Category: Family

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Should Euthanasia Be Legal?


H 
Harold and Patricia Tucker recently passed their 50th anniversary. There was no celebration.
 
Married a month after their high school graduation, Patricia worked as a secretary in a local law firm to help Harold attend law school. Harold went on to climb the corporate ladder, becoming the chief counsel of a major insurance company by age 44. Unable to get pregnant, they adopted two children: John and Elizabeth.
 
Disaster stuck when Harold was 58. After experiencing memory problems, speaking difficulties, and bouts of physical pain, doctors suggested a series of tests, culminating in a biopsy of the brain. He was diagnosed with Pick’s disease.
 
There is no known cure for Pick’s disease, which attacks the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. The symptoms include dementia, memory loss, and loss of motor control, typically leading to death within eight to ten years. Patients often spend their final days in an assisted living facility.
 
Pick’s disease intensified Harold’s constant pain. Relief only came from heavy drug usage and semi-consciousness.

The Dilemma of a Fatal Disease

Terminal conditions are devastating. Life turns upside down – even the values held for a lifetime can be questioned. Psychologists claim that no one copes with impending death in the same manner, although many go through a variation of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
 
As Harold’s symptoms increased, he was forced to resign from his job, relying on Patricia for his day-to-day care. Every movement sent spasms of pain through his body, necessitating a daily regiment of opioid pills and patches. The side effects of the medication were almost as bad as the pain itself, with bouts of severe constipation, stomach aches, and drowsiness. The need for Patricia to handle his most intimate hygiene needs confirmed his helplessness.
 
Rather than spend his last days in pain, using up the savings intended for his wife and family, Harold determined that his life would end on his terms – not at the whim of some disease.
 
What actions would you take if diagnosed with a fatal, debilitating disease such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Alzheimer’s disease? Many believe that they would prefer to die on their terms, rather than endure the ravages of disease. Others accept continued life, despite the emotional and financial costs for their survivors.
 
Few realize that they do not have a choice if the situation arises, especially if they live in 45 of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia, where assisted suicide is illegal. In the five remaining right-to-die states – California, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington – the right to control the circumstances of your death is strictly controlled.
 
Read more . . .

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How to Identify Financial Scams & Investment Schemes

An old proverb claims, “The art is not in making money, but in keeping it.” Unfortunately, con artists and swindlers are anxious to separate you from your money by means of deception and fraud.
 
In an interview with BBC Future, Dr. Eryn Newman of the University of Southern California said a positive story that “feels smooth and easy to process” is easy to accept as truth. Con artists are particularly talented in creating believable lies. Falling for their tricks costs U.S. citizens billions every year.
 
According to Anthony Pratkanis, “Every year, Americans lose over $40 billion in telemarketing, investment, and charity fraud.” However, this amount may be vastly understated because instances of fraud are likely under-reported. According to the Financial Fraud Research Center, up to 65% of victims fail to report their victimization. They typically do not tell the authorities because they lack confidence in the police and the likelihood of restitution. Many are embarrassed by their gullibility.
 
But in her interview, Dr. Newman claims that gullibility – the tendency to be duped or manipulated by one or more people – does not reflect intelligence. Anybody can fall prey to a financial scheme or scam. Therefore, your best line of defense is to have a thorough understanding of how con artists operate – and how to spot them before they take advantage of you.

The Players

Marks

Victims of scams – known as “marks” – are often fooled when they hope to get something for nothing or very little. Other victims – often the elderly – may be susceptible due to their good intentions and desire to help others.
 
While many believe that the typical victim of an investment scam is older and less educated than the general populace, the Financial Fraud Research Center reports that this stereotype is false. The average investment fraud victim is “more likely to be male, relatively wealthy, risk-taking, interested in persuasive statements, open to sales situations, and better educated than the general public.” Martha Deevy, director of the Stanford Center on Longevity’s Financial Security Division, stated in an interview with the American Psychological Association that the typical investment fraud victim is a middle-aged, married, educated, financially literate white male under some financial strain.
 
Dr. Stephen Greenspan has spent more than a decade studying the problem of gullibility. In the The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Greenspan names four distinct factors that make a person more susceptible to being duped:
 
Read More . . .

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Life is What We Make It

autism
 
My friends, Bob and Nelly, are the parents of a severely autistic child who is expected to need care for his entire life. I can only imagine the financial and emotional burden they carried, yet I have never heard either complain. I’ve known Bob since grade school. He was constantly in trouble with teachers, always in detention or getting licks from the principal because he couldn’t or wouldn’t follow rules. While not rich, Bob’s family was comfortable, getting a new car every couple of years, flying away to California for vacations, allowing Bob to pick the college of his choice without concern about cost. Bob, I believed, was destined to be one of Life’s winners. After college, he graduated from law school and married Nelly who was from a similar economic background. They waited until their early thirties to have a child, wanting to be sure they could provide all of the comforts they had enjoyed to their own children. When little Richard was born, they were ecstatic. In their opinion, life couldn’t have gotten any better. When their world fell apart two years later with the diagnosis of autism and the uncertainties that Richard faced, their faith in themselves, each other, even God, was shattered.
 
