I know it would be so much better for it to be handled this way as compared to the alternative of a closed casket due to their head being blown off with a gun.  This way would allow for dignity, comfort, better for family, etc. 

If I was in a terminal situation...Please pull the plug !!!!! That is just me personally though.......I also agree with the above two posts.   Joni

I was raised in Oregon, which was the first state to allow physician assisted suicide, I believe.   There was no great rush of people running to Oregon to kill themselves.  It was treated with great discretion, care and compassion.    Now that I am a nurse in Florida, I send all of my patients to Oregon , if they have made this choice for themselves.    If needed, I would go with them.   Each person, according to law, as this right.    Who wants to be alone, with no living relatives, stuck in a sub standard nursing home, in pain, with strangers caring for you.  You lay in bed day in and day out, ringing the bell for pain medications and no one comes.  Or you need to go to the bathroom and no one comes tohelp you, so you have to mess the bed and no one comes in for hours to check on you.  Then you get yelled at like a child.  If you try to speak out, you have the rath of the low paid techs come down on you.  I would be more fearful of this than of dying alone. At least I have my dignity.  

    I have been a hospice nurse and I have watched people die, in peace.  I praise those physicians that provide for the patient, not just the diagnosis as they learned it thirty years ago.   People in this country are under treated for pain because of fear of  reprisals for the physicians and DEA.   I believe the DEA and its practice of threatening physicians licenses for prescribing pain meds to their patients needs to be eliminated in this current budget crisis and beyond.    If you have a physician caring for you for years, that should be enough to tell the DEA, hands off.   Until this happens, the system will never change until people suffer enough that it becomes an issue of cost to the government and eventually the taxpayer.  Look at what is happening now, the schools are full of pills.   If you are a pain patient, there are rigorous contracts one must sign in order to continue getting your meds.  Blow it, and you are back in pain,  and you may never get pain relief again.  This would stop the crime as well, people in pain, create crimes. Just think how much we could empty the prisons for petty drug crimes and theft of drugstores.... it all ties in , all we need is someone to look at the BIG BIG picture.   Patients are undertreated for pain.    

My grandmother was very sick, my grandfather tried everything to keep her alive.  She was ready to go, but he had a pacemaker put in, and experimental drugs transfused into her body.  She had this smell of decomposing, the day she died.  I loved my grandmother, and the day she passed away, she had this look on her face of "please leave me alone..." not of pain.  She was ready to end her battle.  A nurse gave her morphine and she went off to sleep.  That night, she passed away.  I think that a patient who has struggled has a right to say when enough is enough regardless of spouse, family, or Physician.  My grandfather loved my grandmother and he did everything to keep her alive....but that wasn't fair to her...she was sick and needed to find peace. 

As a professional I took a oath to save lives...not take them. Now decide if doctors have the right!

Sorry, but one more question to think about before deciding your answers...Is it dignified to kill yourself?

I have seen patients in so much pain that I wish the family would give them morphine to help them fall asleep.  If they are cognitive and can make their own decision that is the way it should be handled.  I know a lot of families do not want to lose loved ones.  We did CPR on a guy for over 3 hours.  It was horrible!  He ended up dying anyway.  The doctor did ask the family if is was okay to stop CPR.  I think that is the way it should be handled.  However I am totally against withholding fluids from a patient.  I saw this happen only once and it broke by heart in two.

Dehydration is a natural part of dying and is proven to provide some analgesic effect. There are multiple articles and studies that provide this information.

i think it can be considered murder...but it depends on the situation