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Death with dignity and finding comfort in dying

Physician-assisted suicide to the terminally ill provides a comfort to many who experience great anxiety of an unmistakable deterioration and suffering before death. While many recent gains have been made in the improvement of end of life care-such as hospices and palliative treatment, as well as a larger universal acceptance of the refusal of life-sustaining medications-concerns about patients final days are still not adequately addressed.Patients with terminal illnesses suffer from life altering ailments that morph their body into an uncontrollable shadow of what it was when it was healthy. This forces them to rely on others for their every need. A near death becomes a certainty and both the patient and their loved ones suffer as the ill person slips out of life in pain and anguish. However with the option of physician-assisted suicide, people are provided with the comfort that if their disease becomes excruciating and they deem their life as no longer bearable they can put an end to the misery. This encourages many to at least attempt to live with the disease they obtain instead of committing suicide in a violent, traumatizing manner since they know that the option to end their life is available to them. It also allots them the reassurance that they will be able to end their life in a peaceful way surrounded by their loved ones as opposed to a prolonged and painful death that will leave their family with a distorted memory of what was a good life because of the depressing end. Physician-assisted suicide should be granted legally to terminally ill patients that deserve the right to die. When incurable diseases take over the life of patients, which have become "nothing but meaningless existence with no escape" despite their medicines to dull the pain, they are still suffering because of their freedom that has been taken away.The patients decision to end their own life is owed to them.