Never An Easy Choice

Today Mark's Daily Apple shared an article about 95 year old Emiel Pauwels' choice of euthanasia after having a grand party to celebrate his life. This man was a senior athlete (competing in the Veteran's Games and winning in multiple categories at age 94) and had been diagnosed with cancer.

I don't know why I was surprised by the number of people posting comments about him "giving up" or that he could have "beat cancer". At 95, cancer treatment can be more devastating than the cancer itself. We don't know anything other than his choice after being diagnosed with cancer and I'm saddened by people's judgement when it comes to death with dignity and issues surrounding death in our culture.

Our society on the whole values quantity of life over quality of life. There are no questions about it. We as a whole are so uncomfortable with death and dying that we look at it as "giving up" or "taking the easy way out" or even "cowardly". We keep people hooked to machines to prolong lives for often times selfish reasons. We don't want to deal with the grief and feelings that accompany loss.

Many people form these judgments having never experienced watching a loved one suffer. They have not witnessed the sadness and suffering that terminally and chronically ill people endure on a daily basis.

This is a picture (probably my favorite ever) of my younger brother, Jesse. 

He made the choice at 29 to enter hospice care. He suffered tremendously for 15 years from gastroparesis and the side effects of his treatment over the years. He did not make the decision lightly. It was not rash.

His choice was NOT "cowardly". His choice was NOT "giving up". He did NOT "take the easy way out".

And our family did NOT try to talk him out of his choice for our own selfish reasons. It was terrifying for all of us to consider life without him, but we honored and respected his choice. We also had to fight to have others respect his choice.

The first hospice organization that was treating him had a new medical director start the week after he had been admitted to hospice care. This man pulled the rug from under our feet by saying that Jesse was too young to make this decision and he was not going to help him commit suicide because our family doctor told him there were other options. He discharged my brother immediately from their care. When confronted about "other options", this man told me he couldn't discuss it with either my mother or myself. (Never mind the fact he would not tell Jesse either what these "other options" were.) We confronted our family doctor, who told us he did not do any such thing.

I made a flurry of phone calls that day to try to find someone, anyone who could help us. Being in a rural community, the first organization was "the only game in town". I called countless organizations that day, but no one was able to help us. I called the last group in the Sacramento region that I could find. While they couldn't help us (we were out of their treatment area), the nurse asked if she could pass our information on to a new group, Bristol Hospice, to see if they could help us.

Again, we were outside of their treatment area, but Bristol Hospice took over Jesse's care and helped make the last 6 months of Jesse's life the best he had experienced in years. He was comfortable. He was able to enjoy the time he had left. He got to see the San Francisco Giants win a World Series. He saw one last Winter Classic. One last Christmas with the family.

Most importantly, he passed away peacefully at home surrounded by the people he loved.

There is something to be said about quality over quantity of life. Having watched my brother (and best friend) suffer for so many years, not just physically but emotionally as well due to his illness, I respected his choice. Tomorrow it will be 3 years that he has been gone. I miss him every day, but take comfort knowing he is no longer suffering.

The choice to die with dignity should be just that, a choice. A choice that is respected like any other. We spend so much time talking about not judging others, yet when the topic of dying with dignity comes up, everyone is quick to judge. We talk so much about respecting others, but when a person chooses to end life extending measures that respect seems to fly out the window.

Life is something to be lived to the fullest and celebrated (not everyone gets the chance to have a grand party like Emiel). Each person has to make their own way in this world, let's keep the judgement to ourselves. 

Mustangs in Mexico

I'm still working through M0rt issues and had school tonight. I spent the time I would normally use for tangling or crafting emailing Craftwell customer service about M0rt.

M0rt shouldn't need a new blade every 2-3 pieces of paper (which had ultimately been my solution for the problems I've been having).

Craftwell tried telling me it is likely my file. No, it not likely my file. I sent them the simplest part of the whole project (a circle with a line from center to one edge) to test. I have simplified much of the design I have been working with when I noticed that M0rt wasn't going to be able to cut teeny, tiny circles. The skulls are not too small, or even that delicate.

