2 posts tagged “freedom”

MedFaire was a busy time, and I thought my schedule would free up afterwards.

It didn't.

My sister called to say my mother was being admitted to ICU.  I spent the next 5weeks traveling between states to spend what time I could taking care of her and supervising her treatments.

Her admitting diagnosis was mild enough - dehydration from a stomach flu that was past.  All she needed was fluid.  By the time I arrived (it was a 6 hour drive), they'd given her so much fluid so fast she had fluid in her lungs and in the chest wall cavity.  It took me another 6 hours to convince them she was having a breathing problem, and then another 3 hours before they did anything about it.

They got her lungs dried out, but ignored the chest wall fluid buildup and her bloating, but they were supposed to be easing off on the fluids and rebalancing her blood pressure medication (which was diluted by the rapid influx of fluids and the fact they weren't giving her anything for her blood pressure at the time).  I had to return to work.  When I left, she was improving.

Two days later, she's developed sepsis and gets treated for that.

The next day, there's not just fluid on her lungs again, there's inflammation in her lungs.  They intubate and start treatment before I can get there.  I stay through the weekend, and they say they'll start weaning her off the respirator on Monday.  So I drive all the way back to work.  She does well for three days, then I get reports of fluid on her lungs again and they're re-intubating her.  I'm also getting reports that she has a drug-resistant bacterial infection.

By the time I get there, she's stable again, so I stay through the weekend.  I ask the charge nurse how many bedsores she has, and the nurse reluctantly admits she has two.  Terry Shiavo can live 15 years in a coma without getting a single bedsore, and my mother, who is elderly but aware, gets two?  I make them change her bed out for one better suited to her needs and insist on a physical therapist seeing her and keeping her moving.  They start treating the bedsore.  I go back to work.

This repeats for several weeks - up and down, long harried 6 hour drives in the middle of the night down, slightly slower drives back up to make it to work on time.

Her lungs keep drying out, then filling back up with fluids.  As soon as they clear one iatrogenic infection, she developes another.

Then I'm back down because she's taken a turn for the worse - the fluid build up in her chest wall has gotten great enough they finally notice it - 2 liters worth of fluid.  They tap her chest wall to drain it out and instead of draining it slow, a bit at a time, they take it all at once.  Her lungs collapse.

They get her lungs re-inflated, and now they need to do a tracheostomy because they can't re-intubate her any more.

She's doing better - pinkish color in her face again, aware of what's happening around her, responsive, but not remembering who's been to see her or what was said.  That's OK, she's under heavy sedation.  That she can shake her head yes or no is remarkable enough after all the doctors have done to her.

I go back to work.

At 10:00 pm on 5/11, I get a call that they had tapped her lungs to drain more fluid and her lungs collapsed again.  This time, she went into cardiac arrest and they were working on reviving her.

Another 6 hour drive.  I arrive to learn that they did get her heart going again, and the trach is doing all of her breathing.  She's not breathing on her own.  It took them over half an hour to restart her heart.  It's not beating on its own, either, they're pushing a drug that forces it to beat, but it's a weak one and her blood pressure is too low to register on the sphagnomometer.  During that time, her kidneys and liver were blood and oxygen-starved and both quit.  Neither one starts working again.  At this point, she's a very poor candidate for dialysis - her heart and lungs can't take it.

The day she was admitted, she was bright, alert, joking.  She's been living on her own, taking care of herself, doing volunteer work at the children's hospital.  Her only health problem was her blood pressure, which was under control.  She got a stomach bug (probably from one of the kids) and ignored it a bit too long.  But it shouldn't have killed her.

Because of her medical treatment at the hospital (which was outstanding when she was in crisis and not so good when she was on an upswing - they stopped the care a little too soon and waited a little too long to act when they knew something was wrong), we had to make the decision to let her body poison itself to death slowly or to stop the heart medication that was forcing her heart to beat.

The whites of her eyes had turned a dark yellow, her nails were blue, and she was unresponsive to anything said or done to her.  My sister needed time to think, so she went home to do that and to take a nap.  When she returned 7 hours later, Mother's condition had deteriorated.  Her kidneys and liver would never work again, it was doubtful her heart would ever beat on its own or that she'd breathe on her own.

We agreed to a test, to stop the heart medication for 30 seconds.  The medication was strong enough, and she was at the maximum dose, that it should keep her heart beating at least 60 seconds after it was stopped.  If her heart stopped beating and didn't restart on its own during that time, they would not be able to restart it.

We stopped the drug.  It was just barely less than 5 seconds before her heart stopped beating, and never restarted.

