offer it as an option to starving to death? I agree that if having exhausted all his options Christian still chose to die he should be able to, and it should be easier than the starvation route he was presented with. No argument. But you have to convince me that he has had access to all his options and I’m going to take a lot of convincing.
I apologise, but I’m just not feeling up to wading into it over there today. How many times can someone say “don’t automatically assume that people with disabilities don’t have any quality of life” before someone gets it?
Mindy, thanks for your comment. We’re into page two of comments now, so I’ll repeat something I wrote much earlier:
The Age’s letter page today has people talking about how “elated” they are at this outcome, several suggesting how his suicide could be speeded up, and another comparison to animal euthanasia.
No autotrackbacks here, so I just want to say that the post “Devaluing the Disabled Body” at meloukhia’s place is marvellous. And the rest of her blog is pretty great too. Especially stand-out is lots of meaty nuanced discussion on gender in pop culture (especially SF TV) that might suit some Hoydenizens.
Well. I read the blog posting via a link from Not Dead Yet http://www.notdeadyet.org
and am tickled, as a person with cognitive “glitches and “late arrival to the internet”,
to finally (with help from Viv) to make this comment!!!!
Every task accomplished feels HUGE. I have been thinking about my comment-to-be since reading it. I leave to others to comment on the similar stories
that have come up in the US in the last couple of decades (about the amount of time that I have been disabled by severe illness). Like many others, I didn’t follow very closely, stories about people with disabilities until I “joined”.
I have been thinking about my pal, “R”, another artist who was disabled, with whom I became very close. (Serious illness and disability make bridging friendship both easy and quicker than pre-illness for me and some other people I know and have known.). I knew my pal “R” for 20 years. We started and ended as pen-pals with a lot of US geography between us, as well as he being a male chauvinist and me being a feminist. We had some phone conversations – my limited phone use. We did share a wild sense of humor, as well as art. My pal R, had incomplete quadriplegia, for 27 years. He told me that after 7 years, he decided he wouldn’t kill himself, and found the art group that I started, the
Disabled Artists’ Network (a post group, not online), in April 1985.
R didn’t die from his disability of quadriplegia, but from an infection he got in a
hospital, the MRSR infection, where he’d gone for treatment of bedsores (gotten
from sitting many hours a day in his wheelchair in his greenhouse). He did beautiful pen and ink “pointilism” (dots) drawings, using a wrist splint, so he could hold the pen. I am in NYC, and he in Oklahoma, rural.
I got to know some of his family over the years and he got to know my spouse, who is my caregiver (“carer” in the UK). It seemed to me that persons of religion were most interested in us as people with disabilities.
Yesterday, I was able to get out on a (st)roll, spouse pushing my wheelchair over many streets of mid-Manhattan. I was telling a homeless pal I know for some years (including the recent two that I was totally homebound – ending in April),
about the man who ran over to me, sticking a pamphlet into my face (not good since I have allergic asthma also and print makes me wheeze). And yelling, “Jesus
died for your sins.” Being an atheist Jew, I was confused and thinking that was a good thing, said, “Good…” “Thanks” and the man got upset. My street-living pal, E, knew of my ignorance. He’s young and reads the Bible (New Testament) while
asking for money on the long street, Broadway.
Too many movies have mashed up what life is like for people with severe disabilities, as well as novels. When someone become a person with a (or many)
disabilities, ignorance of living well while disabled is unknown….until someone
explains it is possible to live independently (if you can find a wheelchair accessible place to live, attendant care at home….) and how.
So pleased to have finally posted this comment. I am happy to have found the blog! Thank you.
Welcome Sanda. Nice response to people who thrust pamphlets in your face. Gave him something to think about I suspect.
I like your point about movies, I’ve never really considered it before. There was some talk of doing a ‘Lincoln Rhyme’ movie. For those who aren’t Jeffrey Deaver fans Lincoln Rhyme was a detective injured in an accident and became a quadraplegic and now solves crime from his house with his trusty sidekick Amanda (?) who herself has crippling arthritis. There is some nice URST between them. Of course he has bleeding edge technology at his disposal which most people don’t have and which would be the envy of many a police district. But most importantly he has an astounding brain. I guess the point I (and Deaver) are trying to make is that although he can’t physically get out there, mentally he still can and still solve the nastiest crimes the police have to offer because he is still Lincoln Rhyme.
Apologies: The Bone Collector in 1999 was the first Lincoln Rhyme movie. I haven’t seen it, but apparently he was bedridden in the movie. I will have to check the book to see if he was bedridden in the book.
Welcome Sanda.
” Being an atheist Jew, I was confused and thinking that was a good thing, said, “Good…” “Thanks” and the man got upset.
Crackup!!
Christian Rossiter has just died.
R.I.P.
RIP indeed.