As might be expected, everything about their life and expected future changed. For a time, things were very, very rough. Bob’s law practice suffered, their marriage was under strain as each tried to understand the cause of their son’s autism. As the extent of Richard’s disability became apparent, worries about money intensified. Nelly, as a stay-at-home Mom, seemed to bear the worst of it, spending every day with Richard, chasing every “cure”, spending hour after hour on the latest recommended therapy. By choice, their activities outside of a few close friends and family members virtually stopped. As for Richard, he gradually improved as he grew older, but never to the point of independence or even where they could leave him unattended without worry.

Acceptance & Change

But, over the years, Bob and Nelly changed, almost imperceptibly at first but more apparent as the months went by. Instead of worrying about the future, they began to embrace the present, facing each day as it came knowing that whatever trouble, tragedy, or even triumph was temporary and would pass. They learned to look past Richard’s disability to his strengths – his constant good nature, his unfailing willingness to forgive any slight or slur, his constant joy as he listened to his favorite songs over and over. More importantly, they learned to forgive themselves and to be happy once again. Bob’s legal career never fully recovered, but neither seemed to care about the lost income and the prestige that accompanies wealth.
 
As I struggled with my own problems, I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened? What had they discovered that I was missing? When I finally broached the subject with Bob, he simply replied, “I learned that I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried or how much I wanted, fix Richard’s autism. Whether it was my fault, or Nelly’s from something we inherited from our folks or consumed during our college years, of any one of a thousand reasons didn’t make any difference since I couldn’t go back and change it. The only thing that I could do was change how I felt and what I did. So I did.” He smiled. “Life is what we make of it, not what somebody else does.”

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Can a Zebra Change Its Stripes?

Zebra pregnant front view looking cutoutOften, there is some grain of truth in old sayings and myths. That is why they persist over time and generations. As I considered my own situation, I realized that one of the first questions I needed to answer was whether I could truly change old habits and patterns of thinking, if wanting to have a different life and future is really sufficient to make the effort successful. Perhaps the desire alone is not enough and there are factors that preclude some people from ever being satisfied with their achievements or happy.
 
Skeptics have always questioned whether people, particularly adults, can change, leading to such idioms as

“A Zebra can’t change his stripes.”
“Old habits die hard.”
“You can’t teach an old dogs new tricks.”
“The Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“The sins of the Father are present in the son.”
 

When we look around us, we see the world and our environment constantly changing. Humans are the result of millions of years of evolution, generation after generation of subtle differences. Everything changes all of the time, sometimes too slow to recognize but occurring never-the-less. We are biologically predisposed to change, to adapt to our environments just as we influence our surroundings to accommodate our needs more efficiently. This propensity is apparent in the way our brains work, the influence of memory on our outlook, even the impact of emotions on our behavior.
 
This conflict between constant change and the paradoxical tendency of people to resist change led me to research how the human brain works, the influence of genetics upon our decisions, and why some people are able to make massive changes in their lives and others try, but fail.

Is Success Predestined? Failure Inevitable?

Each of us is both a victim and a beneficiary of our ancestors and our environment. Based upon our genetic tendencies, reinforced by the environments in which we mature and live, each of us develops stereotypes and habits to respond to events and conditions. Our personality reflects our characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving as seen by others. To understand better who we are as well as develop techniques to change, it is important to understand how our brains works, what if any limitations we might inherit from our parents, and how memory affects our decisions as well as the connection between our personality and our mind. As British psychiatrist Dr. Susan Greenfield says, “personality” is how others see you while “Mind” or “Self” is what it feels like to be you. In other words, your “mind” is the emotions you feel at a particular time and location. Even though outside events trigger negative emotions, how we respond to them – their impact and duration – is within our control.
 
Failure is a matter of perspective and can either be a motivator or an obstacle to overcome. Failure is not a predictor of the future, nor a indication of a person’s value. Michael Jordan, perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time, said, “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I have missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
 
Similarly, there is no absolute definition of success or the elements that make one person happy versus another. Most of us are guilty of letting others influence whether we feel successful or not, generally by how much money we make or the assets we have. But tangible measures can be false indicators. How many houses can a person live in at a time? Is there really a difference between a $500 suit and a $5000 suit? With highway speed limits at 70 mph, does it make a difference whether you drive a Chevrolet or a Maserati? Of course, it does. Not, however, because of the tangible difference in benefits, but because “more, bigger, faster, more expensive” brings more status from those around us.
 

[one_third]steve jobs 2 [/one_third][one_third]Who is happier – a Steve Jobs who made millions by designing products that makes life more entertaining, exciting, and easier for millions or Mother Theresa who lived a simple life while focusing the world’s attention on the poor, the homeless, the persecuted? I suspect that both were happy and both probably considered their lives a success, but neither would have changed places with the other expecting to find more happiness as a result.[/one_third] [one_third_last]Mother Theresa[/one_third_last]