As I fretted my way through this past week, having sent off a response to Senator Ellison, yesterday,  with a copy to all 17 Cabinet Members, (A copy of the letter will be posted within the next day or two under Letters to Politicians dated March 28) I repeat a saying,  attributed to George Orwell:

If Liberty means anything at all, it means the Right to tell people what they don’t want to hear!

I know Senator Ellison, Minister for Justice and Customs, will not want to hear what I have to say but I always hold to the optimism that somewhere in the austere corridors of Parliament there may be an Administrative Officer,  who opens one of the seventeen copies and passes it on to a concerned Minister.  Perhaps there is someone in Parliament who will realize  that I am addressing an issue that 70% plus,  members of the public have stated they would like to see implemented, that is Voluntary Euthanasia with strict guidelines in place to protect those 30% who would be Pro Life, regardless.    We are the majority! and while I respect the rights of minorities, I also reserve my rights to being properly represented by my elected politicians

As I noted in my attachment to those 17 Cabinet Ministers, Pushing the subject of suicide out of the limelight (of newsworthiness) will not make it go away.

Death needs to be seen,  not as a medical failure on the part of the health professionals,  but as the normal extension of living that it is.    I believe in the sanctity of life, but I equally agree in the sanctity of death.  If it wasn’t meant to be, it wouldn’t happen – we’d all live for ever and ever, and the world would suffocate because of us not making way for new life.   Medical technology has really intervened to an extent that Mother Nature never intended, and where once it saved life and made it worth living, now it extends it to a point where neither the patient nor the relatives benefit.   However, the Medical Profession, make a very good living, financially, in keeping comatose and many others lingering when they’d rather be dead.    Keeping the “dead” “alive” is really big business.  

And what of the lady (an assessor?) purported to assist the housebound, with her briefcase, yet was “unable” to empty the commode pot of a  frail elderly person on request.   Even if it was not part of her job description would could expect her to assist an obviously disabled person having a particularly bad day,  as we all do on occasions.  Human charity or something!  

And again, also, do “ordinary” folk still mobile themselves, have any idea, that a pensioner can be required to pay for the use of her adaptable toilet seat, the frame on which she struggles from one room to another, that there is no provision for providing special footwear for malformed feet, or grips for malformed fingers, or a commode chair because medicine makes it difficult to get to a toilet in time, being so restricted in her movements.   I had always thought that the Health Department provided for pensioners through the hospital and council systems.  There is much discussion about possible solutions,  but no financial practical support.   I believe if your husband fought in a war, that is helpful for one to receive financial assistance, but a single mother who has spent her life supporting herself and her children (which will include millions of mothers ageing today!) is expected to provide for herself.

This is the reality that makes life so very difficult for the aged in our population.  The body can take years to die slowly, and it is a painful process psychologically,  for once active people to face the brutal reality that it is an irreversible process.  It is not “depression” that saddened people facing this dilemma, it is just the knowledge that at a certain point in their lives, asking for a commode to be emptied falling on deaf ears, is just the beginning of their loss of dignity.

Would you want this future for your Mother, would you want it for yourself?    

No!   Then please do something practical like writing to your local Member of Parliament, your Federal Member of Parliament, pick up a phone and ring them if unable to visit them personally.   Let them know you’re there.   Be Seen, Be Heard, Make them CARE please.

Do we really have to spend a lot of money establishing why many people are seriously depressed?  

I have just come from visiting an old lady of 88 and she tells me, plain and simply.   What is there left for her to live for?   Her life long companion has died some years ago now,  and the days stretch out before her without purpose!   She asks me questions for which I have no answers.  She is without a terminal illness, her previous volunteering day highlights have petered out, and she is desperately wants to be allowed to sleep her last, and not wake up.   She worries about her family finding her in anything other than a dignified appearance of finding her dead in her bed.   She so wishes the “peaceful pill” was available to her right now and wishes Exit International the very best of luck in achieving their aims and objectives.   (So do I!)

