{"id":194040,"date":"2019-02-03T12:19:18","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T18:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=194040"},"modified":"2019-01-31T16:07:40","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T22:07:40","slug":"fatal-diagnosis-considered-assisted-suicide-found-new-purpose-helping-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/fatal-diagnosis-considered-assisted-suicide-found-new-purpose-helping-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"He considered assisted suicide but found new purpose helping kids"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When someone is told he’s going to die, there are decisions that must be made. Does he fight for his life? Try to alleviate the pain in his final days? Spend time at home with family? Or, thanks to the increase in the availability of assisted suicide, does he choose to die now? For Bob Charland, the thought of pursuing assisted suicide was an option. But he found a new purpose<\/a> instead — and that gave him the will to continue living.<\/p>\n

Charland previously worked as a bouncer at a nightclub, which meant he had to face people he kicked out who occasionally got violent. Twice, he suffered severe beatings, which gave him brain damage. He began having problems with headaches, memory loss, and tremors. Then, last year, he was diagnosed with a cyst in his brain and a tumor in his frontal lobe. \u201cMy doctor said my brain looked as though it belonged to a 70-year-old man,\u201d he said in an interview with the Washington Post. He originally thought about assisted suicide, explaining, \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be a burden to anybody.”<\/p>\n

This is not unusual; according to numerous studies<\/a> —\u00a0including ones from the New England Journal of Medicine<\/a> and the British Medical Journal<\/a>\u00a0— have found that many people do not pursue euthanasia to avoid a painful death from their disease. Instead, they often are feeling hopeless, are struggling with depression, have no support, and are worried they will be a burden to their loved ones.<\/p>\n