Five weeks after she was admitted, Mother died in the hospital.  Their care was outstanding when she was in crisis.  They went to extraordinary lengths to keep her alive during those times.

It was the less-than critical times where their care and treatment suffered, and Mother along with it.  As soon as she started having trouble breathing, they'd wait to see if it got worse.  When it got worse, they waited to see if it would get better on its own.  When it got even worse, they waited to see just how bad it really was, and when it became a matter of life-and-death, they were in full swing, making sure she lived through it.  Wouldn't it have been much easier on her and them if they'd taken action early instead of waiting so long before responding?

And how - in a modern hospital - did a patient develop bedsores within a week of being admitted?

None of that really matters now, though.  We can't change what was done.

As a final display of their "wait until it's critical" attitude, the doctor in charge of her care didn't sign her death certificate in a timely fashion.  On the day of Mother's funeral, we had to call from the funeral home to find out why they hadn't signed the death certificate yet (it was 5 days after her death, no need for an autopsy because her cause of death was obvious, there was no reason to delay the signing), and the receptionist had the unmitigated gall, knowing we were calling from the funeral home, to yell at us in a volume loud enough to make the funeral director standing outside the room wince at the decibel level that they'd sign it when they got around to it, then she put us on hold.  So, we put that call on hold, called the clinic right back to talk to someone else, got her name and the name of the office manager, and then spoke to the office manager.  We explained the situation, 5 days, at the funeral, no body because the funeral home couldn't do anything until the death certificate was signed, we needed it signed that day.  She agreed, and we went to the clinic to pick up the signed paperwork.

Then we returned to the funeral and proceeded with it without telling anyone else how the doctor had screwed up yet again.

The rest of it was simple enough.  Mother qualified to be buried in a veteran's cemetery, and we had her interred there.

Since then, I've been going down on weekends to help sort through Mother's things, the food first.  We had to throw away bags full of food that were opened or beyond their expiration date.  What edible food remained we donated to a local soup kitchen.  Ditto for her clothes. 

Now we learn that a judge doesn't like Mother's will and wants to change it.  She complied with all the legal requirements for writing it, had it notarized and witnessed, and none of us children disagree with her choices.  But this judge thinks he knows better and that he has the right to come in and alter that will just because he doesn't like it.  It's not like Mother had a large estate.  There aren't millions of dollars at stake here; hundreds maybe, but not millions.  No one's contesting it.  Sure it stings a bit that my brother gets $5.00 and a note listing all he owes her, or that I get a dollar, and my sister gets the rest (including bills), but we understand why Mother did that.  It was her estate to divide as she wanted it.  If we are willing to accept that, why won't the judge?

Still, whatever the judge decides doesn't alter the fact that we have to sort through her things and set aside family heirlooms for my sister to keep (and share out if she chooses - which, knowing her, she will do in a couple of months), things to donate, things that are just pure trash, and things to put into an estate sale.  We're slowly inventorying everything in case there are any questions - which given the judge's orneriness, there may be.

See, the reason none of us were disputing Mother's will was precisely because she left the bulk of it to my sister.  She's one of those anal people who has to be in control, but she's also a very generous person.  Once everything was settled, all Mother's final bills paid, the car, house contents, and house sold, she'd put it all into a high interest bearing account and let it sit there a year or two because it would take her that long to decide exactly what she wanted to do with it all.  Then, she'd take out a salary and expenses for herself for administering the estate, take out expenses for me travelling down there to help her out, and then evenly divide what was left between us.  That way, she could tell herself she did what Mother wanted.  Then, later, when she felt the money was hers and not Mother's anymore, she'd share it out because that would be the right thing to do.  Mother knew my sister would do that, and even sort of knew how long it would take my sister to decide to do that, which is why she trusted it all to her, and not me (I'd divide it up right away, and that speed would make my sister feel I was being disrespectful), and not my brother (who would blow it all on some get-rich-quick scheme). 

And the judge doesn't know our family dynamics, doesn't understand that Mother knew exactly what she was doing when she wrote that apparently biased will.  He thinks he knows best, that Mother was some weak and stupid woman who hadn't a clue how to write a real will, and that we are too stupid to sort things out among ourselves in an amicable and appropriate manner.

That's a problem in our society - we don't trust other people enough to let them take care of themselves.  People who hold positions that look authoritative presume they have superior knowledge and understanding - and maybe they do in a macroscopic sense.  But microscopically, they lack sufficient information to make informed and reasonable decisions; all they will succeed in doing is anger the people they think they are helping.  We see this in our handling of Iraq (too many links, just google it and you'll see), in criminalizing the use of public space, (1), in that some public parks actively discourage adults unaccompanied by children from using them (no links, personal experience), (2) and now in a judge who disagrees with a perfectly legally written will.

