Quotes About Strength

STRENGTH DOESN'T COME FROM WHAT YOU CAN DO. IT COMES FROM 
OVERCOMING THE THINGS YOU ONCE THOUGHT YOU COULDN'T.--R. Rogers 

You were given this life 

because you were strong enough to live it.--Unknown

WHEN SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS YOU HAVE THREE CHOICES. YOU CAN EITHER LET IT DEFINE. YOU, LET IT DESTROY YOU, OR YOU CAN LET IT STRENGTHEN YOU.


"Strength does does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable wilt "--Mahatma Gandhi 
                                                                                                                                                               


Every Weakness on have is an opportunity or God to show
His strength in your life,  My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weaknes.



A woman's Strength isn't just about how much she can handle before she breaks, It's also about how much she must handle after she's Broken.

TRUE STRENGTH IS THE ABILITY TO GO THROUGH LIFE EACH DAY ACCOMPLISHING THE IMPOSSIBLE AND DOING WHAT NO ONE THOUGHT YOU COULD! ----Nishan Panwar

Let's Talk About Death

You cannot deny or ignore the truth forever. But we have managed to do

just that in case of the human issues surrounding death, terminal illness

or irreversible coma.

The euthanasia debate rolls on endlessly , but people talk of entirely

different things in relation to it. We need urgently to get our

terminology right. We debate whether the Constitution allows us the right

to die, or whether such a sanction would let unscrupulous elements commit

legal murder.

In countries that accept active euthanasia, it takes place under strictly

regulated conditions mandating that the patient be conscious and capable

of deciding independently . But that's a rare situation, when we neglect

to see the elephant in the room.We must move away from the narrow term of

reference of euthanasia as an intention to kill to an intention to care.

The central issue is how we intelligently and compassionately care for

the dying or those beyond medical salvage. It would be a travesty of

medical care if we were to treat them the same way as we do those with a

chance for cure or tolerable quality of life.

For the doctor the standard of care would be to go all out in the latter

context. But in the former, it would thrust man-made agonies not only on

the patient but also on distraught families. Legislation has been sought

by physicians and the public to decriminalise and facilitate legitimate

withdrawal or withholding of disproportionate interventions, as strongly

recommended by international professional opinion.

The terms that must be used are, “end of life care“, “comfort care“ or

“treatment limitation“. These terms refer to the shift in the focus of

care that is appropriate to a terminal or non-salvageable condition,

certainly not to any form of euthanasia.Such a conceptual structure is

based on ethical principles grounded in the patient's inalienable rights.

Physicians and next of kin of the patient have a moral obligation to

place the patient's preferences and wholeperson interests above all other

conside rations. Here the law should be in consonance with this most

fundamental ethical principle in modern medical care.The individual's

right of choice or selfdetermination should be sustained even when he

would lose capacity .

It would follow that an Advance Will would enable the family and

caregivers to be aware of hisher choices made when in full possession of

faculties. While accepting the underlying basis, the 196th and 241st

draft bills of the Law Commission of India turned it down. In their

opinion, such a provision would be subject to misuse under Indian

conditions.

It is unacceptable that the Indian citizen's rights be trampled upon in

so cavalier a fashion by considerations that are extraneous to hisher due

care towards the end of life. When faced with a dismal outlook as with

terminal cancer, the patient and family deserve opportunities for

discussions around prognosis and the informed choices of the patient, as

also for palliative care and emotional and spiritual support. Where

medical care is refined to include such advance care planning, most

patients are found to opt for comfort care in a hospice or at home,

avoiding the futility of technology-laden care in a hospital or ICU.

With the advancement of life-saving interventions, the bioethical

principles governing their appropriate use have evolved over the last 40

years. The first “Do not resuscitate“ (DNR) order was written in the US

in 1974 and later codified to law in 1988, going on to case laws

decriminalising withdrawal or withholding of ventilators and life support 

in the 1980s and 90s. Death with Dignity legislation now exists in most

of the developed world together with worldwide consensus guidelines.

In the wake of the hearing of Common Cause versus Union of India, by a

five judge bench of the Supreme Court, there is a new opportunity to open

the debate to a wider and deeper level. There is already much work done

by professional associations integrating ethics and global standards of

care for the dying.

Seminal works have been published, in the form of ethical guidelines and

standard operating procedures with built-in safeguards, by the Indian

Society of Critical Care Medicine (ISCCM) and the Indian Association of

Palliative Care (IAPC).Recently , the Indian Academy of Neurology (IAN)

joined hands with the ISCCM and IAPC to build advocacy for patient's

rights and physician's protection for appropriate end of life and

palliative care legislation.