We'll see what they have to say.

Considering my observation about how differently MTC behaves on a 64 bit v 32 bit operating system, perhaps there is some sort of issue with eCraftshop Pro. Tomorrow night I will do some more testing using Lappy.

I came to a realization today. I miss helping people. In any capacity. I guess if I really try to sell it, I help people make educated decisions on furniture by providing them with detailed information. Or something to that effect.

My mother-in-law told my husband last night that the kids wanted to know if I was coming for Halloween in my witch costume. (I scared a few kids last year (: ) It did make me realize I miss helping people. Whether it's kids learning or, hell, even working at human services, I feel better when I am helping others.

It really reinforced my plan to finish my Art Education degree and get my LCSW.

On another note, my Ancient Latin American Art and Architecture instructor (I'm not calling him ancient, the class is pre-colombian) finally gave a coherent lecture. We're more than half way through the semester. Most of his lectures are some rambling about some dig he went on and a lot of him pronouncing Spanish words that are so accented, it's hard to make sense of them.

Tonight he used the Ford Mustang as an illustration for stylistic seriation. It made sense. Though most of the class was very unfamiliar a 1964 1/2 Mustang, which was the jumping off point. As soon as we stopped talking about cars, it was right back to rambling.

I had some sort of profound thought I had wanted to share, but totally forgot it. What seemed profound at the time obviously wasn't.

Ah projects

So, I've obviously missed a few days of my zentangles. But I'm okay with that.

After a lengthy discussion with Justin, it feels more important to create in general every day rather than be tied to a specific project.

I was stressing over not getting tangles done. I was going to bed too late because I had to make dinner, walk the dog, go to the store, actually spend time with my husband etc., and lo and behold it's almost midnight and my tangle wasn't done.

Life happens. And it was staring to feel like I was sacrificing other projects I wanted to do so I could get the tangle done.

Like this one:

I have had this project on my radar for ever. Seriously. From the day I got M0rt I wanted to do this. It's not working out exactly as planned (M0rt is choosing to be difficult), but I'm trying a variety of ways to work through this project.

It's really time consuming. I have to make sure the files are appropriately layered for cutting. I've spent countless hours working on the AI file itself over the last how ever many months. But the zentangle project was basically relegating things like this to the weekend. If I am home and not busy with other stuff.

M0rt doesn't seem to take kindly to really intricate scroll work (neither does the Cricut). He chews the paper. He gets his blade stuck and cuts over the same area twice. So that sort of put a damper on my idea intricately cut paper scroll work for this project.

So my next inclination was to cut a template and ink the scroll work using that. I figured if M0rt didn't want to work with cardstock on this, perhaps he'd cooperate with some Bristol. Nope. Not having it. He threw a fit. He didn't want to cut through most of the time (I started at a 6 pressure and went up to 8). When I increased the pressure, he stabbed the paper with his blade and snagged the edges. I wasted a few pieces of bristol in this process.

I got frustrated and was like "fine. be that way M0rt. See if I use you as much for stuff" (maybe he doesn't want to do work and this is all a part of his plan). I decided to hand ink after all. But then Justin reminded me of the Grafix Rub-onz sheets. So I inked the rub onz sheets and am attempting to transfer that way. The only issue I have with that is that there is a slight sheen around the placement because it would be really difficult to remove all of the non inked adhesive.

Ultimately I plan to put this in a 12x12 scrapbook/shadowbox style frame, so the glass will have all sorts of glare that will likely obscure the sheen of the adhesive. I'll let you know how that turns out.

My skipping tangles started on Tuesday with good reason. We went to Sacramento to go to the annual Bristol Hospice Remembrance. I have to say I was really glad I postponed my midterm (first time in all of college I've ever asked to reschedule a test). It was awesome to be somewhere with people who were so highly impacted by my brother. Sometimes it feels like people don't remember he ever existed, but even almost 3 years later the hospice staff tears up when they talk about Jesse. It was also really great to see some of the people who have inspired my desire to provide art as therapy for hospice patients and their families.