Opinion: ‘Stop the torture’ — A husband’s plea for change to state’s end-of-life law

My wife Glenda is being tortured Right now At present And we every single one of us reading this are complicit in her agony because our silence enables this barbarism we call healthcare California passed the End-of-Life Option Act in after years of debate following Brittany Maynard s highly publicized fight for death with dignity The law allows terminally ill patients with six months or less to live to request life-ending medication from their doctors Sounds compassionate right Wrong The law s requirements are impossibly restrictive patients must be mentally competent make multiple oral requests days apart provide a written request with two onlookers and self-administer the medication themselves What sadistic joke is this for families facing Alzheimer s stroke or advanced dementia By the time these diseases reach their horrific final stages patients have lost the very mental quota the law demands They can t make informed decisions They can t remember making requests They certainly can t self-administer anything The law that promised death with dignity has created a grotesque catch- By the time these diseases reach their final horrific stages patients can no longer meet the law s requirements They re trapped mentally gone but legally required to suffer until their bodies absolutely surrender Glenda was diagnosed with dementia several years ago She is trapped in a prison of a failing body while her mind disappeared piece by agonizing piece into Alzheimer s When she was whole she begged me never to let her suffer like this I promised But California s law has turned me into a liar and her into a victim of state-sanctioned torture The law that insists to offer death with dignity has abandoned her entirely Related Articles If US halted fluoride kids cavities would grow by millions research says Kraft Heinz pulling artificial dyes from its US products in At-home robustness tests are here but they aren t reliably the best option Give blood get a Metallica T-shirt Here are the details metal fans Gas station heroin is technically illegal and widely available Here are the facts Don t misunderstand me the hospice workers the nurses the care band they are angels They pour their hearts into caring for Glenda They treat her with more dignity than our laws do But even these compassionate souls are handcuffed by the very system they serve When they tell me She s calm or We re doing everything we can I see the pain in their eyes They know God they know that everything they can do is pitifully limited by laws that tie their hands behind their backs These are people who chose caregiving because they believe in compassion and mercy yet they re forced to work within a system that denies them the tools to provide it It s not the helpers who are cruel it s the law that is cruel It s not the therapeutic professionals who lack compassion it s the legal system that prevents them from showing it We ve created a framework so rigid so fearful so legally paranoid that it transforms healers into helpless bystanders We put animals out of their misery when they suffer like this We call it humane But human beings We force them to suffer because politicians decided that biological existence no matter how horrific trumps human dignity Every day we delay reforming these laws more families are destroyed The End-of-Life Option Act is a cruel joke that helps almost no one with dementia We need laws that honor advance directives that respect decisions made when minds were clear I don t want sympathy I want you to help change the law I want you to demand our legislators expand compassionate options for patients trapped by diseases that steal their final voice Paul Fillinger is an Air Force veteran and retired advertising executive and filmmaker He has been married for years and lives in Lafayette