Suicide Button

In high school I read the book Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein. In the book, the main character Lazarus Long is the oldest living full human left in the universe. It's a sci fi book way, way, way in the future. Anyway, Lazarus has decided he's seen everything, done everything and he's ready to push his suicide button, but a young descendent of his is trying to discourage him from doing so.

I've decided I want one of these buttons installed. I'm not a rash human by nature. In fact it takes me forever to make big decisions, and I agonize over them. But seriously, when I get to the point where either my body or my mind goes (it's a toss up which will degrade to mush first) I want to be able to just push the button. No chancing it with pills, no gun, no ugly. Just a nice cocktail with an umbrella in it, a good view pushing the button and slipping away.

Where does this come from? It comes from my latest trip to see Dr. Mary. Nyssa has been in pain for two days. It's her back. X-rays don't show any kind of break or fracture, but they can't really pick up if she slipped a disk. There's also some possibility she suffered a stroke of some kind because she appears to have lost some use of her left paws. Either way, she's clearly unhappy. The x-ray also showed that she has really bad arthritis in the lumbar area of her spine. Like so bad that her disks are fused together. So Mary gave her an injection of anti-inflammatory and she's on Cosequin twice a day. If the pain improves and she gets better, we'll just keep her on Cosequin long term. If not, we'll have to try some steroids. Luckily, all of her blood work is stellar for an almost 13-year-old cat.

Still, in some ways, I wish when it came to the end of the line for our pets, and even our other loved ones, there was an easier way to say goodbye. That naturally, we could all just push our own buttons. It seems a whole lot more civilized that way.