I'm so furious about this attempt to scare seniors, because it's so close to home: My mother just died Sunday.

We talked with my parents about all kinds of these issues in advance - but they also changed their mind about some things as they got closer to the end. My mother died peacefully in her sleep, exactly as she wanted.

My father, on the other hand, died of cancer in the hospital, talked out of the home hospice care he would have preferred by his "pro-life" activist physician. ("You don't want that, they're a little too free with the drugs." You know, because God forbid you die a few hours sooner.)

Two days before my father died, I literally had to push his doctor up against the wall and harangue him to get him to authorize the morphine he needed. And you know what this tin god did? He left an order for morphine pills "on request." (Dad could no longer swallow, and was in so much pain, he was in and out of consciousness.)

I found out the next morning and told the nurse to get him on the phone. The weenie had his associate call back instead, and he said he couldn't override the other doctor's instructions. "As long as I have you on the phone, I have another question," I said sweetly. "Dr. X also left instructions that my dad was to be resuscitated, and he told us he didn't want that. My mother says that's not her signature on the request, so it seems to me we have something of a legal problem here."

All of a sudden, he became quite helpful and offered to prescribe a morphine IV for my father.

Now, I'm a fighter, and I'm effective. But not everyone is, especially when a parent is dying. And some of those seniors have no family left to fight for them. So regular counseling about this would be a very, very good thing.

And the people who are using it to frighten seniors for their own political benefit (or a talk-radio paycheck) should rot in hell.