Quotes About End-of-life

To have control of my own mind... to go with dignity is less terryfying. When I look at both options I have to die, I feel this is far more humane.

But even when people are too weak to speak, or have lost consciousness, they can hear; hearing is the last sense to fade.

The resulting dehydration usually isn't troublesome, and actually can increase a dying person's comfort, by reducing the incidence of some uncomfortable symptoms such as vomiting, pain, or difficulty in breathing.

When Death Is Close

As her time grew near, your brother took her in. His family situation was under strain, but at least she had a bed there, her own room. It was almost good enough. But really none of it was good enough, even though it was better than many get. When she began to lose consciousness, your brother had her moved to a local hospice; you flew there in the dead of night, desperate to get there in time, so that she wouldn't die alone.

I'm choosing to suffer less. To put myself and my family through less pain.

Mid-life crises, in Fran's ageing view, are a luxury compared with what she has seen of end-of-life crises.

Ninety-nine percent of requested deaths go unrecorded. It's a secret crime.

The coming together of two laudable movements -- death with dignity and cost containment -- concerns me Patients have a right to die. But do they have a duty to die

Hospitals are terrible places to be and terrible places to die.

One reason issues like euthanasia are so salient today is that people no longer have positive ways to respond to suffering.

But for people who are at the end stages of dementia, death should not be fought against. It's a kindness. Let them go.

It has become easier to live longer but harder to die well.

Consequently, patients and their families were often reluctant to have doctors prescribe morphine, because in the popular imagination it was seen, as Richard put it, to be "a death sentence.