“Commercialisation“ of medical care is commonly perceived to be driving

practices that keep patients on ventilators. But it is the medical

profession that is seeking decriminalisation of appropriate treatment

limitation. Misuse of treatment withdrawal has been overplayed while

being oblivious to the injudicious use of high-tech, highly expensive

life prolonging interventions that the absence of such provisions would

allow.

If we are to be a thoughtful and caring nation, we must not dither in

making laws that would reduce the devastating consequences of such

intervention to the patient, survivors and society as a whole. The time

is ripe for open discussion on the inescapable reality of death, the

tragedy of unnatural prolongation of dying and the ways we can help

people through a “good death“.

When we restore the individual rights of choice and privacy , and extend

protection to the honest caregiver, we as a people will have taken a

historic leap forward.

Airlift: Not lifted From The Facts

The film Airlift is a success. I was bewildered by its attempts to sup-press the truth. It seems the director, Raja Krishna Menon, has no idea as to how the Government of India works. There is a deliber-ate attempt to show the ministry of external affairs (MEA), ministry of civil aviation (MoCA), Air India and Indian embassies in Kuwait, Iraq and Jordan as incompetent and the gov-ernment as not at all con-cerned about Indians in Kuwait and Iraq. The film claims that the govern-ment was prodded into discharging its responsi-bilities by Katyal, the hero in the film. It is obvi-ous that, in order to ensure box-office success, director Raja Menon was prepared to forego ethical norms, and engage in dis-information. Right at the beginning, we are told Katyal is a creation of the director, based on Mathunny Mathews and H.S. Vedi, who were both based in Kuwait for many years. As joint secretary (Gulf), I have known them. As a matter of fact, the evacuation of 176,000 Indians from Kuwait is a study in teamwork: the government and the Indian community car-ried out the biggest evac-uation by air in history. On August 2, 1990, the day of the invasion, Katyal telephones MEA from Kuwait and gets through to joint secretary Kohli who explains that as he is not the Joint sec-retary dealing with the Gulf he would ask his col-league who deals with Kuwait to call back. Strangely enough, Katyal continues to deal with Kohli till the end. In reality, many Indians 
from Kuwait did get in touch with me. What is mysterious is how Katyal failed to get in touch with the correct official. Of course, there Is a pur-pose: Kohli comes across as incompetent; he waits in the office of the minis-ter for hours to meet him though no joint secretary has to wait for hours to see the minister. The portrayal of the minister is an exercise in disinformation: the min-ister tells Kohli that his is a weak coalition govern-ment and, as such, he does not want to get involved. Kohli should deal directly with MoCA. Let us look at facts. I.K. Gtgral as the minister of external affairs was deeply engaged from the start. He had two con-cerns, a peacelbl resolu-tion of the crisis with Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait and the safety of the Indian community. The reasoning was that if Iraq withdraws, there will be no need for evacu-ation. India got in touch with some HAM coun-tries and Gujral went to the US to meet secretary of state Baker and UN sec-retary-general de Cuellar. It soon became clear that the US wanted a military solution and it was necessary to evacuate Indians. Gujral, accompa-nied by additional secre-tary I.P. Khosla. on their way back from US reached Amman in the second week of August. I joined them in Amman. We proceeded to Baghdad and had a meet-ing with President Saddam Hussein who offered to facilitate the evacuation. Any sugges-tion that Government of India was forced into arranging the evacuation by pressure put on it by Katyal or anybody else in Kuwait is absurd. From Baghdad we flew to Kuwait. When we landed, we were told there was an angry crowd of 3,000-4,000 Indians waiting to see Gujral. We went to them and, within four minutes. Gujral made the crowd say Bharat Mata lei Jai. Ambassador Kamal Bakshi in Baghdad fed hundreds. He was in con-stant touch with the com-munity. Yet, in the film, Katyal goes to the Indian embassy in Iraq, and the ambassador is unable to attend to the issue. It is good to encourage patriotism, but is it neces-sary to paint the govern-ment as disengaged when the evacuation was car-ried out successfully? It is strange that the director never thought of contact-ing MEA. I asked him about all this in a TV dis-cussion and he had no answer; in another dis-cussion, he told me he was all praise for MEA and Air India. Why did the film give a contrary impression, I asked him? He had no answer. Right at the beginning, 
the director should have said that his film was a fictionalised account of the evacuation. Instead, he says, but for the char-acter of Katyal, every-thing else is based on real events. The Censor Board should have consulted MEA before clearing the film. Raja Krishna Menon cannot take shelter behind patriotism or free-dom of expression as he has deliberately misled the public about a matter of national importance. We all know why he did it.