And here is another’s story.

“I looked after my mother for 13 years, at first the medical people wanted to place her in an institution, as she was speaking in a strange language, which nobody understood. We persisted by requesting further tests. By this time CatScans were available, which showed she had been suffering small strokes over speech and memory. Somehow I could intuitively guess by some of her actions and the body language with the language what she was trying to relate…………I also knew what her views on aged caring ???? were. SHE DID NOT HAVE DEMENTIA, but she also had been aware that something had been changing in her (brain, memory,) which she was afraid that people would think she was mad, so she tried to cover up her little mistakes.

I stand here now and say ” I am sorry Mum I did not understand”, because I am aware that I sometimes have to struggle for the right word ie the word refrigerator kept coming up when I was talking, but something was making me stop in mid sentence until Washing machine came up………..this is happening to me more often now…… spelling…….words that I knew so well allude me as I struggle to even find it in the dictionary. Perhaps dementia IS A PART OF THE AGING PROCESS, and not an illness, and depression in older people may in fact be part of frustration and sadness that you are no longer the person you once were and you are facing the reality of the long day to day futility of trying to still retain some dignity………….

We can’t all be like the media concept of healthy active, travelling aged community who have $$$ to spend. We do it for as long as we can.

So to answer your question in short, Yes I am glad I have the information I have to enable me to make my final exit. My choice as it would have been my mothers also.”

When an old lady died in the geriatric ward of a small hospital near Dundee in Scotland, it was believed that she had nothing left of value. Later, when the nurses were going through her meager possessions, they found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that copies were made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital.

One nurse took her copy with her to Ireland. The old lady’s sole bequest to posterity has since
appeared in the Christmas edition of the new Magazine in the North Ireland Association of
Mental Health. A presentation has also been made on her simple, but eloquent poem.

This little old Scottish lady, with nothing left to give to the world, is now the author of this
“anonymous “poem wining across the internet:

What do you see, nurse?
What do you see?
What are you thinking?
When you’re looking at me?
A crabby old woman,
Not very wise,
Uncertain of habit,
With faraway eyes?
Who dribbles her food
And makes no reply
When you say in a loud voice,
“I do wish you’d try.”
Who seems not to notice
The things that you do,
And forever is losing
A stocking or shoe?
Who resisting or not
Lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding,
The long day to fill?
Is that what you’re thinking?
Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse,
You’re not looking at me.
I’ll tell you who I am
As I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding,
As I eat at your will.
I’m a small child of ten
With a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters,
Who love one another.
A young girl of sixteen
With wings on her feet
Dreaming that soon now A lover she’ll meet.
A bride soon at twenty, My heart gives a leap

Remembering the vows That I promised to keep.
At twenty-five now, I have young of my own,

Who need me to guide
And a secure happy home.

A woman of thirty, My young now grow fast,
Bound to each other With ties that should last.
At forty, my young sons Have grown and are gone, But my man’s beside me
To see I don’t mourn.
At fifty once more, Babies play round my knee, Again we know children,
My love one and me.
Dark days are upon me,
My husband is dead,
I look at the future,
I shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing Young of their own, And I think of the years
And the love that I’ve known.
Am now an old woman And nature is cruel;
‘It is jest to make old age Look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles, Grace and vigor depart, There is now a stone Where I once had a heart.
But inside this old carcass A young girl still dwells, And now and again, My battered heart swells.
I remember the joys,
I remember the pain,
And I’m loving and living
Life over again.
I think of the years
All too few, gone too fast, And accept the stark fact That nothing can last.
So open and see,
NOT a crabby old woman:
Look closer…. See ME.

Remember this poem when you next meet an old person who you might brush aside without looking at the young soul within.

