Question
17: Under what conditions would you request death?
This Question gives you an opportunity to wax philosophical.
Apart
from the technical means of bringing your life to an end,
what
factors and conditions would lead you to prefer death?
Perhaps you cannot think of any
conditions worse than death.
If
so, you will answer this Question briefly by saying
that
there are no circumstances under which you would request death.
This
would be a place where you could state that any level of life,
that
any quality of life,
is better than no life at all.
No
matter what, you always want to be kept alive by all possible means.
You
simply do not believe in ever choosing to end your own life.
Even if this is your first response to this Question,
you
could give your mind free rein to imagine
the
worst possible things that could happen to a human being.
If
something that bad
were to happen to you,
and
if there were no way for you ever to escape from it,
then
and only then would you request death.
You should also take your age and likely life-expectancy into account.
And
if you revise your Advance Directive every five years,
your
situation might be very different
when
you next revise your statement about requesting death.
For
example, as you get close to the natural end of your life,
you
might decide that if you became completely blind
and
unable to take care of
yourself,
you
would choose voluntary death.
As with the other Questions about life-ending decisions,
you
should consult with your proxies
to
get their feedback about your decisions concerning
the
conditions under which you would choose death.
Your
proxies might be responsible to carry out your decision.
So
they should agree with you
about
which conditions make merciful death is wise choice for you.
The
selection above is the beginning of Question 17 from the book:
Your
Last
Year: Creating Your Own Advance Directive for Medical Care.
If you click
this title, you will see
the complete table of contents.
Three more pages on this Question explore some possible conditions
under which you might request death.
If you
would like to see one person's Answer to this Question,
go to James
Park's Advance Directive for Medical Care.
Scroll down to Answer 17.