Speak Up: The dying should have an option my father was denied

Olivia Fritz wrote an Opinion about her support for House Bill 140, which would allow physicians to provide medical aid in dying (Wednesday).

• I have suffered for the last 53 years. I came close to death on a number of occasions. I don’t know what I would have chosen years ago, but after a lifetime of suffering, I believe a person should be able to make the choice of not suffering and die in their own time, alone or with their family. What my father went through was really sad. If he could’ve, he would have chosen a way out of his suffering. It is bad enough that he had to wait to die, but the doctors ignored his do-not-resuscitate wishes and resuscitated him and planned to do surgery on him. I got to the hospital in time to stop them, but they already gave him anesthesia, and he didn’t open his eyes again till moments before he died. He knew, when they diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease, that he didn’t want to die that way. He also had colon cancer, and they gave him an antidepressant because he said he just wanted to die. I loved him more than anyone and miss him every day, but I felt then and still feel today that he should have been allowed to go in his own time. — Name withheld