Mary’s note:  This article may well explain why I sat in excruciating pain with nerve damage unable to raise a doctor to come to my home at 3 am in the morning back in 1999.   The locum was going to take up to eight hours to arrive and was traveling from Sunshine, I told him not to bother at the doctor’s surgery opened at 9 am and that was down the road!…I am not sure how many doctors are able to visit the sick at home, but it can’t be very many.     It is most unfortunate to think that a doctor is not safe to visit genuinely ill people.  

Cabrini Hospital didn’t have an emergency department in 1999 and I felt far too ill to sit for five hours unattended, in a Public Hospital.   They do now but you must have hundreds of dollars to pay for their services.   A Catholic Hospital but please don’t expect charity.   Too ill to go to a hospital!    Yes, I could have gone into the Emergency Department but there I would have sat, crying with the pain, because what I was suffering from,  was not life threatening.   It was a case of the treatment being more painful than the ailment.    I always remembered taking my very young daughter to Prince Henry’s where she lay on a bed awaiting attention for five hours before I took her home without ever seeing a doctor in the Hospital.   Her ailment later required specialist care!

 Imagine, it is not going to improve with our ageing population requiring more intensive care out of hours.

The World Today – Wednesday, 1 March , 2006 12:46:00
Reporter: Jean Kennedy
ELEANOR HALL: A study by researchers at Newcastle University has revealed that some GPs are taking drastic measures to deal with violent patients.

The research found that some GPs have devised escape routes in their surgeries so they can flee an attacker and many have stopped making house calls or visiting certain areas altogether.

ELEANOR HALL: And that’s Dr Arn Sprogis speaking to Jean Kennedy

Sunday, March 19th, 2006: 5.45 pm

Under Related Readings – Facts and Figures I condensed a comprehensive article on the work undertaken in Melbourne’s Medical  Research Establishments.   An article taken from today’s Sunday Age Extra.

“Choices Comment”:

Given that many of the trials will be successful in denying death its trophy in the short term, one can hope that at some point in our lives that we will be allowed to die when we want to. If politicians continue to allow technology to develop to a point where people can’t be allowed to die, when age and senility takes over, what will becoming of us?  Are the elderly to be likened to a sausage machine factory, being processed without a future.

Death is not an admission of failure by the medical profession.  It is the natural progression of life.  We are meant to die eventually of what nature (and for those who believe in God) intended.   Many of us do not want to live indefinitely, just in the very best state we can,  while we have life,  but death is not an enemy to be avoided at all costs. .

Can we just be kept reasonably healthy until it is time to die? We can be healthy, but crippled, blind, arthritic, very tired, feeble and frail. (I know an elderly lady who eats one particular type of tinned fish because it is the only tinned food she can manage to open on her own. Bottles are sealed beyond her capabilities)

I’ve never seen a dilapidated pharmaceutical company building so I don’t believe their investments are out of the goodness of their hearts to help their fellow man. Research and Health is very big business and keeping people alive long after their used by date is looking more formidable as technology seeks to override what Mother Nature intended.    Big Business in “Health Care” but bigger relief in being permitted to die when enough is enough!…..  One services the Industry, the other, the Patient!  Who can win this one?

May I suggest that we all get behind the Hon, Sandra Kanck, a Democrat,  who will be in the very best position to test the legitimacy of the suicide related materials law?.  As what she is attempting to do is for the benefit of all the pro choice people in Australia, the very least we can do is make sure she is heard loud and clear.   Please write and support her.

The Advertiser, Adelaide
THU 16 MAR 2006,
Election Countdown March 18
By GREG KELTON

Ms Kanck, a strong supporter of euthanasia, will detail various ways by which people commit suicide.

She will make the speech as part of her move to re-introduce her “dignity in dying” legislation which has failed to get support in previous Parliaments.

Ms Kanck said there was a range of untested legal issues revolving around the federal legislation.
The constitutional problem facing Ms Kanck revolves around the implied protection of freedom of political speech and the
federal Parliament’s power to affect the privileges of state parliaments and their MPs.

