Happy Memorial Day

(Editorial cartoon by Kevin Siers / The Charlotte Observer (May 22, 2013) and featured at McClatchy DC. Click on image to enlarge and then kindly return.)

It's Memorial Day, a day in which we remember and honor those men and women who died in the military service of this country.  It's a day I mourn my brother who died of Alzheimer's hastened by the chemical exposures he sustained in Viet Nam.  It's a day in which other families mourn the deaths of their lost soldiers, some dying as recently as a week or so ago.

And for what?

To say they died to preserve our democracy just doesn't cut it with me anymore.  The last ten years I've come to realize that what my brother and others died for was to keep the 1% fat and happy and, unfortunately, in control.

That democracy has been sold to the highest bidders, from the White House right on down to the local dog catchers.  Our Congress can't get even the tiniest bit of gun control passed, although an overwhelming majority of Americans want at the very least background checks for those who would purchase guns.  Our president has continued the shredding of those rights guaranteed by the Constitution carried out by his predecessors.  And our courts have tilted, nay careened, to the right to protect corporate interests to the detriment of we-the-people.

And I don't see an end to any of that.

So I mourn.

In Memoriam

Another one of my heroes has died.

Florence Wald passed away last weekend at age 91. Ms. Wald introduced the concept of hospice care to this country, and in doing so changed the way dying people were treated medically and socially. A new paradigm emerged from her work, one in which the actual day-to-day care of the dying was the focus, and the deliverers of that care, nurses, would play the central role in that process. From her obituary in the Los Angeles Times:

Wald sparked a movement that grew from the first hospice program established in the United States in 1971 to more than 3,200 nationwide now, offering comfort, care and pain relief to patients in their final weeks and months and helping to ease the distress of families faced with the loss of loved ones.

In the process, she made nurses an integral part of the care of patients and forged a new coalition between doctors, nurses and patients -- replacing the long-held tradition that the doctor reigns supreme. The core idea of this new coalition was that, when hope for a cure is gone, attention should shift to a dying patient's physical, emotional and spiritual comfort. [Emphasis added]

Ms. Wald was able to lift the unspoken ban on the dispensing of heavy pain medications for those who were dying, making their last days and weeks less onerous for both them and their families. The patients were able to confront death without the wracking pain, and their families were able to maintain and, in many cases, re-establish their relationships with the dying loved one at the most important of times.

"Hospice care for the terminally ill is the end piece of how to care for patients from birth on," she wrote. "As more and more people -- families of hospice patients and hospice volunteers -- are exposed to this new model of how to approach end-of-life care, we are taking what was essentially a hidden scene -- death, an unknown -- and making it a reality. We are showing people that there are meaningful ways to cope with this very difficult situation."

Later on her life, she also came to realize that the patient may finally come to the end of what can borne, even with the palliative drugs available. She stepped forward to support assisted suicide for those who desired it:

Wald also came out in support of euthanasia. "There are cases in which either the pain or the debilitation the patient is experiencing is more than can be borne, whether it be economically, physically, emotionally or socially," she said. "For this reason, I feel a range of options should be available to the patient, and this should include assisted suicide."

Rest in Peace, Florence Wald.

And thank you.