Once Mother's house is cleaned out and on the market, I won't have to go down near as often, saving me gas money, wear and tear on the old car (which is holding up remarkably well under the travel).

It doesn't mean things will calm down, because my youngest is getting married on July 13th, then shipped off to Baghdad.

(1)  OK, the guy went too far in some cases, but most of the cited instances were perfectly reasonable ones.  And I can see where he'd still consider himself to be a student there, on probation until his bill was paid.  Me, I'd intended to haunt the local universities in much the same way once I retire and have the time to spend at them.  My taxes help support them, and as long as I don't make unreasonable demands (grades, degrees, taking up professional time or a seat away from a paying student....), I see no reason why he, I, or others like us can't take advantage of something our tax dollars provides.

(2)  I was sitting on a bench, watching the lake waves and the boats, enjoying a nice day out in a public park with my little dog, who was napping in my lap.  The police officer who made me leave told me the park was for families and people with children, that single adults needed to go elsewhere - and my dog was "too small" to count as a valid reason to be in a park.  If I insisted on staying, he would arrest me for loitering since I'd been there for more than 15 minutes.  It was "policy" to keep single adults out of parks to "reduce crime".  Now, mind you, I'm an old, fat woman with a little dog, reasonably well dressed and groomed.  I pay my taxes without too much complaint.  Yet, I am not allowed to be in a public park unless I have a child with me.  Or maybe a big dog.

It's been a year since I wrote this, and very little has changed for the better in that year. We’ve had states try to pass draconian anti-abortion laws, we’ve had one champion for women’s rights railroaded out of her authoritative position because she decided her people could offer women what they need. In the news, we read stories of women “being raped”, not of “men raping women”, and watched court cases of rape victims being further victimized. We’ve seen more women and children becoming homeless because they weren’t allowed a choice that could have prevented the whole problem. We have people actively and vociferously advocating having babies - in spite of the fact that we are breeding ourselves out of resources.

More and more, we need to take control of our reproduction, to stem the constant increase in our population. We need to consider the welfare of those who are already born and living in this world. We need to care for those who are alive now, and in need now.

I believe life, and the life of the soul, begins at conception. I do not believe sentience begins at conception. That is something that develops when the vessel it is meant to inhabit matures enough to nourish the seed of sentience and nurture it to fruition. Life is sacred. All life is sacred. I am morally opposed to the malicious taking of any life, but I believe life that already exists independently takes precedence over a potential life. Choice must be moral, ethical, and legal. Let me explain.

I choose life for myself and the children I bore, because I am inherently selfish and fluffy. I choose for no other woman because I am an American. It is the precise separation of religion and law that allows disparate faiths to thrive alongside one another, including disparities within religions, such as Catholics and Methodists. The American attitude of freedom of religion and the separation of church and state has ensured our safety in the practice of our beliefs, and our rights are not dependent upon the morality of the privileged few, but rather on higher ideals of justice, equality, and freedom.

I am pro-choice because it is the only moral choice to make when it involves other people.

Without choice, there can be no morality at all. There can only be slavery.

Consider. A woman who becomes pregnant has not just her unborn child to consider, but also any other children she may currently have, her own body, and other people dependent upon her. She is the custodian for all of them. She must be allowed the freedom to choose to add this unborn child to the family or to abort it for the greater good of those already born. If we take away that choice, then the unborn baby may be saved but at the cost of a far greater evil to the woman and to those already born.

Is it better to allow a woman her choice, knowing she may choose to abort in some cases, or do we remove that choice and most assuredly commit evil in every single case?

Life must be protected. There is no doubt about that. As a woman, it is my duty to protect the life of my unborn child, not the government's, not some preacher's, certainly not yours. It is also my duty to protect the lives of other children I may already have, and those living children take precedence over an unformed and unborn potentiality. It is my duty as a woman to protect the people already living in my care, and I must consider so very many things.

The welfare of the developing embryo is, like the embryo's own tissues, too caught up in the mother's own existence to be considered separately. The distinction between mother and child occurs gradually. In the beginning, when there is no distinction, when the embryo is incapable of independent viability, it is and must be entirely and completely the mother's decision on how to safeguard all the lives within her care, from her own and the already-born to the unborn within her. The mother can, should, indeed, must, protect herself first, because she must be healthy and able to care for those dependent upon her. Then she must protect the already born who are in her care – whether those are older children of hers, her elderly parents or grandparents, cousins, kin, mates, mates' kin, co-workers, neighbors. She has a large group of people to consider, not just the one unborn child.

