Playing God with life and death?

This post does not come exactly out of "nowhere," but as a topic of public discourse as it arises, from time to time; I'm talking about how we approach our own death, or that of a loved one.

During the furor over Terry Shiavo's situation, there were those who hurled charges at her ex-husband to the effect that his desire to remove her feeding tube amounted to "playing God."  Many conservative Christians mourned the act of removing that tube almost as if Terry were being euthanized.

During her last days or weeks, Pope John Paul II also lay dying.  I read a couple of comparisons between his "death with dignity" and Terry's process of "forced" dying.  I am a conservative Christian, but I was on the fence, on this issue.  First, I don't know the circumstances of the late Pope's dying process:  Was he tubed and monitored, or was he allowed to die as his body and spirit would have it?  I don't know.

My husband and soul mate and I completed health directives and Living Wills several years ago, dictating that no heroic measures should be taken under the usual kinds of circumstances described in such legal documents.  We updated them, in August, because our attorney said the language and form had been changed, some, and we probably ought to make them current.

I didn't expect to have any problem in marking the choices.  But I found myself wavering:  Was I asking Bruce, or whoever might be serving in a decision-making capacity, to "play God" by refusing feeding tubes and other measures, when two doctors agreed that no hope existed for my recovery?  I knew I didn't want to "live" for a long time as Terry did, but at what point are we playing God?

My late mother-in-law ("Gram") died at home, in her own bed, under hospice care, which meant she was free of tubes, monitors, IVs, and all the other things that go with the medical model.  She was given morphine, as needed, to allow her to die without having to fight pain.  Was hers a death with dignity?  Not to the extent any of us would want, but more than it would have been, under other circumstances.  She died when her body and spirit said, "Enough."

I also thought about how people died in the days before "modern medicine" had "progressed" so much.  Feeding tubes, IVs, and the like are really pretty recent additions to the death-fighting, life-saving process.  They have a proper place in patient care, but I'm wondering . . . when a body can no longer survive on its own, when the brain has nothing left, aren't we playing God when we try to prolong a person's "life," just because we can?  It's no longer a question, for me, of the quality of life, but whether we aren't trying to cheat death when its time has come.  Scripture tells us that God knows the number of our days; are we saying, "We're going to fool you!"?

I'm not trying to pacify anyone when I say that I can't sit in judgment of anyone who chooses to fight death tooth and toenail, with every weapon and every strategy medicine can provide.  But when I thought about Gram and about how recent all these methods are that we've come to accept as the way it should be, I had no trouble marking my Living Will to give me the best chance to die when the time has come, with my faith in Jesus Christ to walk through that valley with me.

One more thing:  If you and your loved ones have not thought about these issues and completed the legal documents appropriate to the state in which you live, what are you waiting for?  The Schiavos were a young couple, when she lost her ability to communicate what she wanted.  Don't walk--run! but only after you have thought carefully about the options.