Pain Persuasive Speech

Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as god himself. Never.” Only the power of someone’s voice could help us understand. That’s why it’s so important for people to open up and tell their stories. Without those people all we have are statistics and no real connection.

Jack Kevorkian was a doctor who assisted terminally ill patients to commit suicide. He believed that they had the right to die in an appropriate way; to die with dignity. He therefore invented a machine (called thanatron—a Greek word for death machine) which could take away his patients’ lives painlessly and efficiently, all they had to do was to push a button and their lives would be ended by either deadly injection or carbon monoxide poisoning. There had been at least one hundred patients who tried and died in this method. Dr. Kevorkian was charged several times with murder in these deaths. Lucky for him, a judge dismissed one of his charges because there was no evidence of murder. Jury did not find him guilty either. Nevertheless, he

What a great topic! I currently work on a general progressive care floor, and we currently receive post-operative patients that undergo colon rectal surgeries, such as ventral hernia repair, panniculectomies, resections, among others. Unfortunately, some of these problems such as hernias, are recurrent, so we do see patients coming back often, misusing these opioids medication and ultimately pharmaco dependents. As we know, painkillers simply mask the pain that a patient feels. They don’t heal or cure anything. Gradually patients end up taking higher and higher doses, only to find out that eventually they can’t get through the day without the medication, and having as their last resort having to turn to pain clinics for pain management.

When we get older and when we deal with someone else who is nearing death we misunderstand what happens and how to understand the death process, we do not know what to expect and how to handle the process.

In 1990, physician-assisted suicide became well known around the United States when Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a retired pathologist, assisted a 54-year-old Alzheimer’s patient end her life. He would go on to willfully help dozens of terminally ill people end their lives. He spent eight years in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder in the death of 130 ailing patients whose lives he helped end (Kevorkian, 2011). Many consider him a hero, setting a platform for reform. In 1997 Oregon lawmakers approved a statue, Death with Dignity, making it legal for doctors to prescribe lethal doses of a medication to help terminally ill patients end

A patients suffering cant be relieved all the time despite flawless palliative care, continuing to live causes misery that can only end with death.

Pain is universal. In life, everyone will feel pain; it is inevitable and cruel. Physical or emotional, insignificant or severe, it is there. The pain continues mounting into an unbearable amount of suffering. Suffering that blots out everything of worth, such as family, love, aspirations, and optimism. Hopelessness seizes any will to endure. With no way to subside or control the pain, often one will go to extremes in order to be free of it. Many take their life, in order to escape the horror. Committing suicide is a traumatizing experience for any and all involved. Life is precious. The chance to live is only given once, and cannot be taken for granted. Preventing even a single life from ending early is imperative and obligatory

Kevorkian had created a machine, known as the "suicide machine", which was made up of three glass bottles connected to an IV. In the three bottles were saline solution, a sedative, and potassium chloride. When the patients felt they were ready to begin the process, they turned the machine on themselves and were put to sleep by the sedative. After this, they were eventually killed by the potassium chloride. It has been said that when the people began hearing about Dr. Kevorkian and his "suicide machine", many terminally ill patients began to fear their own physicians. The patients began to believe that all physicians were out to assist them to death or try to talk them into physician-assisted suicide (Thomas 14). Kevorkian claimed that he had, “caused no death; he just helped with his patient's "last civil rights.” He states that doctors that don't help assist their patients are like the “Nazi doctors during World War 2, those who used experiments on the Jewish people.” (50-51).

Opioids, a knock off version of meth which is prescribed by doctors, are known for being addictive and have become a major issue in Ontario, especially in cities like Thamesville and Chatham-Kent. With a little population and no promising economy, the only businesses that seem to be prospering are the medical treatment centers. Like much of Ontario, these cities have also seen a rise in misuse of prescription opioids; it is the fourth most commonly used drug. These drugs are prescribed in large bulks of 100 to even seven hundred doses at once instead of smaller doses to see how a person does with it. When people had these large doses at hand they started selling it to make money. This caused teenagers to start using opioids. When the government

For the most part, everybody throughout the world views life as sacred. In America, we see this in our laws which serve justice to those that have killed, and in our constitution alongside liberty and the pursuit of happiness as an inalienable right. It is generally agreed upon that most everybody would rather not die, and for that matter, would rather not see other people die as well. In short, barring serial killers and psychopaths, almost everybody supports life. However, when discussing the death and life of certain people, such as terminally ill patients and those sentenced to die by the court (capital punishment), a fair deal of disagreement arises. Within the politically fueled discussions that seem to dominate today’s discourse, we

Forcing terminally ill patients to suffer straight up to their last days is unacceptable and provisions can be made in order to allow competent patients to have a choice at the end of their lives.

We are culturally ingrained from an early age that life is precious and each day is a gift. Life should not be squandered but preserved.  We are encouraged to live with a purpose, cherish our loved ones and live life to its fullest. But what if life becomes too physically painful to endure, often experienced by many terminally ill patients suffering an incurable disease, or a chronically ill elderly person who lacks the ability to thrive?  For forty-five day’s I watched my chronically ill mother languish away in a hospice care facility. The experience was emotionally and financially draining, and I began questioning whether a person should have the right to choose when and how to end their life. In the United States, assisted dying is a widely debated and passionate issue. Opponents argue preserving life, regardless of how much a person is suffering, is an ethical and moral responsibility, determined only by a higher power.  At the other end of the spectrum are those who support a person’s right to end their life with dignity at a time of their choosing.   Wouldn’t my mother’s suffering been greatly reduced if her doctor was legally and ethically permitted to administer a lethal cocktail of drugs to end her life quickly and painlessly? Wouldn’t the prevailing memory of my mother see her in a better light instead of helplessly watching her undignified death? To deny terminal and chronically ill people the freedom to end their

Society views suicide as an unreasonable and inconsiderate action since there are many alternate avenues of help that a person could resort to. In the case of Euthanasia for a terminally ill being, there is no option to make things better. There is only medication that prolongs the death by temporally numbing the pain. One must imagine what the patient is feeling and at some point and set aside their feelings to be more understanding to that of the patient.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian more commonly known as Dr. Death is greatly known for his opinion that euthanasia should be legalized and his work with patients seeking help. He was very important in showing euthanasia and voicing his opinion on the subject so the public could not ignore the importance of the matter. Dr. Kevorkian was said to have been involved with 130 suicides by patients who wanted to end their own lives (Nicol and Wylie 17). He had two machines he used to help the patients, one an injection and the other a mask, however both machines were operated by the patient and although Dr. Kevorkian was taken to court many times for these he was not convicted because the patient was in control. He was very careful as to not actually commit the act himself until he was contacted by Thomas Youk, a young with Lou Gheric’s disease; Lou Gheric’s disease is when the muscle stop working and eventually the patient chokes to death. Tom’s condition prevented him from actually operating the machines and therefore Dr. Kevorkian decided that he would operate the machine himself because he cared greatly about all his patients and could not let Tom live in his constant fear (Nicol and Wylie 11). Dr. Kevorkian taped Tom’s wishes and then himself hooking up the machine and pushing the button to inject the drugs. He then proceed to

1) Patients have the right to make their own informed decisions about if and how they die. When a chronically ill patient decides life is no longer worth living because of the insurmountable pain they are in, who are we to tell them differently? There are cases where attempts to cure are doing more harm than good, not only mentally and physically to the patient, but emotionally to his family and loved ones as well.