———————

DIAGNOSIS: CANCER

You’ve just been told you have cancer.

“DIAGNOSIS: CANCER” will be broadcast on TUESDAY MARCH 21st at 7.30pm on SBS. Repeated on FRIDAY at 1pm and MONDAY at 2pm.

SBS is undertaking a survey asking the question on their website:

Should cancer sufferers be optimistic about their chances of survival with increases in technology? 

The response to date has been 64% Yes – 34% No.

It is one thing to survive cancer but there is always the ongoing knowledge of its return with less chance of a successful outcome, and with this in mind, we need to be mindful of addressing the issues of severe pain and suffering without the hope of recovery.  It is not everyone’s idea of a good time to lie in a bed indefinitely being too ill to care or focus on outside interests.  

The politicians are going to have to address the “survival” repercussions which can be more painful than the cancer itself.   With one in four affected by cancer many of those decision makers of today will form part of the statistics tomorrow!…. Doctors have ready access to the final solution but do the law makers have the same luck?

I have addressed an email through their website requesting that a further program could be considered for those who don’t make it out of remission with cancer – with a Public forum on Palliative Care / Versus Choice.   I will await a response to my suggestion.   In the meantime may I suggest you access their website and participate in both the survey and their feedback column with suggestions of your own perhaps.

It is even too early for the birds!   I hope all those people who sleep throughout the night appreciate it. 

To wile away the time without thinking about choice in dying and too early (or too late) to put a TV on I picked Phillip Adams “More Unspeakable Adams” and wanted to share his thoughts on ageing with you (well some of them perhaps).   It is times like this when I wonder if I am too late or too early to have a glass of wine.  Is it very late at night or very early morning?

sic Pages 176 – 178.

“A few days back, I heard myself complaining that I was half dead.  Whereupon the words rang in my ears with the urgency of a fire alarm and the finality of a funeral knell.  For they were literally true.

The road ahead, which once promised to take me to some dazzling future of discovery and now leads into deepening gloom – and if you squint you can just see the dark of the end of the tunnel.  It is a road pot-holed with prostate ops, superannuation payouts (the geriatric jackpots) and, worst of all, the most terminal of conditions, galloping irrelevance…….

Middle age is when you think of reasons not to go to the pictures tonight, when you turn up the heat and turn down the volume.  It’s when these feelings of deja vu are very probably true.  To me middle age is to be nothing in particular, like middle-class.  Middle age is when your dandruff is cured, albeit by baldness.  Just as your toothaches are dulled by dentures.

It’s when ambition withers, step stretch, arches fall and you find yourself beneath the spreading atrophy. 

Middle age is when you start becoming a political eunuch, for the simple reason that the urgency ebbs out of issues.  It is the time when you realise that the world is not going to be saved in the next ten minutes by some ideological cavalry charge, that humanity is not going to be transformed and that injustice will probably be with us at least until Christmas time.   At middle age you’ve lost any vestige or belief in the value of revolutionary change, having observed that totalitarian cures are as bad as the disease.

Middle age is when cancer ceases to be a birth sign and becomes a death threat, when feverishness is a symptom of influenza and not infatuation.  When a wrinkled brow is not so much a momentary expression but a permanent feature.

Middle age is when you see the mistakes you made in ignorance of the mistakes made by those who went before you.   Middle age is when you find you’re repeating yourself while insisting the young have nothing to say.   Middle age is when the last vestige of adolescence has the become the first clear symptom of obsolescence.   It ’s the time when you’d happily swap your gout for acne.

Until recently middle age was always receding as I advanced, like some sort of grim rainbow.  From memory, it always seemed to be fifteen years ahead while out and out senility was a further ten away.  Now suddenly, I’ve caught up.  And worse still, I can imagine a time when middle age will be something behind me.   I wasted time and now doth time waste me.”

Don’t you just love his language?   I so wish I had his wit and humor!

