Mother admits ending sons life

[vacay]

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I'm not sure how I feel about this?
On the one hand she didn't want to see her son suffer anymore. But surely a 7 year old when he asked his mom to take the pain away didn't mean to end his life?

Sorry if there is already a thread going I haven't checked

They already do this sort of thing in hospitals for people who are dying anyway. With palliative sedation.

I wouldn't be lauding your own virtue here. Your poor mother. Most decent people, if they could, would seek to shorten their loved ones' suffering not force them to endure it in the name of their religion. God will not be patting you on the back, Summerose. Not at all.

My father spent the last four weeks of his life writhing in agony,if I could've ended his suffering I'd have done so in a heartbeat.

I don't believe in god.

Same

Well said!

Having had contact with others experiencing the latter end of a cancer I cannot feel anything other than she wanted him to be free of torment. I can't feel anything other than compassion for the family.

My husband died in agony from cancer - the end of life care was appalling. If my children were older I would have helped him die. It was bad enough losing him but to watch him die like that has left us traumatized. I totally understand and respect her decision and I will continue to campaign for an assisted dying law as will my children

I don't understand the difference between her doing that and hospice/drs giving the big doses at the end of life.
I don't understand why we keep humans suffering and let animals go to sleep gently.

I wept when I read this earlier today. That poor woman, her poor son. There is nothing more to say. Truly heartbreaking.

I only hope, if I was in this situation, that I would have the courage to do what she did.

She would have loved her son more than anything.

^ this

So long ago but she must have had to relive that every day afresh. How painful for her. It's achingly sad.
I signed the 'dignity in dying' petition.

I sat with my dad in a hospice, the day before he died, and he seemed relatively peaceful.

But it doesn’t always work like that sadly. Years later I sat with my grandmother as she was waiting to die. She was extremely distressed, crying, and kept repeating how much pain she was in. She spent around six weeks in this state. It was awful.

@Summerose I can't agree that only God can take a life otherwise it works the other way too, so no insulin if your body can't produce it, God "made" you that way. I think Stephen Fry summed it up best when asked if God were real and you met him what would you say, and his reply was “Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain?"

Having watched my own strong, full of life Mother die from the cancer that robbed her of her dignity, her very essence of who she was, the agony of the last 2 days where she was on end of life care, completely unconscious on a morphine driver with us just waiting for her to take her last breath, I wish we could have pushed more morphine into her wasted, bald, crunched up body, wrecked from chemotherapy. It broke all of us, even 15 years on it still physically hurts to think of her like that. I try to drown it out with the memories of her vibrant laughter, her joy in her grandchildren.

I feel for the Mother in the news article, I really do, incredibly brave to come forward and share her agony over what she did.

Exactly. She acted from love. I'll never understand this obsession we have with keeping humans alive far beyond their quality of life. It's incredibly selfish in my view.

One of the many reasons I’m an atheist.

I don't know. It doesn't say but was it terminal and did he already have a prognosis? The child could have been trusting that the pain would go and he would get better.

I remember seeing my grandmother dying and wishing someone would just put a pillow over her head and end it. I’ve since seen a number of older relatives die and it isn’t noble - it’s bloody horrible but at least they had a long life. She was very brave and made a decision to end her child’s suffering. I couldn’t bare to watch a child go through what those elderly relatives did.

I think this is an impossibly hard situation that no one could really ever understand unless they're in it and faced with the choice.

My mother died of a rare form of cancer in my home, as we weren't able to visit her as a family in hospice or hospital due to COVID. She had nursing care and doctors visiting daily and ended up with a driver for meds, but directly before she passed she kept wailing from pain. I couldn't cope with her cries and she was already at maximum dose of everything. A cancer nurse specialist and doctor gave her some type of pain relief, i believe morphine based, which resulted in her death minutes later. They asked me first if I was ok with further dose of pain relief prior to giving it, and explained she may start to slowly drift off. At the time, I thought it was just the way her cancer was impacting her, but in hindsight I believe it was euthanasia (that I arguably played an active role in). Sometimes I ask myself if it was the right thing to do or whether I should be mad at medical staff for not explaining the impact of my decision that day etc, and sometimes I may awake at night thinking that I killed my own mother. Her death certificate doesn't suggest this though, it just lists the name of her cancer. It's a very personal lived experience that I'm not sure people can judge unless they've been in it.

I think this type of thing happens a lot more than we realise. I worked home care when I was 18 and my first shift was a wife that hadn't slept for weeks and a terminally ill husband. My shifts there abruptly came to an end after being unable to locate his pain relief, calling the office to report, and days later he passed away "peacefully in his sleep" - though fellow carers told me it was via medication issued by wife. It was never reported to the police, but care manager and cars staff all knew how his death came to be. People turn a blind eye more than we know.

I would have done it.

@Summerose that was the choice of your mother and you, I am sorry for her suffering and death, and your sorrow and distress.

However, it was not the right choice for this lady and her child in 1981. Can you not open your heart and mind a bit to the suffering of this child and his mother? She was trying to save her beloved child from agonising, pointless pain. She couldn't save him from death, he was dying anyway. You are sounding very judgemental.

Often religious beliefs are not helpful when they lead to such rigid thinking.

She did the right thing for her poor boy.

Yes, me too.

Same that must have been so hard what she went through and doing that. I am very pro euthanasia and giving people the option to do this legally. I think the alternative situation we have now is far less humane and indeed cruel

Leaving people to endure agony when death is inevitable is cruel.

Says who? My mum was in denial and kept talking about recovering whilst dying from stage 4 cancer. Who are you to say she got nothing from being alive whilst I sat by her bed and played along with the fact that we'd all go to the beach when she was better?

Palliative care exists for a reason. We don't just kill people even if they have no hope.

This is why euthanasia is illegal - people like this thinking they can decide when life should end.