2008 Woodie Awards
The "Right to die:" An option for other states
Dominique Dumadaug
Issue date: 3/18/05 Section: Opinion
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Cancer runs in my mom's side of the family, affecting mainly the women. Most of them fought off the cancer and continued to live life cancer-free, but Diana was different.
For eight years my mother's cousin Diana had lived with cancer. She would fight whatever cancer she had, only to find it appear somewhere else in her body.
Whenever she found she had cancer in another part of her body, she was positive about it, being strong while losing her hair due to the many chemotherapy treatments.
Diana was a strong, beautiful and lively woman. And that was why it was so hard to see her slowly waste away after she stopped her cancer treatments. She gave up; she was tired of always having to fight, knowing she was never going to get any better.
Seeing her in the last months of her life was especially hard, as her body diminished in size, her skin hanging off her fragile, dying body.
Her strong voice was reduced to a whisper and she couldn't do anything by herself or be left alone, in fear she would try to do something without any help and end up hurting herself.
It was hard seeing her hooked up to a bunch of machines: one to help her breathe, a feeding tube, and one that her husband injected with morphine every few hours in hope she wouldn't feel any pain. She looked dead even though she wasn't.
Not only did it hurt to see such a strong-willed relative so weak, but to see all my other relatives in agony. It broke my heart to see everyone so sad, especially her only son Paul, who had just graduated from high school.
I know if there were some other way, she would have not died this way. Knowing her, she would have picked a more graceful way to die. She wouldn't have let us suffer, hoping to God that she wasn't.
I support a terminally ill patient's right to die. After seeing what happened to Diana made me support the notion more.
A doctor can give a diagnosis and prescribe something that may help the pain they are feeling, but only the patient knows what pain they are feeling and how much it really hurts.
For eight years my mother's cousin Diana had lived with cancer. She would fight whatever cancer she had, only to find it appear somewhere else in her body.
Whenever she found she had cancer in another part of her body, she was positive about it, being strong while losing her hair due to the many chemotherapy treatments.
Diana was a strong, beautiful and lively woman. And that was why it was so hard to see her slowly waste away after she stopped her cancer treatments. She gave up; she was tired of always having to fight, knowing she was never going to get any better.
Seeing her in the last months of her life was especially hard, as her body diminished in size, her skin hanging off her fragile, dying body.
Her strong voice was reduced to a whisper and she couldn't do anything by herself or be left alone, in fear she would try to do something without any help and end up hurting herself.
It was hard seeing her hooked up to a bunch of machines: one to help her breathe, a feeding tube, and one that her husband injected with morphine every few hours in hope she wouldn't feel any pain. She looked dead even though she wasn't.
Not only did it hurt to see such a strong-willed relative so weak, but to see all my other relatives in agony. It broke my heart to see everyone so sad, especially her only son Paul, who had just graduated from high school.
I know if there were some other way, she would have not died this way. Knowing her, she would have picked a more graceful way to die. She wouldn't have let us suffer, hoping to God that she wasn't.
I support a terminally ill patient's right to die. After seeing what happened to Diana made me support the notion more.
A doctor can give a diagnosis and prescribe something that may help the pain they are feeling, but only the patient knows what pain they are feeling and how much it really hurts.