www.rideforlife.com/news/als_news/choosing_when_to_die. -
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Published on: 1/1/2007
Last Visited: 3/11/2007
When David Sheets told his wife on May 15 that he had e-mailed his doctor, she understood what he meant.
He had decided it was time to die.
Sheets had friends who enjoyed his huge sense of humor, had a job he felt was useful and had a wife he loved.But he had been living with Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), since 1983.Some describe the disease as being buried alive.When the paralysis reached Sheets' lungs within four years, he made the choice to be hooked to a ventilator so he could breathe -- something only about 5 percent of ALS patients do.
Unable to move and communicating only with his eyes, he married, took a job, ran a fantasy football league and started writing the story of his tour in Vietnam.
On May 17, he spelled it out for his wife, Mary Willette-Sheets: He wanted the ventilator turned off in three weeks, on June 8.
Sheets, 53, was born in Indiana and raised in San Diego.He joined the Army in 1967 and served in Vietnam with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment.Soon after his tour ended, so did a two-year marriage.He settled in California into a life of women, drugs, partying and school.
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Unlike people with spinal-cord injuries, ALS patients like David can feel touch, heat and cold.He could see and hear, but couldn't move or speak.He communicated by looking at a clear acrylic board where letters and numbers were grouped by fours.A glance up or down plus left or right showed which letter he meant.He used an eyebrow muscle to type on an adapted computer.
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Mary asked permission to meet Sheets and to bring her small Shih Tzu dog, Molly.
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Sheets proposed in August 1996, and they were married that October.
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Every other week, Sheets would visit Aunt Bert, who was in her 80s.A martini would be waiting, ready to be poured down his feeding tube.
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Sheets started doing Internet marketing research for a graphic-design company.The company never imposed deadlines, but sometimes he worked 16-hour days anyway.
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Whitten started visiting Sheets as an ALS Association volunteer.
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A comely nurse had her arms wrapped around Sheets, holding the cards in front of his eyes.
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Last year, Sheets and his wife attended her father's funeral at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, where members of her Guard group held a full-honors ceremony.David told her: "This is exactly what I want," including a 21-gun salute, she said.
He had to quit working sometime after Christmas because his eyes weren't moving as nimbly as they had.
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Sheets told family and friends.He told his buddies at the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which had been paying for repairs on his van for years.His wife introduced him to a Guard chaplain, who met with him several times and came last Sunday to hold his hand as he died.
Eight of his caregivers were there.So were his doctor, Aunt Bert, and two of her children and their spouses.
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Sheets said something to each one before 3:30 p.m., when he was given an anesthetic.He was unconscious when the hospice nurse turned off the ventilator.
On Thursday, David Sheets got his 21-gun salute at Fort Snelling.
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