What Broke My Father's Heart

This cartoon makes people wonder, "Is the treatment worth it?" Medical technologies such as the pacemakers can extend people's lives, but at a cost of extending people's sickness as well. Source: www.quora.com

What Broke My Father’s Heart by Katy Butler is a heartbreaking personal experience of the death of the author’s father, Jeffrey. Used to teach at Wesleyan University and coach rugby, Jeffrey started to suffer from dementia, a mental disorder that seriously affects people’s memory, thinking, judgment, behavior, and language, soon after he retired. His only source of lifeline was his pocket-watch-sized pacemaker that had been helping his heart to beat in a rhythmical pattern for nearly five years. The author writes that during those five years her family has been suffering from sharing her father’s agony. After realizing that the pacemaker was something that Jeff would have never implanted in his body, Butler and her mother decided to relieve him from his pain. Once the author's mother realized that dying naturally without the aid of pacemaker is the best way to die, she decided not to get any medical help during the last days of her life. This story brings up the ethics behind medical technologies that extend people’s lives. Could escaping death through pacemakers be the best answer? Could stopping someone's lifeline be justified, even if it is done as an act of mercy? Would the aftermath of relieving someone’s pain be better than that of letting somebody live on? Butler seems to have the answers for the people whose beloved family member is slowly dying. Through the story, the author warns not to try to escape death by the means of medical technologies because they will torture the users instead of helping them. She would most likely recommend the people to stop the pacemaker if they were to make a mistake of implanting one in sick family members or friends who are showing constant signs of agony. Butler went through this kind of situation for years and researched much about the ethics of pacemakers, thus making her suggestion more creditable. I thought that the author successfully accomplished her purpose to show how unnatural it is to extend someone's life by using symbolism such as “curious spiraled metal wires…mixed with the white dust and pieces of bone” (Butler 22).