Compassion & Choices

Compassion & Choices
Category: Community Service/Non-Profit
Neighborhood: Downtown
Update - 1/2/2010 3 photos
"'The continuous torment of the leaking bag, the over active fistula, the hours spent lying flat in bed waiting for the nurse...the anxiety when a visitor comes that the leak should happen, awakening at night to find it has burst, wearing a dress I love and the fistula staining it, getting up two or three times a night to empty the bag...the saddest of those hours spent waiting for the nurse. When the bag leaks I have to take it off and lie flat in bed with wash rags to sponge off the horrible content of the fistula. The hole is deep, the discharge ugly, green, yellow. I often weep.'

Even the slightest movement was enough to dislodge the bag and send the acidic discharge spewing across her abdomen. Within a very short time, the skin around the opening was raw and abraded, prone to infection. When the discharge touched it, as it did all too frequently, the pain was searing.

...

Anais grew steadily weaker throughout December 1976, but Rupert continued to care for her until her lungs filled with fluid and she went into a coma...Her death certificate listed as causes cardiorespiratory arrest, severe malnutrition, and widespread metastatic carcinoma."

-from Anais Nin, A Biography (Putnam, 1995) by Deirdre Bair, pp.506, 514.

Torture of prisoners of war is widely outlawed according to the Geneva and other international Conventions...yet tolerated when it concerns the elderly, the frailest, the most vulnerable: the dying.

Compassion in Dying continues to educate the public across this country, in the face of societal ignorance, religious superstition (mainly the Catholic Church), and institutional inertia.
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11/29/2009
The national disgrace:

http://www.cbsnew...

We as individuals will all suffer for it. The nation pays for it.

It is neither compassionate nor humane how we treat the dying.

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12/21/2008
Thank you to everyone who read my review(s), whether you agreed with me or not.

I-1000 passed by a wide margin due to the honesty, openness, and courage of people in this state.

Compassion In Dying helped me greatly to better confront and understand a universal human situation.

The work is not done, of course.

But we have helped break through the pervasive denial--of both death and the right to a peaceful death--in society. And in doing so, I believe we have made life that more precious.

I urge everyone to prepare an Advanced Directive as well as a POLST form with their physician. Compassion in Dying can provide you with these forms.

In addition, I recommend the following books or DVD's (not an inclusive list, by any means). All can be found at the Seattle Public Library:

Peaceful Dying: The Step-by-Step Guide to Preserving Your Dignity, Your Choice, and Your Inner Peace at the End of Life, by Daniel Tobin, M.D.

Healing into Life and Death, Stephen Levine
Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying, Stephen Levine

The Orphaned Adult, Alexander Levy

My Mother Dying, by Hillary Johnson

Caring for Your Parents, WGBH (DVD)

Fatherless Sons: Healing the Legacy of Loss. Jonathan Diamond.

Power of Forgiveness, directed by Martin Doblmeier (DVD)

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10/6/2008
Go gently into the night...a parent, sibling, partner, spouse, friend.

Let us allow their final wishes to be respected. Dying is hard enough. Don't make it torture.

On November 4, we in Washington State will have the opportunity, thanks to Compassion and Choices (the new name of this organization) to become the second state in the country to pass into law a bill which will give to patients with a diagnosis of a terminal illness the right to chose to die with dignity and in peace.

This is a basic human right. It ought not to be in the hands of state or church to decide.

Oregon became the first state to approve such legislation. Its success has made it both a trail-blazer and a model for other states.

Please support I-1000. Former Governor Booth Gardner (who has Parkinson's disease), one of the principal backers, spoke movingly at the annual meeting in October of his "final campaign." Former Governors Gary Locke and Daniel Evans as well as the Seattle Times, among others, have endorsed I-1000.

The main opponent is (the political arm of) the Catholic Church. Sixteen years ago they defeated the first attempt (I-119) at passage of such legislation.

The mark of a civilized society is the compassion and understanding it extends to all of us at the end of our lives: the right to determine when, where, how, and with whom we share our last moments.

Compassion and Choices has helped made me aware of the value of living life with awareness. To that end, it provides case management to the terminally ill as well as advance directive packets to those interested.

There are no fees for its services.

The work is done overwhelmingly by volunteers, with a paid staff of three persons. The board of directors includes doctors, city attorney, a social worker, health care administrator, minister, psychologist, and a public advocate.

http://www.yeson1...
http://www.yeson1...

http://slog.thest...

http://www.candco...

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6/29/2007First to Review
After the shocking legal battle, with its attendant intervention by both G.W. and Jeb Bush, over the respective rights of Terri Schiavo's parents and her husband to determine whether or not the woman, who had been in persistent vegetative state for years, could die with dignity (have her feeding tube removed), the right for the terminally ill to make a decision to end their suffering bounced onto the nation's headlines.

The lead lawyer for the husband came to speak to this chapter of the national organization a year or so after the husband won. IThis year former Oregon Governor Barbara Roberts, who spearheaded the enactment of "Death with Dignity" into law in that state (the ONLY state to have such a law), spoke at the annual meeting.

Roberts has written that our society has kept death issues in a closet. We're unwilling to use the ``die'' word; we keep patients hooked up to cold tubes and respirators and heart monitors when ``what a dying person needs is comfort, closeness, dignity, and in some cases, pain control.''

http://www.msnbc....

In 2002, the Bush administration (under AG Ashcroft) attempted to overturn his law, the first in the nation but was unsuccessful.

See http://www.statel...

The state chapter is gearing up to put an initiative on the ballot in Washington State in 2008 that would allow physician-hastened death for the terminally ill, i.e., give these patients the right to choose how and when they exit. It has the support of former Washington governor Booth Gardner and others.

A small organization with a very very important purpose: the right to choose how one die: a natural death or prolonged suffering, not to be confused with euthanasia.
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Sponsors an annual keynote speaker, aids others in preparing advance (medical) directives as well a the Washington State POLST (Physicians Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment) form, as well as provides counseling and hospice referrals.

Brings attention to topics that many if not Americans would rather not hear about it at all. We all know it's more interesting to watch "American Idol" or "Survivor." But...

...it's a matter of life and death, your own and that of your loved ones.

You would probably end your dying pet's suffering, wouldn't you, instead of prolonging it.

This organization needs and deserves everyone's support. Most of the work is done by volunteers, apart from the staff of three.

Some indication of the difficulty of passing legislation here in Washington state--it' was the Catholic Church that spearheaded the effort to defeat a previous initiative (in 1991) at is to be found in an outstanding recent (12/02/07) cover story of the New York Times magazine:

http://www.nytime...

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