Physician Assisted Suicide

A time I had to overcome adversity in my life was when I became injured during the middle of cheer tryouts. At the time I was very passionate about competitive cheer, and my goal was to make the junior five team. When I got to tryouts everyone was tumbling, stunting and doing the dance routine. My adrenaline was pumping as I went to warm up my tumbling and throw a roundoff, back handspring, layout. I was determined to accomplish this for tryouts and impress my coach, but I was still very nervous. As I was running into the roundoff back handspring, I knew something was bound to go wrong. The next thing I knew I was in the middle of the air and suddenly landed on my knees, with my ankle twisted under me. My face got bright

I had been cringing about day for so long. I was completely terrified to go into that room. As the door opened I was exposed to a cold draft and I could feel the dense air. The day I was told this needed to be done was horrifying, and now it’s actually happening. They rolled me over to a new bed and I looked around seeing doctors everywhere. There was a table that they rolled next to me and on it was things that I can’t even explain. They put a green mask on me with tubes going through both sides of it. They told me I’d get drowsy and all of the sudden I closed my eyes and it was happening. I was getting knee surgery.

That day when I returned home from school, my mom’s boyfriend called me asking to speak to my grandmother. Typically, Gus would call my grandmother himself if he wanted to speak with her, which was rare. I found out about my mom going to the hospital from my grandmother after that phone call. The doctor told my family that a stroke afflicted her in the middle of the day. My mom confused the date with her birthday, had trouble getting words out and remembering our family member’s names. The nurse had to take her for walks periodically and exercise her legs and arms because they were weak. Seeing my mother in this condition made me appreciate my mother and everything she does for me tremendously. However, I was terrified for my mother’s health.

In 2003 during the last semester of nursing school, my life was devastated as my ex-husband was arrested as a serial rapist. This was overbearing and I thought this as being impossible to recover from. A breaking point came as I approached a red light deciding whether to deliberately run my minivan into oncoming traffic with my two young children to end our lives. Only days later, I once again felt that I was at the lowest point in my life as the reality of this event truly hit during a medical-surgical examination.

While the pain is fresh and the glory is sweet, I decided to write this article about my experience running the marathon and how in my opinion, it metaphorically correlates the beginning and the diurnal responsibility of my profession as a Surgical Technologist.

Physician-assisted suicide is the direct or indirect assistance of the doctor for termination of patient’s life. It is one of the most debatable, controversial and ethical topic of today. Life sometimes unleashes such gruesome realities that we never think of amid the hectic and eventful course of the dwelling. However, when any calamity strikes, we are stranded on the cross road, oblivious of the leading ways as every path leads to the narrow alley with the close end. Likewise; diseases, accidents, and traumas induce one of our beloved’s soul in a condition that he/ she becomes mental or physical paralyzed and left at the mercy of others. If the condition persists for the inordinate period of time, it

The surgery I had was a pretty major surgery some could say, four though six hours and it's compared as open heart surgery. It wasn't the surgical pain though that caused me to stay there longer then i was supposed to no, it was some kind of nerve pain that even the doctors and nurses had know idea what to do. My case was so uncommon they sent me into ICU after fives days of being in pain two hours three times a day. Not knowing what to do the nurses would just shoot me up with a bunch of drugs just to calm down the pain and all I could do was watch as this was all happening while gasping for air.

Rach, can you do the dishes before we go to the party?” My mom’s voice called up the stairs. No, I don’t want to do the dishes. “I’ll be there in a minute,” I sighed, sinking farther into my cocoon, pulling the fuzzy blankets closer to my face and breathing their sweet lavender, cotton sent. I felt secure, for a moment. In the next moment, Anxiety came. He nestled his dark face tenderly in my neck then squeezed my face firmly into his, my ear pressing painfully against his icy gray lips. He dug his talons into my stomach and he slowly wrapped me into his bitter cold body. I shivered. Another presence entered, wrapped in a blanket nearly as black as Hell, He took the dripping wet blanket off himself, laid it on me and then evaporated.

I had my fourth knee surgery this past winter and my goal is to let go of my fear. I have one more sports season left before graduation. If I complete the full season, it will be the first time since my sophomore year that I have done so. I know that I will not be able to achieve the goal of playing a full season without letting go of my fear, and after four consecutive seasons on the sidelines I have come to fear more then just injury. I have come to fear not having the talent to play at the high school varsity level. I fear that the coaches will only see my as a injury waiting to happen and not as an athlete. I fear a season spent worrying about what could happen oppose to whats happening in the moment. I fear another season on the sidelines.

Katlynn was out of the hospital after about a week and a half. All of us girls cleaned the house spotless upon her arrival. That may not sound like much, but we were young girls that lived on a farm, so being messy was pretty much our thing. Katlynn came home and we all showered her with hugs. The first week she was home we watched her like a hawk, trying not to make it noticeable. Since Kate got out of the hospital she has to take pills every morning and night, and she had to make a trip to Mason city twice a year. Today she only goes once a year because she hasn’t suffered a seizure since. There have been a few scares here and there, though. It’s been seven and a half years since that terrible day, and Kate’s doing great. She is at the age

In the summer between my sophomore and junior year, I had started to feel agonizing pain in my lower back. After seeing a specialist and going over the MRI, I was diagnosed with Lumbosacral Disc Disorder with Radiculopathy. Overall, the MRI revealed lumbar degeneration and congenital abnormalities of the lumbar spine with spondylolisthesis and instability. The problem causes low back pain with left leg weakness and numbness. The congenital abnormality of my spine was there since birth which is very rare; however, I do not have the most severe case compared to other people diagnosed with the same problem.

The procedure always spoke to me as an embodiment of the human spirit. ‘ If we cannot fix it one way, we will do it another; If we cannot mend the brain, we will correct the feet.’ Ever since my operation, I have used this same outlook to overcome all the handicaps. When I came home from the procedure, I had both legs in soft-wrapped splints. I was to be non-weight bearing and to keep still. The recovery period was frustrating for me and absolutely maddening for my mother. I had no interest in being immobile. So within days of coming home in the splints, I had to be brought back to the hospital. I had snapped the splints in to by trying to crawl. Afterwards, I was put into hard castings and I was more cautious. Once out of my castings, I had to endure a year or more of physical therapy, because I had to learn how to walk again. To this day, I refuse to let my disability stunt my potential. I have tried at every available opportunity to challenge myself, to keep on fighting, and to invent ways around my

Today in clinical, I offered a male patient to perform a full bed bath. It was my first time performing a full bed bath on a male and the thought of this made me feel a little nervous because I had only practiced this task in the simulation lab and the thought of performing peri-care on the male gender was intimidating. I began to gather my items and throughly think about how I would normally perform a bed bath on a female and the difference of genital areas. As I brought the items into the room, my patient was friendly and helpful in directing his preferences of which areas he wanted to be washed first. His friendly personality made me calm down in a situation where I would normally be on my toes, as I was not thinking about my

Undergoing a foot surgery at the age of 10 was the worst, as well as a meaningful experience that I had in my life until now. Having been born with flat feet, I discovered that my feet was aching from when I was 9, but I just disregarded the numb feeling for six months since the pain was not so intense. To be honest, I thought that this will eventually become better if I leave it alone for a while. But rather, the shape of my feet was gradually turned into a shape that resembled a garden gnome.

I was in the fifth grade and had just undergone my first surgery to have my tonsils removed. As I laid on the couch the lights began to blur, the voices began to fade, and the fluid that ran through my veins started to flood out of my mouth like water cascading over an edge.