Life must be protected, and the question becomes, whose life?

The pro-life argument is not one of law or physical technicalities, but of the spirit. It is not life with which they are concerned, but the soul. Let me address this from my own Numenist perspective.

To have any integrity of the human soul at all, we must be allowed to know, and knowing, to choose our path. To remove a person's right to choose is tantamount to gainsaying the spiritual concept of free will. Free will is an important part of Numenism. Those who would prevent a woman from making a choice to bear or abort the unborn embryo may think they are stopping a terrible crime, but what they are actually doing is harming everyone - everyone connected with the woman, everyone in that woman's neighborhood, society, culture, and religion. They are stifling spiritual growth, playing god in an unhealthy way, and abusing the intelligence granted us.

It is fine to be pro-life. If you can change someone's mind with love, compassionate words, and physical support, so much the better. It is not acceptable on a spiritual level to force someone to make choices they would not make because you feel it is the right thing for them to do. Removing choice from someone removes their humanity, their adulthood, their hard-won maturity. It makes of them slaves. Slaves have no choice in what they do - it is all controlled by someone else. Spiritual slavery is as terrible as physical slavery. I, personally, think spiritual slavery is more terrible than physical slavery, for physical slavery has avenues of escape, even if that escape is death. Spiritual slavery offers no escape, for even death doesn’t guarantee freedom.

This isn't about "killing babies", it is about the freedom of the human soul. It is about being allowed to choose our destinies. It is about being allowed to have respect for our own reproductive lives, and it is about having no shame when we protect ourselves by doing what we must.

I could never ask a woman to risk her life for a pregnancy she did not want. I could never ask a woman to shoulder a lifetime responsibility she does not feel she can bear with grace. I could never presume to make a life-altering decision for anyone not myself. I didn't even have my son circumcised so he could make that decision for himself when he was old enough. How could I have the utter arrogance to decide if a woman would bear child or not?

I believe that abortion is the taking of a life, but it is not murder. There is no negative stigma of a woman choosing to preserve the emotional, physical, and mental well being of her life and the lives of those already dependent upon her. Abortion is a method of self-defense and protection for her and her world. To label a woman who has had to choose an abortion with the same name as the people who deliberately drown their children or shoot them or starve them is a disservice to the soul of society. And when we burden society's soul with too many negatives, it responds in harmful ways. Those already born become less valuable, more disposable. People who know their lives are not valued in turn place little value on other people, and violence, greed, and callousness become common.

The reality of abortion is not black or white. It is not good or evil. It is human struggle, filled with blood and grief and fear and pain and humiliation. Nobody plans to get pregnant just so they can have an abortion. Abortion is not used as a primary method of birth control, not by any sane, valued being. Birth control methods fail, and abortion is a back-up for that. Men take advantage of women via rape, and abortion is there to help protect the woman from one major consequence of the man's violent act. Only the woman can determine if she is capable of caring for a pregnancy forced on her through violence, or through failed birth control.

And that brings us to what our society would consider the dark side of abortion and what I consider the bright side of it. Relief. Abortion is a safety valve for families. The choice to abort or not allows the woman and her family freedom and safety. It is a considered action that dignifies the value of human life and the human soul by considering all parts of the equation and not just the one unknown cipher. Like any act of great human consequence, there are times when abortion is the right and only thing to do, and times when it is a terrible mistake. The pregnant woman is the only one who can make that decision, and once made, we, as a society, cannot ethically and morally judge her choice, not and remain a moral and ethical society.

Who are we to second-guess her choice, a choice that is never as simple or easy as it sounds?

We have the wealth, the technology, and the ability to make every child born a wanted child, to prevent unwanted pregnancies, to safely abort dangerous or unwanted pregnancies, to provide support while any children are entirely dependent upon the mother, to make families stronger and safer.

But we don't.

As a society, we Americans devalue the mother, we force women into untenable positions to assuage the vocal demands of a small group of control freaks, we force children into untenable lives of poverty and violence, we make all of society colder, meaner, and more selfish, and we do this by preventing women from being honored, from making the hard choices they must make. Abortion is not easy. It is as life-altering a decision as giving birth, and there's not a woman who has had an abortion who doesn't regret the need for that decision. They may not regret the decision itself, they may rejoice that they could have that choice, but they will always regret the need that forced the decision upon them.