______________________________

Later this morning I am going to my first Humanist meeting, although I’ve been a Member for perhaps two years.   The reason why I am attending this particular meeting is that the DWDV draft Charter is up for discussion and it will interest me to see how formal documentation evolves through the two Organisations.   I was quite pleased to know that the ex VESV had the confidence in its mandate to allow open discussion about its contents, and to invite constructive criticism, from “Outsiders”.  A Charter of Principles to support dying with dignity.    I am hoping that I will be able to hold my tongue and allow others their point of view should it differ from mine (and, of course they will!)………..

What is the Humanist Society of Victoria?   Quoting directly from their own explanation, It is a non-profit, educational organisation which works to build a more civilised society with ethics based on human values.   It considers that reason, fee inquiry and a scientific approach enable us to understand our universe and our place in it.   It defends freedom and democracy and provides a positive alternative to religious and dogmatic creeds.  It supports separation of church and state, and secular education.

If the Humanist Society is an organisation you’d like to know more about there is a Link to their Website,  in the drop down menu bar, under “Additional”  across the top of this page.    Alternatively please give Marie Hodgens a ring on 03 9833 4732 or email her hmhodge@optusnet.com.au   Their website would direct people in other States.

Admittedly I rarely recommend any product, but this organisation is a very diverse group of people with lots of offer.  Try them.  I refuse to permit advertising on this website because it is such a pain having the distraction of it, but in this case, I am the advertiser without their knowledge or consent but I don’t think they’ll mind.

“I Want to Live” by Al-Antony Moody is a very touching short article which I have submitted under Additional – Related Readings – Other, the last item on the list of subjects. (Drop Down Menu)   Any one who reads it will be touched by its poignancy.

And there is a young lady living in Sydney who personifies the battle that people with chronic illness live daily and face their uncertain future with courage and fortitude.  How much easier it would become for us all if only the Government could experience the pain of the individual constituent?.   She is pinning her hopes on voluntary euthanasia being her right of passage to a good death, after long periods of suffering during which  her pain free time is spent highlighting the plight of the chronically infirmed.  I sincerely hope her doctors are among the 40% who listen intently to their patients wishes when it all becomes too much.   She is blest with a loving family surrounding her.   Others are not so fortunate!   My friend leads such a busy life lobbying that she really hasn’t got too much spare time “worrying about her future” which is also a blessing others can’t always share.   I found tears welling up, in spite of myself and my good intentions,  as I sat yet again in the Doctor’s surgery facing yet another challenge last week……unfounded yes, but it could have been so easily the other way.

I have been very quiet haven’t I?  Not from choice though!….The storms of a fortnight ago wiped out a computer that is imperative to my needs.

But in the meantime, I have been a busy little beaver, not with Choice but with personal health issues, like a small growth on the leg.   Given my prognosis it was with some misgivings I had it removed and awaited the test results, taking the opportunity to have full blood tests at the same time.   On Friday March 3rd I was given the all clear with both the lump and the blood tests, so I live to fight another day.  For each of the three appointments I was almost late for each of them, so remain convinced the mind is a very powerful tool.

Complacency is not something anyone in remission with cancer takes for granted.   A month ago I had been bitten by a spider and had a puncture mark with blistering, headaches, and a general seediness, so of course, blamed everything on the very dead spider.  Then when I was told the bite wouldn’t have given me these symptoms, I worried unnecessarily.

______________

I have so much reading to catch up on that I think I will have to come out of retirement and actually work in a disciplined manner.

______________

I watched the Compass program on Channel 2 last night, A Parish with No Priests, filmed in Tasmania, the home of ex Senator Harradine & the current Senator Abetz, his great friend and mentor.  

The focus of the program was to highlight to the Vatican the plight of the Catholic Church with dwindling numbers of congregation and an even worse shortage of Priests.   It was established that 70 – 80% of churchgoers are women.   In the 1950s some 1300 men were ordained Priests, but by 2006, only 160 were inducted.

