I am interested in your thoughts testing Metformin and aspirin, both inexpensive
And widely available on someone like your friend.
A review of pubmed.org cancer + Metformin and pubmed.org cancer + aspirin will
Show you reasons why the combination may work well. The dose and frequeny
Requires. A bit of work. Both drugs are old and widely used. The will not be widely studied
For cancer because of their low cost.
My mother drove herself to the md and likely died in the ambulance. By the time I came to collect
The corpse her written wishes had been of no use, a tube down the throat and one in the neck.
She wanted none of that.
Aspirin and Metformin may bring some good to those have exhausted
Many options.
A few references are below.
Results: 2
Death Without Dignity
The End is a series about end-of-life issues.
The California Senate’s passage of theEnd of Life Option Act last week, which would allow terminally ill people to choose to end their lives, filled me with both joy and sadness.
The bill — which needs the approval of the State Assembly and Gov. Jerry Brown to become law — would have made all the difference when I tried to help my friend Robin kill herself five years ago.
We’d been friends for 22 years. She had pancreatic cancer, and no chance of recovery. So when she could no longer tolerate music, watch television, read, eat or rise from her bed, it wasn’t a complete surprise when another friend called to say that she wanted our help to end her suffering.
This was going to be the Good Death, carefully orchestrated, carried out in a circle of love.
I chronicled this story in my memoir “I See You Made an Effort,” except that I didn’t tell the whole truth. I wrote that I wasn’t sure of the legality of this act. But I knew we were committing a crime in the state of California.
It was late in the afternoon, on a Saturday, when five of Robin’s closest friends assembled at her bedside. The plan was to give her drugs that would help her fall into a deep sleep from which she would mercifully not awaken.
As I understood it, we were going to use a combination of her cornucopia of prescription medications. Her home health aide retreated to the spare bedroom and we took charge.
We toasted her. We kissed her. We told her we loved her. The air was charged with adrenaline and sorrow.
It really felt like a celebration as we started upping her pain medication. One by one we pushed the delivery button on her morphine drip. We all wanted our fingerprints recorded. I suggested we put her dog’s paw on the pump to really confuse things. It was the best party you never want to be invited to attend.
She had Paxil, Wellbutrin, Ativan, morphine, oxycodone, clonazepam and Haldol in her system when we puffed her pillows, smoothed her comforter and settled in for the night. We thought it would go more easily if we left the room, so we turned on a baby monitor to keep tabs on her as she drifted off. But after a few hours it became clear that the drugs were having the opposite effect. She seemed more energetic than possible for someone who was about to die.
None of us were medical professionals. Were we causing her unintended suffering? It was a terrible and terrifying responsibility.
Under the guise that we’d upped the medication because Robin was experiencing pain, we phoned one of the hospice nurses. She explained that some patients have a paradoxical reaction to benzodiazepines and advised us to increase the medications even more.
Her family in New Jersey had all but left us in charge of her care. We decided to press on and up the medication. We made sure she was comfortable before we hunkered down waiting for her to let go. Just let go.
It was 3 a.m. when we heard her calling for us. Two of us went in.
“I need to get up and walk. I need interaction,” she said as she tried to lift her skeletal frame from the bed.
“No, Robin, you can’t get up,” the other friend said flatly.
Something inside me went numb. I said nothing. Silently, robotically, I shifted her position on the bed. I tucked her in tightly. I turned my back to her. I walked out of her bedroom and closed the door behind me.
That’s the moment I replay in my mind, late at night, when I look down at the delicate Art Deco ring that she always wore and that’s on my finger now. How totally dependent she was on us. How her bony hands had pulled at her nightshirt to cover herself when I moved her. How her attempt at modesty was the last gesture I would witness from my friend Robin.
The five of us huddled in the living room. “If we go back in,” one friend reasoned, “Robin’s going to keep reaching out for us and it’s only going to get harder on her.” There had been so many goodbyes. Every time she’d come close to dying in those last months, we’d all rushed to her bedside. We were wrung out, all of us, and especially Robin.
“You’re losing me,” she had reminded us, “but I’m losing all of you at once.”
I made the appalling decision not to go back into her bedroom for another farewell. One by one we departed until just one friend remained with her when she slipped into a coma, late Sunday afternoon.
Only the home health aide was at her home at the time of her death on Monday morning.
If medical aid in dying had been legal, her doctor could have written the right prescription and allowed her to have the more graceful exit she wanted. Still, as imperfect as it was, we gave her a memorable send-off. At the very end, she was alone, as we are all in death, but right before that, she was in a circle of love. I believe she knew that. I have to.
Annabelle Gurwitch is an actress and the author, most recently, of “I See You Made an Effort.”
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