As you might have noticed, or not noticed, I have not been blogging as of recent...Reason being, I have been waiting, watching a friend die of Lung Cancer in Hospice care...

To start, hospice is a great idea and organization ran by fantastic people...The idea of hospice is take care of the terminally ill...let them die with dignity and no pain...

Hospice, in reality, is assisted suicide, it is a trade-off between no pain and life...morphine is given by pump at the end of an individuals life where there is no pain, the dose has to be increased more and more until the persons' breathing becomes shallow and they cease to breathe...

There are two camps of thinking about this, one is that the person will die at exactly the same time whether the drugs is given or not, and the other is that the drugs are a trade-off between a small shortening of life and pain...I don't think it really makes one bit of difference which might be actually true...I think the idea of letting a terminally ill person go, pain-free and with dignity is the only humane course of action...

The unfortunate circumstance of hospice care is that only about 18% of eligible people actually use the free service...Hospice service is provided through government and private donations to all terminally ill persons...

I watched my friend slip away with minimial pain, with dignity and grace...I said my goodbyes...I am glad they choose to go the way they did...I will miss them, but will have them always in my thoughts and memories...

Now for my soapbox, the person I speak of, was 69 years old, she died of lung cancer after being diagnosed 6 months earlier...it was quick and very painful...in the end she literally drowned...in mucus, lung tissue and cancer...I am not one for sentiment, or resolutions, or any airy-fairy nonsense...I am a realist...and I saw what smoking did to this precious woman...if you smoke...quit...it is an ugly way to die...the old adage "you have to die someway", well, yes, you do, but this is not the way to die...drowning on your own cancer while being pumped with morphine to feel no pain until you die...