Take help navigating life with diabetes? You can always Ask D'Mine!Welcome again to our period of time Q&A column, hosted by veteran typewrite 1 and diabetes author Wil Dubois.

This week's enquiry brings to mind the fact that it's nearly Lent, the fourth dimension when many Christians forfeit something (usually a vice) as a way of reaffirming their religious beliefs. This girl of a T2 mom who takes insulin has a overserious age-related concern…

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Josie, type 3 from New Jersey, writes: We are jolly devout Catholics. My mother, who is now 70, is a type 2 sick and has taken insulin for about 15 years. She wants to stop, but her doctor says there are no alternatives, and that she'll die without it. To ME, that makes stopping insulin suicide, and that's a sin, right?

Wil@Postulate D'Mine answers: Consecrate Moo-cow. Oh. High-risk diction on my part. This is probably a call-the-Pope rather of enquiry, but Eastern Samoa e'er with lector questions, I volition fearlessly take a stab at it for you. Still, you might want to get a ordinal opinion.

From a priest.

Immediately I think I'm safe in saying to all my readers that if your religion says that suicide is a sin, and if you are a believer and a follower of that religion, then it is a sin. Where behave the ma's leading religions come down on the subject? Your religion, Josie—along with to the highest degree past flavors of Christendom, Judaism, and Islam (suicide bombers notwithstanding), collectively with Buddhism and Hinduism—takes a dim perspective of ending your life past your own manpower.

In fact, as "sin" goes, kill yourself is one of the biggies. Why is that? From a religious perspective it seems to come devour to questioning God's plan for you, which I hazard makes suicide a form of blasphemy, and that's i of those things that historically and mythologically pisses deities murder.

So that's beautiful cordate, for most religious folks in most religions, suicide is some sort of sin. The real question, then, is this: Is stopping your medicine a form of suicide? And to answer that, we take to talk a little more about suicide.

I'm sure that most folks, devout or otherwise, would agree that putting a gun to your temple and pulling the initiation would count as a suicide. American Samoa would hanging yourself, jumping in foremost of a train, stage setting yourself on fire, downing a full bottle of sleeping pills Beaver State even pulling a hitman on a police officer.

Anyone disagree with that psychoanalysis? Even if you aren't religious, I'm sure you would agree therewith number of actions being classified advertisement as felo-de-se, even if you in person may non regard suicide as a sin.

Forthwith, let's babble out more about that bottle of sleeping pills. What, real, is the difference between taking too very much medicine to kill yourself versus not taking enough medicament, knowing that will kill you? Ah ha! Got you there, didn't I? Interestingly, although these two actions are the opposite sides of the same coin, with the same result, a great many multitude view cardinal American Samoa suicide and the separate As not suicide.

What's up with that?

Personally, this ever leaves ME scratching my head, but the alleged logical system when I dig into IT is that taking an o.d. is an explicit action, whereas doing nothing is passive and "rental nature take its course." That's every last good and fine, until you get Graven image back into the picture. Is music part of God's plan? Most mainstream religions, including the Catholic Church, say "yes."

Specifically for you, Josie, the National Catholic Bioethics Center has written extensively on the subject, and their learn is that Catholics are 100% out-of-school to refuse "extraordinary" measures and experimental treatments, especially in an end-of-life vault of heaven, but that taking run-of-the-mill proven medicines—like insulin—is classified ad by the church as "morally obligatory." And the Catechism backs that up, spelling out (in a word of mercy killing) that acts of omission enumerate just arsenic powerfully as acts of perpetration, if death is the result, and are therefore sins.

All of that said, I live in a very Christian religion part of the world, and I'm impressed with the power of the topical Catholics to see slipway to justify ignoring the dictates of the Christian church hierarchy. And so even if the church says it's a sin, your mother would need to accept that, which I suspect she presently doesn't.

Thus where does that allow for us?

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Well, is your mother's Doctor of the Church correct that there are no alternatives to insulin for her? That's a 100% mayhap. Here's the thing: We know that, historically, in the normal course of type 2 diabetes, the burgeoning insulin resistance will ultimately burnout the ability of the consistence to produce meaningful amounts of insulin, hence our terminology of "insulin-bloodsucking" when describing advanced type 2 diabetes. The fact that insulin bequeath live required during a lifetime of T2 is a punch that should ne'er be pulled. The conception should comprise introduced at diagnosing.

But you'll note that I said "meaningful."

There might still comprise a dribble of insulin being produced. So could that trickle be enhanced with a slew of Bodoni font pills? I'm start to believe that's possible, particularly when linked to a reduced carbohydrate diet, but to Maine the impact happening quality of life would Be more burdensome than insulin, and the incline effect risks higher. Only still, perhaps in that case, it's an option to be evaluated.

It might equal the little of evils for your family.

What do I personally trust? Keeping my personal Episcopal religion outgoing of this, Hera's my humanistic take on suicide: I don't equal suicide. In my time working in health care, the only wounds I sawing machine that never healed were the wounds left on the souls of the loved ones of people who killed themselves. In general, we humans have an astonishing ability to recover from the most horrific of experiences. We are irregular. But something well-nig the suicide of a loved one short-circuits the sanative processes of center, mind, and person. Suicide of a love leaves behind a wound that remains fresh and bare-ass, decade after decade. Survivors carry these wounds to their own graves. So from what I've seen, committing suicide is the ultimate cruelty to your loved ones.

I conjecture if that's non a sinning, I don't know what is.

So do I believe that not pickings medicine is a form of suicide? Yeah, I DO. I see no difference between picking up a bottle of unnecessary pills to kill yourself and setting a needed bottle down. Not pickings medication that can easily keep you alert is making a choice to die, and that, by any definition, is committing self-destruction.

This is not a Greco-Roman deity advice column. We are PWDs freely and openly sharing the wisdom of our collected experiences — our been-there-done-that knowledge from the trenches. Bottom Railway line: You still motivation the guidance and care of a licensed Graeco-Roman deity professional.