Meghan O'Rourke Quotes

The belief in the probability of death with dignity is our, and society’s, attempt to deal with the reality of what is all too frequently a series of destructive events that involve by their very nature the disintegration of the dying person’s humanity. I have not often seen much dignity in the process by which we die.

I have not often seen much dignity in the process by which we die.

In this service I hope to live; in it I wish to die!

Whereas a prolonged life is not necessarily better, a prolonged death is necessarily worse.

Many, if not most, Americans can imagine a fate worse than death, and it is a seemingly interminable process of dying. For them, it is frightening that politicians can find ways to interject themselves into this sad process.

Sister, you're trying to keep me alive as an old curiosity, but I'm done, I'm finished, I'm going to die.

Death deserves dignity.

A lot of money is spent trying to keep people alive who don't necessarily want to be alive.

Illness and death are not optional. Patients have a right to determine how they approach them.

It seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession, that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives, to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God's waiting room.

We could keep his body going, but it was trying its hardest to die.

Hospice has brought such a light in my life. It is something I will be involved with until I need hospice myself.

We should at least make sure that patients are given the opportunity to opt out of spending their final days in a hospital, hooked up to tubes and running up enormous bills.

Unless they've had some experience with it, the hospice is still a mystery to most people. Because hospice deals with death, people tend not to talk about it.

Bodily discomfort and emotional fear and attachment make the dying uncomfortable and fearful. So, to help those dying people, I think modern medical science has a lot of facilities to reduce pain, or perhaps not to reduce pain, but not to experience pain.

I hope that when the time comes, I am treated with compassion and allowed to pass on to the next phase of life's journey in the manner of my choice.

When we, doctors, ask patients what their priorities are if time is short, what we do is we use what is available to us - whether it's geriatric care or palliative care or hospice care - to make sure they're living the kind of life that they want to live.

We could move catalog, if he'd only die quicker.

I would urge the government to allocate more funds toward fighting cancer. My own situation, it made me think. It made me think about the potential of dying. I wouldn't say I was scared. I'm more scared of how it will happen than of it happening. I'm not scared that I'm going to die. I think of how I'm going to die ... I don't want to linger. That scares me a little. The idea of lingering.

The definition of what it means to be dying has changed radically. We are able to extend people's lives considerably, including sometimes, good days.

In the event that my illness worsens, I want to have a guarantee that I can die in a dignified manner. Nowhere in the bible does it say that a person has to stick it out to the decreed end. No one tells us what "decreed" means.

Each man is master of his own death, and all that we can do when the time comes is to help him die without fear of pain.

But we have gone so far in the direction of over treating terminal patients that we've failed to recognize when we're doing more harm than good.

In quixotically trying to conquer death doctors all too frequently do no good for their patients' ease but at the same time they do harm instead by prolonging and even magnifying patients' dis-ease.

I believe often that death is good medical treatment because it can achieve what all the medical advances and technology cannot achieve today, and that is stop the suffering of the patient.