Freedom ❤️‍🩹

 

If a doctor told you:

"You have an incurable disease and you don't have much time left to live, but we could make a hole in your belly (gastrostomy) to feed you, then we'll make a hole in your neck (tracheotomy) to allow you to breathe, we'll insert a tube into your urethra (vesical catheter) to allow you to urinate, and a nurse will empty your bowels daily. Of course, we'll have to give you antibiotics to contain the infections caused by the tubes, and you'll inevitably have to endure bedsores, painful sores that eat away at the flesh right down to the bone.

But you could live a year or more!"

And if a doctor told you:

"You have an incurable disease, but we could minimize your suffering and, at your request, grant you a painless death. Unfortunately, science has its limits"...

Which doctor would you prefer to be treated by?

At night, sometimes I can't create the mental vacuum that allows me to ignore the sound of the ventilator, and then that hoarse panting of a mortally wounded beast invades my brain, paralyzing my neurons, blocking their synapses, transforming sensations into terror. It's not the fear of dying; I've already died once, and it was like turning off the light, turning the page, closing a door. There's nothing metaphysical or transcendental about it...there's no reward or punishment, pleasure or pain, above or below, high or low. So it's not having to die that torments me, but having to live.

Euthanasia isn't the product of an absurd omnipotence that would push man to want to control death; this omnipotence is already present in intensive care units and is called technology. Euthanasia is, in many cases, the only way to counter the omnipotence of technology, returning death to death.

[…]

I love life, Mr. President.

Life is the woman who loves you, the wind in your hair, the sun on your face, a nighttime walk with a friend. 

Life is also the woman who leaves you, a rainy day, the friend who disappoints you. I'm neither melancholic nor manic—dying horrifies me, unfortunately, what's left of me is no longer life—it's just a stubborn and senseless determination to maintain biological functions. My body is no longer mine... it's there, spread out before doctors, assistants, relatives. Montanelli would understand me. If I were Swiss, Belgian, or Dutch, I could escape this extreme outrage, but I'm Italian, and here there is no mercy.

Piergiorgio Welby ❤️