Dutch Pro-Euthanasia Association to Start End-of-Life Clinic in 2012

The Dutch pro-euthanasia association, NVVE, is planning to open an end-of-life clinic in 2012. Here, severely ill people who are unable to find a physician willing to assist with their euthanasia, can come to die. The clinic is completely legal, according to both the NVVE and physician organization KNMG. In the Netherlands, people who suffer [...]

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Study Finds Brain Activity in “Vegetative” Patients

Yesterday, my boyfriend sent me a NYtimes.com article on brain activity in people in apparent vegatative state. The study the article discusses examines the possibility that some people in a vegatative state – that is, people who have opened their eyes and for this reason are not in a coma, but who give no further [...]

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Oral Surgery Went Much Better This Time

I went to the oral surgery on Monday again to have two other wisdom teeth removed. This time, the experience was much better than when I went in December, so either one of my nurses called the staff out on their inappropriate behavior in December, or Dr. van G. has much better communication skills than [...]

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My Experience Is Real, So It Isn’t in Your Medical Textbook

Yesterday, Chally had a post up at FWD/Forward entitled Only You Know Your Own Experence. In it, she discusses an interaction with a medical professional who, for whatever reason, insisted that she must be depressed or suffering from OCD because she woke up at 5:00 AM each morning and then checked her E-mail, and the [...]

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Navigating the Dutch Health System

A few days ago, a discussion was started at Mental Nurse about the subject of clothing rules in mental hospitals, with some general notes on the care situation in various hospitals in different countries thrown in (among them, comments from me about the Dutch situation). DeeDee Ramona wrote a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Irish Health [...]

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Bad Experience at Oral Surgery

I went to the oral surgeon today to have a wisdom tooth removed. Well, in all honesty, Dr. D. and his resident (or that is, I am assuming she’s a resident) are eligible for some much-needed lessons in disability awareness and much more general communication skills. It was bad. As I went in, I was [...]

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Who Decides What “Quality of Life” Means?

Over the last few days, I’ve come across a few blog posts on the subject of quality of life, as it relates to euthanasia and assisted suicide. Note here, that my opinion about assisted suicide and euthanasia is not based on some kind of mantra that says that everyone has an obligation to live until [...]

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Mentally Ill Receive Inferior Medical Care

I haven’t been able to go online for six weeks due to a massive computer crash, which I saw coming but didn’t anticipate on in time. When I went back online a few days ago, I stumbled upon an article that states that research found that mentally ill people receive inferior medical care. Didn’t surprise [...]

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Developmentally Disabled Die becaue of Carelessness and Discrimination

Last week, Mencap, a UK advocacy group, published a report detailing six cases in which developmentally disabled people died because of poor healthcare (PDF-file). The reasons for these people’s deaths ranged from the failure to insert a feeding tube after a Down Syndrome patient was left unable to swallow by a stroke – a practice [...]

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Cancer Patients Not Getting New Drug

Recently, a man in the UK, Alex Baxter, killed himself after being denied a new, likely effective (as in, life-prolonging and quality-enhancing) but very expensive cancer drug, Sutent. In his case, it was the insurer denying him the drug, while his doctor had prescribed it and even appealed the decision not to provide the money. [...]

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