Please don’t let me suffer

by Roberta Ness

How modern medicine—and honest conversation—can make dying less terrifying

Hope you’re keeping cool as the weather turns sultry. Maybe today’s cup of comfort should be iced, eh? Today, we’ll be grappling with a subject that is as blistering as a summer’s day. Our question is this: does dying inevitably involve agony, either emotional or physical or both? Many people quietly think, “I don’t fear death. I fear pain and suffering.” Such admission may feel cowardly. After all, isn’t our ideal of courage facing death with equanimity? Well – I can tell you that personally, I’m a wimp. I don’t want my end of life to be tortured. But good news. My research has given me reassurance – and I think by the end of this blog, you’ll agree - that, given modern medicine, much of dying-anxiety is the worry itself.

Loss of control.

Loss of control - three simple words that strike terror into our hearts. It’s the reason you might fear flying more than driving even though you are 10,000x more likely to die in a car than in a plane accident. My husband, David took his own life prematurely by stopping eating and drinking as his Alzheimer’s disease spun out of control. He could not stand that his ability to make his own decisions and to care for himself was being ripped away. He preferred forsaking his beloved life to forsaking his independence…