One Dying Wish By James Duffy Analysis

In the short essay “One Dying Wish,” author James Duffy explains the importance of letting terminally ill patients decide whether they want to continue their lives or find peace and die. Patients and their families struggle immensely by the patient staying alive. Watching the patient suffer through the pain and losing hope. Duffy’s thesis is that terminally ill patients should have the choice to die in peace, without being medicated beyond hope.

Duffy explains that terminally ill patients are in pain, and the idea of keeping them alive knowing there isn’t hope for them is wrong. The hospital Duffy worked in had a policy that stated “As long as someone is alive, they would do anything to keep them alive” (73). Duffy then describes a

Duffy refers to “A Crime of Compassion,” by Barbara Huttmann, Huttmann was a nurse and explains her experience with a patient named Mac. How Mac’s illness of lung cancer, tore his family apart Mac begged the nurses to let him die. Every time he went into arrest, a code blue was called. In one month, Mac was resurrected fifty-two times. Barbra saw that Mac no longer had the will to live; the next time Mac went into arrest out of compassion Barbra, did not call a code blue. “For granting Mac’s dying wish, Barbara was charged with murder” Duffy (75).

Duffy then states “Had Mac had the option of a peaceful and pain-free death, it would have saved himself and his wife the pain of being forced to stay alive.”

Duffy also refers to his Aunt Eileen how she was diagnosed with skin cancer at a young age. Eileen loved her family and did not want to die, Eileen was able to get into hospice care, where she found peace with herself and was able to die without pain. Duffy explains, how if she was forced to live, being resurrected such as Mac. Eileen’s family would have suffered so much and would have made this time more