This isn't even addressing the primary reason for allowing women to make the choice to carry or abort the pregnancy – the spiritual growth that such decisions will bring. By abrogating the woman's right to choose, we stunt her spiritual growth. We enslave her soul and the souls of all her children and dependents.

Perhaps there are those who want women to remain spiritually small and weak; they are themselves small-spirited.

There are those who will cry out, "But what about the father's right to choose?"

And to them I answer: The father's right to choose takes place before the act of coition and orgasm. Once he decides to squirt his sperm and conception occurs, he hands over the decision for what happens next to the woman. It is her body, her life, her family, her community, her spiritual well-being that informs her decision. She may choose to allow him a part in her decision, but it is ultimately and completely her decision, and it will remain hers until we develop something along the lines of the Bujoldian uterine replicators. When we have artificial wombs that put no woman's life at risk to carry a baby to term, that involve no woman's emotions, bodies, or families; then men can decide to take custody of the embryo, grow it in the artificial womb, and raise it.

When women can walk away from the pregnancy as easily as men can, then men can decide.

So, if men want to make that decision, to take the lifetime responsibility of growing and rearing a child, they should hustle and develop working artificial wombs as soon as they can. Until then, they need to take responsibility for their fertility, either through using condoms and a spermicide, through abstinence, through vasectomy, through the male birth control pill, through self-control. And they must always, always be aware that birth control does indeed fail, that surgical sterilization isn’t always 100%, and that, like most humans, women make mistakes, are forgetful, may have an idiosyncratic reaction to birth control, and sometimes, sometimes, in spite of all the effort to the contrary, pregnancy occurs.

Abortion is a safety valve for those instances. For men as well as women.

Abortion is never an easy choice. No matter what the media tries to make us believe, abortion is a dreadful burden, a life-altering choice that haunts the women who must choose it for the rest of their lives. If a woman is impregnated by a man - through failed birth control, through lies, through rape, through changed circumstances - she has very few options. Every one of those options has a strong potential to be detrimental to her health, her spirit, her mental well-being, her finances - and the health, well-being, and care of those already alive and in her care.

If a woman lives where she can still choose abortion, she has to undergo a risky surgical procedure to free herself of the unwanted pregnancy - a man walks away without having to undergo any kind of surgical procedure or alteration to his body.

If, for religious or ethical reasons or, increasingly often, for lack of adequate medical care in her community, she has to carry the unwanted pregnancy to term, she risks a host of ailments, up to and including death. A man gets to walk away without any kind of damage to his body and certainly without any fear of dying for it.

If a woman chooses to place the child for adoption, she can't do so without the father's permission - permission he can deny just to punish her - and it is a punishment to both the mother and the poor unwanted child, to have to work and spend money to feed, house, clothe, and educate that unwanted child, frequently without any support whatsoever from the father - who gets to walk away without losing a penny or a moment's sleep over the lives he's just destroyed. Even if a court of law determines he should pay child support, all he has to do is walk away. A woman who walks away from her baby is prosecuted for child abandonment at best, and child abuse at worst.

If the couple are married when the child is conceived and born, if the man decides he no longer wants to be responsible for the child he helped bring into the world, all he has to do is walk away. No one condemns him for it. No one demands he pay for the life he helped create. No one blames him if he denies the child is his. After all, short of DNA testing, there’s no proof, not like there is when a woman gives birth. Maternity is rarely in doubt.

So many men have taken the option to just walk away, it's a wonder women haven't risen up and reacted with far greater anger and made far stronger demands. It’s a wonder women even consider giving men any choice at all.

Men make their decision to impregnate women the moment they allow their sperm to come into contact with a fertile egg. If men failed to use birth control themselves, (via abstinence, condoms, male birth control, self control, or vasectomy), then they are as liable for the unwanted child as the women they impregnate - more so, perhaps, because they could always choose to walk away and (radical idea) not leak sperm in inappropriate places.

The burden of birth control is not and should not be entirely upon the woman.

Me, I'd like to see every child born be a wanted child - planned and anticipated and hoped for. That means everyone has to own up to their part in the procreation process - from erection to childbirth, and take responsibility for the results of their choices.

That means we need a wide variety of choices, from better birth control for both genders to better behavior from men and women to better health care. We need artificial wombs so women can walk away from a pregnancy as easily as men do. We need better methods of adoption and fosterage. We need more humane peer pressure.

And we need to allow women the freedom to choose and the access to knowledgeable and skilled physicians to help them in their choice.

And men? If you want to have a choice in the continuance of a pregnancy - get busy developing artificial wombs. When you build those wombs, then you can choose.