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| Yes | 22% | 102 votes | Total: 454 votes | |
| No | 78% | 352 votes |
Yes
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Add to FavoritesA DNR is document that allows a patient to make his or her wishes known should she be incapacitated by illness or trauma, and that illness or trauma cannot be resolved.
If you do not wish to be kept alive by machines, or be "brought back from the brink of death" only to face an ongoing decline of the physical self, signing a Do Not Resuscitate order allows you to convey those wishes to medical staff and family.
It is a form of passive suicide. Allowing yourself to die when the natural order of things is trying to kill you is a form of suicide.
If you choose to go gentle into that good night, then family and medical staff should respect your wishes.
If you sign a DNR, you know you are going to die, and soon. You know that there is no cure coming in the next week that will return your body to a healthy state. You know that the disease or trauma that has robbed you of your health will kill you. You are in pain. Every moment is a moment of misery. You are living in a state of decay.
When you see the light at the end of the tunnel, you don't want anyone pulling you back. The medical team has tubes and machines and injections and can take all sorts of extraordinary measures to bring you back to your now miserable life.
But you have chosen to go. Choosing not to use the wonders of modern medicine to evade death for just a little while longer is passive suicide.
Not wishing to be revived, and revived again, and again and again is passive suicide. Should you choose to sign a DNR so you can die without doctors and nurses poking and prodding you or shooting electricity through your body like so many Frankensteins, your wishes should be respected.
Passive suicide is a choice. It is a decision. And it only exists because of the alternative. Because modern medicine can keep a body alive even after death, there are those who believe that every measure should be taken to maintain life, that a breathing body is life, that defying death is the purpose of life. It is their choice, then, not to sign a DNR, and to be resuscitated again, and again, and again, and again with doctors and nurses poking and prodding and shooting electricity through their bodies like so many Frankensteins.
Eventu ally, though, death will win. So should you die in spite of all the wonders of modern medicine, you can go to your grave knowing you did not commit passive suicide. You just died.
Learn more about this author, Shelly Mcrae.
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No
The decision to sign a DNR order is one that is highly personal and one that should be made after much thought and discussion with your loved ones. It is one that should be made long before your mind is "muddled" with any mind altering drugs. With technology becoming better and better, and medical care becoming more advanced, the possibility of keeping someone's body alive, long after their mind has gone is a fact and one that can be a living nightmare.
Many of us who have worked in the health care field have Living Wills, which include a DNR order. Having watched and participated in many "Codes", knowing how brutal it can be on the human body, the wish to not have that kind of treatment preformed on one's self, after a trauma, or an illness has left you a shell of your former self, is not passive suicide. To allow a person to die with dignity, offering them comfort measures and relief from pain should be our top priority if that is what they have expressed is their wish.
Having been at the bedside of too many people, in pain, suffering for days, pleading to die, to be released from the torture they are going through, to have to perform that final insult on their bodies because they did not have a DNR order is torture for the health care professional as well. When we do CPR, we are not gentle; it is hard, and brutal. Ribs are broken; at times, a lung can be punctured in our efforts to bring this frail body back to life, again. Tubes are inserted down the throat into their lungs so we can breathe for them. Large size IV's are started, leaving the arms bruised for days, if the attempt is successful. The person is in more pain that they were before if we bring them back from the brink of the peace they so desperately wanted, only to last for a few, painful hours more.
Of course, I am not saying to never do CPR on anyone. It has saved the lives of countless people. People who have been struck by lightning, drowned, or had other accidents. But in a lingering illness, or just old age, having a DNR signed is just saying that you want to have the final say in the way you die. A death with dignity! Without someone pounding on your chest, inserting things into every orifice, causing you more pain and suffering, and then, not even knowing if it will work.
Passive suicide: Never!
Learn more about this author, P. M. Montgomery.
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