As some of you are aware, I'm a caregiver for a variety of people. And something you see a lot in my side of the industry is death. A lot of it. If you're unlucky enough to work at a facility you sometimes see people die daily. Of course, over time you become desensitized by it. But I still see some people who are in such bad condition that I think to myself: Are we keeping them alive because they want to, or because WE want to?
Let me explain a scenario I saw a few months back:
There was a girl whom I didn't work with but saw often and overheard about enough to get an idea of what was going on. This girl was in her late 20's who was at a facility I was temporarily filling in for, the thing about her is she was riddled with cognitive and physical issues. But the most stand out thing was she was constantly suffering from violent seizures every few minutes.
All day, and all night the seizures would occur. At night she'd be screaming and moving around violently in bed (from what I heard in my clients neighboring room), she was in a lot of pain from her body slowly but surely killing her by deteriorating -both muscle and bone. She was on the brink of losing her ability to speak as well, every time she talked it was very stressed and clearly painful and barely audible. Over the course of my stay she was also losing her ability to control her limbs. Of course these were just stand out things, there was more to it than that.
Eventually I asked her nurse how long she had left and the nurse said, "Not too long. But, she's been getting to this point the past 5yrs. Honesylu, my recommendation was to have her pass away peacefully, but her parents didn't want that so we've prolonging her life as much as we can."
I asked her if the girl ever asked to die because of how horrible she's been suffering. She answered with, "Well, she has. From time to time. But her parents have control over that decision and they said no. Besides assisted suicide isn't legal in this state. Her parents just can't stand the thought of not having her in their life anymore, regardless of what it does to her. I don't think their intent is malicious though."
But I don't know 
maybe I'm wrong and we should keep people alive for as long as their guardians want. But I do feel at some point, eapecially in this case, it could be seen almost as abusive to do it. Thoughts? I know this is a heavier topic XD
