Many people are confused about this subject. They do not want to watch their loved one suffer or suffer themselves. This is understandable. However, thanks to recent medical breakthroughs, practically anybody can have his or her pain completely relieved and die in comfort and dignity without being put to death like a pet.

You don't have to feel drugged, either. With modern pain-control techniques, you should be comfortable and clear-headed, even with cancer all through your bones--like my father had when he died.

There are several reasons some people die in pain. Many doctors and nurses in this country have not been trained in modern pain-control techniques; they mean well, but just don't know how to keep people both comfortable and clear-headed. Patients and their families are often afraid to take effective doses of drugs. Insurance plans frequently don't cover Hospice or other comfort measures; occasionally, pharmacies refuse to fill prescriptions large enough to be effective. The first thing to do is to find a doctor who knows about pain control. A good doctor should ask how bad your pain is, and believe you. He/she should ask you when and how often it happens, what factors make it better, what makes it worse. He/she should know that not all pains are the same: bone pain, organ pain, nerve pain can be quite different. Your doctor should try to figure out which is causing your pain, because different kinds of pain often need different kinds of treatment. If your doctor doesn't know much about pain, he/she should be willing to refer you to a pain specialist or pain clinic. If not, the nurses at your local Hospice usually know who's good and who isn't, and often will be willing to refer you.

There is a wide range of choices for controlling pain. Most pain can be controlled by oral medications. Medicine should be given in increments -- starting from aspirin and moving up step by step to morphine. It should be given before it starts to hurt. It takes a lot more medicine to get pain under control than to keep it under control. There is no maximum dose of morphine. You can safely take as much as your pain requires. You build up until the pain is gone, then take maintenance doses regularly to keep the pain away. You needn't fear overdosing, because pain neutralizes the respiratory side effects of morphine. You also needn't fear addiction for it is extremely rare in this setting, and basically irrelevant. There is a wide margin of safety between the dose of drug which kills your pain and the dose which makes you feel "high". Both doses go up as the pain gets worse, so you should never find yourself feeling groggy. If you do, you will need to cut back a little to the dose that controls your pain without making you feel "drugged".

So don't despair. Pain can almost always be controlled. Pain is never a reason to die, nor to ask your doctor to kill you. If you feel that you truly want to die, you could be depressed. This should be checked because depression can almost always be successfully treated.

What is "Death with Dignity"? People who advocate physician-assisted suicide or direct euthanasia ("mercy killing") tell us that death is the compassionate answer to the suffering of terminal illness. But we have seen that modern care techniques like Hospice relieve physical and emotional suffering so well that people receiving Hospice care hardly ever "want to die". They prefer to live with dignity and to die a natural death.

Maintaining true dignity for the dying requires that we value people even as their bodies and capabilities decline. Often the last few hours, or days, of life are the most valuable to a person and their family alike. Old hurts are healed, old wrongs forgiven, unspoken love expressed. Offering euthanasia as a short-cut to dying could steal the most precious moments of life.

No society in history has had the ability we possess to provide every person with a humane and natural death. If other societies with fewer options have considered it uncivilized to legalize intentional killing, how can we embrace it?

This is a subject whose time has come. Human life has become cheap and valueless since the legalization of abortion in 1973. The time is soon coming when people who cannot take care of themselves will be told it is their "duty" to end their life. We must fight this trend!

What is a Living Will? It is a documet by which a person can give, in advance, a directive to have life-sustaining medical treatment withheld or discontinued at the time of future serious illness or injury should he/she be unable then to make medical decisions.

Living Will language is deceptive. Simple wordings appear harmless until the meanings of the words are analyzed. Words such as "artificial means," "reasonable expectation of recovery," "terminal" are open to a variety of interpretations. Many of the meanings that could be construed from these words may be contrary to the intent of the Living Will signer. Also, there may be more provisions to a Living Will law than the simple declaration which is signed by the individual.

Living Wills are unnecessary because people already have the right to make informed consent decisions telling their family and physicians how they want to be treated if or when they can no longer make decisions for themselves. Doctors are already free to withhold or withdraw useless procedures in terminal cases that provide no benefit to the patient. Some people fear that medical technology will be used to torture them in their final days. But it is more likely tht the "medical heroics" people fear are the very treatments that will make possible a more comfortable, less painful death.

It is not possible to make well-informed decisions about treatment before an illness or injury occurs. Special circumstances at a future time will affect decisions concerning treatment. Every treatment should not be applied to every patient in every circumstance. If a patient is dying, it is both good medicine and good morals to withdraw useless treatment that would only prolong the dying process with no benefit to the patient. Useless treatment does NOT include pain management or food and water.

Living Wills weigh the law in favor of death rather than life. They do not give the patient the power to direct that he or she be given life saving, or life enhancing, treatment or even food and water. Presently, there is a rapidly growing trend to withdraw beneficial medical treatment and food and water from incompetent and even non-terminal patients. What is needed is protection for such persons, rather than legislationauthorizing their death by starvation and dehydration. Starvation and dehydration is a terrible way to die and totally unnecessary.