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A 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.

Eventually, 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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