The End, Given Away and Taken Away

The plot line of Million Dollar Baby ends in the euthanasia of Maggie, the female boxer played by Hillary Swank. Maggie suffers a broken neck and becomes quadriplegic after leading a life of extreme physicality. The Clint Eastwood character, Frankie is ultimately the one who pulls the plug and injects Maggie with a lethal dose of adrenalin. (Oh, you didn't want to know how it ended? Sorry.) In a related story, Hunter Thompson recently took his life with a handgun in his Colorado home. Apparently he faced declining health and chose to put an end to the pain and the potential loss of vitality. Once again, the issue of euthanasia, voluntary and otherwise, is forced into the public consciousness.

For some reason, we Americans seem stricken by the idea that someone might want to put an end to their human life. We seem unable to grasp the concept that some life is not worth living. (I do not mean children born with disabilities. I mean adults who are capable of making their own decisions.) I've already read denunciation of the movie for the very fact that it didn't portray Maggie overcoming the depression, the frustration and the limitations of quadriplegia and becoming a teacher, a motivational speaker or a business owner. The argument is that quadriplegia is not the end of a rich, meaningful life. I can agree that quadriplegia is not NECESSARILY the end of a rich, meaningful life... but I allow for different responses to that condition.

We know that we feel physical pain according to our individual threshold for pain. We know that we react differently to medications. We know that a certain smell may make one person vomit and another person hardly notices. We know that we are all made individuals. There are very few common truths about the entirity of the human race.

So why would we believe that the "best" response to a physically debilitating injury is the same for everyone? Why would be constrain those who would rather not live in their new, quadriplegic reality? Why would we punish those who enable the choice to leave that body?

(I know where I'm going when my body dies and that certainly has a strong bearing on my current belief that I'd rather not live in that condition. However, I proactively acknowledge that I'm not in that position and therefore may have to change my personal choice at some point in the future.)

What's the difference between one shot of adrenalin that results in cardiac arrest and forty years of chicken fried steaks that result in cardiac arrest? What's the difference in one lethal dose of poison and a lifetime of smoking cigarettes? What's the difference in a terminally ill person walking off a cliff and a mountain climber who fails to inspect equipment and ends up at the bottom of the cliff? Don't all of these result in death? Don't we know that chicken fried steak, cigarettes and faulty climbing equipment will most certainly kill the body? What about the belief that God gave us life and it's not our right to end that life? Why do we call it "taking a life" when we do it in one shot and we call it "living a life" when we do it over a period of 30 or 40 years?

I want to make that decision for myself, if and when the time comes. My wife (God bless her) knows that I have no intention of living inside a hospital, a nursing home or other care facility. I only hope that I have the strength to walk into the desert when that time comes and I don't have to rely on someone else to do what I cannot do for myself.