Complicity

When you know someone is close, so very close to "fading", and you let the person be, you do not do anything to seek emergency medical attention, are you a murderer or complicit in suicide? Are you respecting the patient's wish, or standing by and fully knowing without medical intervention, the person may very well soon become so weak and just die?

Mum knows fully well her condition is critical at the moment, and that her lifeline is wearing thinner and thinner and that her life is hanging increasingly by a thinning thread. She has the option to go into ER and be admitted into hospital for monitoring pronto. But she chooses to wait till the hospital calls her in for surgery, which can be a week or at least several days from now. Am I "helping" her by respecting her wish, or am I killing her by not actively having her committed into hospital for treatment? 

 She chooses to be at home, in the relative comfort and familiarity of home. This is understandable, as at home, she can lie in her own bed, she can go sit on the balcony and look out the window, she can sit in her comfy chair and put her legs up. But at home there is no medical professional to monitor her life signs and give her IV drips. There is just me, a wannabe-lawyer trying to be a wannabe-carer, trying to muddle through and give her whatever she can drink to stay hydrated and hopefully get some nutrition to sustain her bodily functions. I know fully well what she is drinking, protein shakes (albeit high in many of the recommended daily intake of vital nutrients) and the occasional soup and fruit juice (with glutamine, for extra energy), is not enough to sustain her in the long run. And that there will be a point where her resources become so depleted that she may go into shock, or worse.

But she wants to stay home, she does not want to stay in hospital for an unnecessary period of time. I asked her, and that is her wish, one she explicitly told me. A wish I can only respect, especially after a number of confrontations we have had over the issue over the past three weeks when I have exhaustively tried to persuade her to go into hospital. I reminded her again today if she really does not feel well and feels so very weak, we must check into ER. And she agreed.

Dare I even think it? Dare I even say it out loud, or is my mind going into hyper imaginative mode again? Is she doing something consciously, I wonder? Somehow, my gut is telling me  mum may be choosing an "easier" way "out" by letting her body starve. Easier at least compared to languishing in unbearable pain when at the very end the cancer spreads and spreads and eats away your body bit by bit.

 And in a way, if this is true, I do not seem to be the least bit concerned. In fact, if it is true, I actually tacitly hope for it, if it is really her wish, for her sake, and in a selfish way, for my own and for everyone's sake.

 Is it so terrible, so sinful of me to even have this thought or to even think of this possibility? Is it so cruel of me to keep on thinking and imagining the ways she could "go"? I am not plotting her demise, for I do hope she can get better and travel again, as she has always enjoyed doing. But I think she realises, especially after how the doctors have described her current condition, with the cancer spreading in her spine and in her digestive system, it really is a matter of time for her, only, nobody knows when or how or how painful it will be. And it can take a while, a grueling, and excruciatingly painful while. What is the purpose of living and experiencing so much pain, when she has experienced so much pain and suffering over the past few years already? And what is the point of undergoing a surgical procedure which can only solve your eating for some time and prolong your life when you know very well the quality of that life will be eroded by the cancer spreading, for which there is no cure or treatment, not even to contain the spreading?

I am scared to even have these thoughts, to even know that my mind can think this way. But if I look deep inside my conscience, I only wish her the best, and I only wish that she does not have to go through unnecessary suffering for long. I only  hope that one day, when that day comes, mum can pass away relatively painlessly rather than having her experience so much pain and suffering right up to the very end.