VSED: The Least Bad Option
“Your mother didn’t choose a terminal illness. She only chose not to let the disease pick when and how she would die.”
Choosing Death Over Suffering: Informing Patients About Physician Aid-In-Dying (Part 1)
As more states legalize PAD and the practice becomes more ethically accepted, it is important to determine a standard of care to guide physicians.
What Ways Can You Die When You’ve Had Enough of Life?
When you believe it’s time to go, what options do you really have? There are more than you you think, without having to resort to a violent ending.
Dave Warnock, Part 2
Part 2 of my conversation with Dave Warnock, an atheist who was recently diagnosed with ALS and who spent over 30 years as a fundamentalist evangelical Christian minister.
Dave Warnock, Part 1
Dave Warnock is a former fundamentalist evangelical Christian minister who rejected his faith and was later diagnosed with ALS. Here's the first of a two-part conversation.
Death from ALS — It May Not Be as Peaceful As You’d Like
Author and retired technology expert Harwell Thrasher shares his experiences caring for his wife Sharon after she was diagnosed with ALS.
One man’s experience using Washington’s PAD law
A Washington state man, Aaron McQ, described his illness (a rare form of ALS) as "terrifying . . . like waking up every morning in quicksand." He agreed to discuss his experience with Kaiser News to help provide more understanding about how users feel after qualifying for PAD. Over 3,000 terminally ill residents in the US have used PAD laws since Oregon's first took effect twenty years ago. This is one man's experience.
ALS and the End-of-Life Choice
Once ALS starts, it almost always progresses, eventually taking away the ability to walk, dress, write, speak, swallow, and breathe and shortening the life span. How fast and in what order this occurs is very different from person to person. While the average survival time is 3 years, about twenty percent of people with ALS live five years, 10 percent will survive ten years and five percent will live 20 years or more.