
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 20, 1991                   TAG: 9103200420
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PATRICIA HUTSON
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PETS PUT OUT OF PAIN, BUT PEOPLE. . .

I DIFFER with Eric Q. Underwood's assessment (letter, Jan. 22) that "most people disagree with letting someone die when it is in that person's best interest." I think these people are in the minority and that this is proven by the large number of people who write for living wills after publicity in such cases as Nancy Cruzan's.

Mr. Underwood is "surprised" at these people. I am appalled at them and at a society so compassionate toward animals that humane societies are operated to accept and destroy strays without hope of adoption for "humane" reasons.

A society that puts pets to sleep when they are in great pain and terminal condition, yet uses high-technology machines (designed originally to keep people with reversible conditions alive) to prolong a terminally ill patient's life even when the person is in intolerable pain or irreversible coma, is a cruel contradiction to the words "humane society."

Twenty years ago we lost our first son, Scott, 9 years old. He died almost instantly after being struck by a car.

Six years later our second son, Stephen, was struck by a car as he got off the school bus. Stephen was taken to Roanoke by a life-saving crew kind enough to allow me to ride with them.

I will never forget the inhuman sounds of pain that came from deep within my 10-year-old son as he tried to regain consciousness. It seemed to tear his heart out as well as my own.

Although I try to limit my prayers to the Lord's Prayer as the Bible instructs us, at that time I prayed silently that God would let it be his will that my son suffer as little as possible, and if he had to die at such an untimely age or live in a vegetative state, that he be allowed to depart this life as soon as possible.

I will never forget how hard it was to watch air pumped into my son's obviously dead body for 24 hours because the law required the doctors to monitor his non-existent brain waves for that amount of time.

I hope Mr. Underwood and his family will accept my sincere sympathy and admiration. I don't believe my sanity would have withstood having to watch either of my sons suffer as they had to watch their daughter's agony. Stephen's doctor explained to us (with tears in his own eyes) that Stephen also had a broken neck and numerous other injuries and had he lived his life would have been very difficult.

Recently my father died an agonizing death due to cancer, and his life was prolonged past what he need have suffered. We all have to die sometime, and although technology has provided us with miracles, it also has been carried too far when it prolongs suffering needlessly.

People who oppose letting others "die with dignity" when they are suffering needlessly while awaiting imminent death should try to exercise their imagination and put themselves in a similar situation. It's very possible that someday they will actually find themselves in one, and although they might think now it wouldn't change their attitude, once the pain begins it might well be a different story.

by CNB