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Friday, July 11, 2014

How would you like to Die? Would you want the Doctor's to help you or what? This is a personable one as a legal one.



Diane Rehm and her husband John had been married for 54 years when he knew he didn’t want to live another day.
His Parkinson’s disease had become unbearable. “He just kept getting weaker,” the NPR host told NBC News. “We called in the doctor and John said to him: ‘I am ready today.’ He said ‘I can no longer use my legs, I can no longer use my arms, I can no longer feed myself.’ And knowing with Parkinson’s it is going to get worse rather than better, he said ‘I wanted to die.’” He asked the doctor for help.

The answer they got surprised and disappointed both of them. “The doctor said ‘I cannot do that legally, morally or ethically’,” Rehm said. “He said ‘I don’t disagree with your wish that you could die with the help of a physician but I cannot do it in the state of Maryland.’”
John Rehm had to deliberately die by dehydration. It took nine days.
“John said he felt betrayed,” Rehm said. He said, ‘I felt that when the time came, you would be able to help me.’”


It’s just the type of death the advocacy group Compassion & Choices, among others, has been fighting to prevent. Instead, John Rehm should have had the option of an assisted death, the group says. They call for "aid in dying" — allowing mentally competent, terminally ill adults to request life-ending medication from a doctor for a peaceful and painless death. It's legal in several states, but not Maryland.

John Rehm met the definition, says Diane Rehm, a nationally syndicated talk show host for WAMU-FM in Washington.
“Both of us had agreed that when the time came, we would be there for each other in whatever way was necessary,” she said. “So when he made up his mind, that was it.”
"He simply decided the end had come and he did not want to carry on this way."
She wasn’t happy about it, but understood his decision. He’d been in assisted living since November of 2012. “That was something we had both agreed we never wanted but at that point he had started falling and I couldn’t lift him,” said Rehm.
By June of this year, John was very frail. There’s no cure for Parkinson’s, and the few available treatments eventually stop working. “He was so brave,” Rehm said. “He simply decided the end had come and he did not want to carry on this way. He could no longer feed himself, he couldn’t shower alone, he couldn’t stand alone.”
The only option, his doctor told him, was to refuse all food and water. It’s not an easy way to die, as it takes anywhere from a few days or a few weeks to succumb to dehydration. It can be very painful, causing headaches, leg cramps and delirium.

John Rehm’s doctor kept an eye on him, administering low doses of morphine to control the discomfort. “He did not seem to feel pain,” Rehm said. “We kept putting lotion on his lips and using tiny little sponges in his mouth to keep him comfortable.”

It wasn’t easy to watch. “I wanted to take applesauce and put it in his mouth,” Rehm said. “But you can’t do that. You have to respect someone else’s wishes. You have to honor his desires. And he was finished with life. He said ‘I am looking forward to the next journey’,” she added.
Polls show that 65 percent or more of the U.S. population supports having an option available to help people choose a quicker, more painless death, Compassion & Choices says. This is different from assisted suicide or euthanasia, the group stresses. “Assisted suicide is a crime in many states, including Oregon and Washington, where aid in dying is legal,” the group says.
Assisted dying is also legal in Vermont and Montana. Several other states have considered the matter.
"I have no doubt that he was terminally ill and if he was in Oregon he would have qualified for aid in dying," said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices.
He should have had better choices."
“We do not let our little animals suffer and people shouldn’t have to suffer.”
In the United States, there's strong opposition, Coombs Lee says. "There is a vocal and politically strong minority that opposes it vehemently," she said. "They have all the power in the legislatures. The combination of organized medicine and organized religion is an extremely powerful combination in the halls of our nation’s legislatures."

Compassion & Choices says it doesn't support euthanasia or "mercy killing," "because someone else — not the dying person — chooses and acts to cause death." What is called euthanasia and is legal in some European countries more closely resembles what the group calls aid in dying.
It would allow a doctor to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs for a patient to take as he or she chose. “I would like to, in every state across the country, in every city, in every county, I would very much like to see a justification, an allowance, for aid in dying,” Rehm said.
“We do not let our little animals suffer and people shouldn’t have to suffer.”
Such a method could help patients ensure that loved ones are with them if they wish. As it happened, Rehm wasn’t there in her husband’s very last moments on June 23rd.
“I spent the night there Sunday night the 22nd because I was afraid he was going to die that night and I didn’t want him to die alone,” she said. She and their dog Maxie slept beside John’s bed.
“I will hopefully someday, with the help of a kind physician, be able to end my life when I choose."
“When the caregiver arrived at about 7:30 in the morning I said ‘I’ll run home and feed Maxie and take a shower and I’ll be back’.” A doctor called her soon after and said John, who was unconscious by this time, would likely die within the next 24 hours. But before she could get back, the caregiver called. John Rehm had died. “I got there 20 minutes too late,” Rehm said.