The subject character was a Priest, Father Fred McGregor, a personable enough gentleman, on loan from Sydney to Tasmania.   It was interesting to learn that there are about nine Priests in Sydney,  in his age group 30 – 40yo  with the vast majority in their 60s.    There is a 75% shortfall in the availability of Priests coming up through the ranks.  And Tasmania have lost 18 Priests (to death) in the last couple of years.    Allendale Catholics get to hear Mass once every two months as Fr McGregor spreads his load of 3 masses,  over some 20,000 square kilometres.   A Catholic couple having their twins baptized thought that “baptism was nice, but not essential”.   Oh!, I thought, that is a major shift in attitude!….. I was taught, that unbaptised people would nevverrr evvvver see the face of God.

The shortage of Priests is so drastic the Church has introduced the Special Ministry.  A group of worthwhile Catholics who conducts services distributing the “Body of Christ” to the congregation, and even conduct funerals.   Yet through all this, women will still not be worthy of ordination into the Priesthood. 

Even the Special Minister felt unworthy of conducting the Service and I wondered about a Religion that takes away any sense of joy in participating in the Church Service.   They always seemed to be apologising for their sins and beseeching God for favors.   Why not just enjoy life and living knowing one can only do their best and nothing else could or should be expected of them.

Unless they start importing Priests from the Third World Countries where I am sure there is an abundance of them, the Catholic Church will not survive if they continue to promote “only Men as Being Worthy” to represent Christ here on earth.  Talking logically when I was a young girl, I would have been banished to Hell Fire for eating meat on a Friday, the church in its wisdom saw the stupidly of this commandment and abolished it.   Why not do the same with believing only men are worthy to consecrate the host?  Moving with the times,  in a very wise corporate decision and even better for business.

Father McGregor tells us the shortage of Priests has nothing to do with the vow of chastity (yeah right!) and says that other denominations are struggling equally with failing to attract young people.  (They’re all at Hilltop in Sydney).   I wonder myself whether their declining numbers is because of the Church’s failure to come into the twenty first century and treat women as their equal, not their servants to provide cheap labour for cleaning, flower decorating and catering!  

Women today are educated and even the Priest had to admit were up to 80% of the church attendees.  Why can’t the Church give credit where credit is due and acknowledge the role women play in their “blind sense of following the leader”.   One parishioner said she felt incomplete because of the lack of services available to her parish.

If I am still around in five years time, I will try and follow up where Father McGregor is situated then and whether he remains a Priest.   I appreciated his care of the parishioners when he said that that even after 12 hours work loads on a Sunday and three masses, that for each congregation they had a right to expect equal value of his time and commitment, even though his last mass was at 6 pm.  That 40 churchgoers had the same expectations of him, that a 400 member congregation wanted of him.

To avoid burnout of an obviously dedicated man of God, surely some of the rich Catholics (try the Politicians, but not taxpayers, of course) can pool their resources and get this man a helicopter to fly around the countryside one day a week.   His enthusiasm may last longer, that driving home for one and a half hours after work………Is he setting the standard for the introduction of Mr Howard’s Industrial Relations Legislation passed in Parliament but not yet fully impacting on society?  And is he not a menace to other road users have spent the entire day, meeting, greeting and generally acting appropriately with each new face and circumstance?

The first priest I’ve seen interviewed in many a long day that sounded like an ordinary human being and not a pompous, sanctimonious Man of the Church, I hope he fulfills his dreams in life.    I felt, perhaps there was hope for the Clergy yet!

Perhaps there will be a place for Voluntary Euthanasia in the new order of the Church. (In line with Women Priests) by necessity.

Like the Labor Party, without change,  the Church will end up with three hands clapping in an empty room.

_________________________ 

The New Zealand Herald: March 5, 2006

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/location/story.cfm?l_id=129&ObjectID=10371136