student sample essay
Treatment or Euthanasia?
About eight years ago my grandfather, Dallas Thomas, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease involves the deterioration of neurons in the hippocampus, a structure in the brain responsible for the distribution and retrireview of memory. At the time he was diagnosed I was ten years old and didn’t know what the disease was. As the years went by my grandfather’s condition gradually got worse. There were times when he couldn’t remember my name and he wasn’t able to do the simple things that he used to. He had forgotten our favorite card games, and traditions on holidays. He lost the ability to do basic things like tie his shoes or go to the bathroom, and he couldn’t remember directions and how to get to one place from another. His face began to change and he no longer looked confident but confused. He had wrinkles in his forehead that projected concentration and deep thinking and a glaze over his eyes that suggested he felt lost and uncomfortable around the places and people that should comfort him the most. Four years ago, my grandfather was put into a nursing home that specialized in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. From there his quality of living decreased more rapidly rather than gradually. He was unable to communicate thoughts and ideas, and at random moments he would get very angry as if he was being ignored rather than understood when he spoke. He was also changing physically. He got skinnier and his coloring changed from a rosy pink to a pasty white. He stopped eating hard foods, and his once very firm handshake became very timid and shaky. The once very intimidating war hero now seemed like a small, confused child.Days then months passed and every day spent with my grandfather became more and more cherished. Everyone knew it was only a small matter of time before his death. Early in September of this year my grandfather caught pneumonia and got very sick. It was easy to see the pain and understand the terror that he felt when he was unable to catch a breath. Having asthma, I know what it is like to be unable to breathe. You try so hard to get a breath of air that it feels like your chest is going to burst. It is the feeling of suffocation, and the terror that you experience as you struggle to breathe is overwhelming. Even though he was unable to communicate his pain to the doctor, my personal experiences helped me identify with his suffering. The doctor gave my grandfather morphine to ease his pain and I watched as he slowly drifted into a light sleep. His breathing became very shallow and the pauses between breaths became longer and longer until they ceased. He died peacefully in his sleep. Rather than a tragedy his death felt relieving. We had all watched this amazing man deteriorate to nothing for years, and finally his struggle was over. Although my grandfather suffered from a terminal illness, it is a fact that his disease was not the cause of his death. The morphine that was administered to him to relieve his pain had actually caused him to die. His disease was fatal and consequently he would have eventually died but without the morphine it is possible that he might have remained alive for several more hours or even days. But by giving my grandfather morphine the doctor was not practicing euthanasia. Euthanasia is the deliberate act of ending a human’s in order to free them from unbearable suffering. Morphine is given to patients to manage pain and suffering, and the death of the patients in reaction to the morphine is merely a secondary effect. Morphine is effective for reducing pain because it reduces activity in the medulla. The medulla, located in the brain stem, regulates involuntary actions such as heart rate and respiration and simple responses like coughing and swallowing. Morphine works in three stages. First, it blocks receptors, which stops the pain impulses from traveling to the brain. Second, it causes the patient to fall asleep, because it reduces the level of arousal generated by the medulla and less arousal is available to be sent to the higher areas of the brain. But at very high dosages, morphine can reduce the activity in the medulla to the point that respiration ceases so the patient stops breathing and dies (Holmes 10). Many times it is difficult for a doctor to determine the severity of pain in a patient who is unconscious or otherwise unable to communicate with the him or her. If the amount of pain in the patient is unknown, doctors may not know the actual amount of morphine that should be used or even if morphine should be administered. Even though my grandfather was unconscious just prior to his death, his suffering was so extreme that it was obvious to any observer.Active euthanasia, the deliberate ending of someone’s life in order to relieve them of their suffering, is a complex ethical issue. But death caused by opiates administered in order to manage severe pain is different than euthanasia. I don’t believe that the larger ethical issues surrounding active euthanasia should prevent doctors from using morphine to ease the intolerable pain and suffering of their dying patients. Even though the administering of morphine may hasten death, that death is inevitable anyway. The use of morphine by doctors can give the suffering, terminally ill patient the opportunity to exit life peacefully and without pain. (923)