Rehm doesn’t want that type of uncertainty for herself. “I will hopefully someday, with the help of a kind physician, be able to end my life when I choose,” she said.
“I think there are so many reasons why people choose to end their lives and I am not talking about people who are desperate, who are miserable and lonely. I am talking about people who have lived their lives and are satisfied with what they have had and are really ready to let go,” she added.
“I just think we ought to be able to create that space for ourselves where we can choose to die with dignity and with the aid of a physician.”
As for her husband, Rehm said, “I will love him and miss him forever.”

Thursday, July 10, 2014

New six-minute test could offer a way of identifying early stage Parkinson's disease for the first time



Scientists have developed a six-minute test which could give an early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease.
Currently Parkinson’s patients only discover they have the debilitating neurological problem when the symptoms have already taken hold.
But Oxford University academics have come up with a new way of spotting the disease at an early stage.
The researchers were able to detect early Parkinson’s disease with a remarkable 85 per cent accuracy.
The technique uses an MRI scanner to monitor the neural connections in a concentrated area at the very centre of the brain.
Even at a very early stage, Parkinson’s patients had much weaker connections in the basal ganglia region of the brain, which is associated with motor control.
The study, which has been published in the journal Neurology, found that by taking 180 pictures in six minutes they could spot the poor connections.
They also found that the test had a very low chance of incorrectly diagnosing healthy people with the disease.
A new six-minute test could diagnose Parkinson's disease in its early stages. Michael J. Fox (pictured) was diagnosed with the disease in 1991


The said scans could be done on people in their fifties, the age when the condition usually begins to take hold.
Study leader Dr Clare Mackay, a psychiatrist at Oxford University, said: ‘At the moment we have no way to predict who is at risk of Parkinson’s disease in the vast majority of cases.
Currently it is only possible to diagnose Parkinson's disease when it is more advanced. Billy Connolly (pictured) was diagnosed with the disease in September last year on the same day as he was told he had cancer


Currently it is only possible to diagnose Parkinson's disease when it is more advanced. Billy Connolly (pictured) was diagnosed with the disease in September last year on the same day as he was told he had cancer
‘We are excited that this MRI technique might prove to be a good marker for the earliest signs of Parkinson’s. The results are very promising.’
Around 127,000 people in the UK are believed to have Parkinson’s, which causes tremors, slow movements and muscle rigidity.
The new test uses an MRI scanner to monitor the neural connections at the very centre of the brain. Sir Roger Bannister (pictured) has recently revealed that he has Parkinson's
The new test uses an MRI scanner to monitor the neural connections at the very centre of the brain. Sir Roger Bannister (pictured) has recently revealed that he has Parkinson's
There is currently no cure and no way of halting the disease.
But the progressive nerve cell damage produced by Parkinson’s is thought to begin long before any symptoms appear. 
Dr Mackay said: ‘We are still at least ten years away from that magic breakthrough which allows us to slow down the progression of Parkinson’s. 
'But in order to get there, we need a way of spotting the disease early on. The two things go hand in hand.’ 
And co-author Dr Michele Hu, from Oxford University’s Nuffield department of clinical neurosciences, said: ‘Because it is so sensitive, we hope that it will be able to predict who is at risk of disease before any symptoms have developed.’
Claire Bale, a spokesman for Parkinson’s UK, which funded the research, added: ‘This new research takes us one step closer to diagnosing Parkinson’s at a much earlier stage – one of the biggest challenges facing research into the condition.
‘One person every hour is diagnosed with Parkinson’s in the UK, and we hope that the researchers are able to continue to refine their test so that it can one day be part of clinical practice.’


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2655259/New-six-minute-test-offer-way-identifying-early-stage-Parkinsons-disease-time.html#ixzz3788vJoAZ
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