They contact me by phone or letter. If they can’t write, a relative will do it for them. I ask them to enclose medical documentation of their problem. Then I evaluate the records myself. I go over them with my assistant, who’s a medical technologist and has some medical expertise, for some more input. We go to the patient’s house, with the patient’s friends and relatives there, whoever the patient wants, with my two assistants. We will have a videotaped discussion, and all this is summarized in writing.
In cancer cases, it’s obvious. In many cases, we have just one major session and then a brief session just before. It’s obvious, they’re dying. In cases of multiple sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease, we followed one woman for a year and a quarter, with five or six sessions. You can see in these sessions how she deteriorates. It’s a medical problem that doctors have got to evaluate.
Yes. I make patients suffer. But they do it for me because they trust me and they know the option is there. They know they’re not going to die in extreme agony. I keep them going as long as possible. In fact, Sherry Miller, the one with MS, wrote H E L P, exclamation point. Big letters when she first wrote “help.” She already was so bad she couldn’t do it herself. She kept saying, “I waited too long, I can’t do it myself "
Oh, sure. People who call up and say, I’m diabetic, I’ve got heart disease, you know they can go on. That’s not terminal, that’s not critical. Many psychiatric cases, and you know they are in agony. Some people have told me from the age of 4 to 35, they’ve never wanted to live. These cases don’t qualify. I don’t even consider them.
It’s a strange phenomenon. Not one of them fears death, not one. I’ve had all kinds of religions, and not one wanted a religious consultation. Religion is totally irrelevant to what they want.
It’s tough on me. You’ve got to steel yourself. Every doctor does. If a doctor didn’t do that, he couldn’t function. Medicine is a real tragic profession in most cases. You steel yourself and you cannot empathize too much, although I do. Several times tears have come into my eyes. These are not happy moments. The ending of a human life can never be a good moment.
No. I have never cared about anything but the welfare of the patient in front of me. I don’t care about the law. I don’t care about injunctions. I don’t care about legislators.
Of course you can’t legislate this. Every case is unique. This cannot be legislated. That’s what’s wrong with all these silly initiatives. No other medical practice has law controlling it. It’s the medical profession’s fault that this is happening.
I will help a suffering human being at the right time when the patient’s condition warrants it, despite anything else. That’s what a doctor should do.
Well, I’ve been there twice and I wasn’t frightened. When you walk down the aisle with holding cells on each side, and someone spots you and then there’s suddenly an uproar of cheers, and hands come through the bars to shake your hand, would you worry? That happened both times.
