To Live or Die
One day after a hunting accident in which he broke his neck, Tim Bowers was presented the grim choice of whether he wanted to live or die. On Saturday, November 2, doctors told Bowers he would be paralyzed and could be on a ventilator for the rest of his life. The 32-year-old man chose to take no extra measures to stay alive. He died Sunday, hours after his breathing tube was removed. To me, this is so heartbreaking – yes, I support the trend to allow patients more self-determination, but to ask an SCI survivor only hours after his devastating injury if he wants a ventilator or not? What a reckless offer! It loads way too much responsibility on a shocked individual who just doesn’t have the psychological or emotional wherewithal to grasp the implications. As a quadriplegic, I can speak from experience – at the onset of spinal cord injury, it’s completely understandable for a person to recoil at the prospects of quadriplegia. But life is the most irreplaceable and fundamental condition of the human experience, and to expect a freshly-traumatized person to make a rational decision about life-as-a-quadriplegic is, I think, medical malpractice. My heartfelt prayers go out to the Bowers family as they learn to adjust to life without their beloved son and brother.
