“Ma’am, if you were my wife, I”d rip out my own feeding tube.”
Posted on 04/07/2014 7:29:50 PM PDT by Morgana
Texas has a medical futility–what I call Futile Care Theory–law permitting doctors to remove wanted life-support that works from a patient based on their views about quality of life.
Before that is done, patients/families are supposed to receive due process–such as it is–e.g., a hearing before a bioethics Star Chamber committee. Then, if the committee decides the treatment should end, the patient has 10 days to find a new hospital.
terrymaceBut here’s the thing: I believe that once a society determines that doctors can refuse wanted efficacious life-sustaining service–that becomes the meme–and eventually the due process part goes away.
That may be part of what happened in a case out of a hospital near Austin. As recounted by Thaddeus Mason Pope, an estranged wife (of 5 years!) authorized pulling the feeding tube of Terry Mace (on the left in picture at right). His parents won guardianship and a court blocked the dehydrate decision.
But the hospital did it anyway.
From the Austin State Journal story:
Stephen Casey, one of the attorneys for Mace’s parents, said doctors at Seton Medical Center Williamson surprised the family by removing the feeding and hydration tubes for Mace sometime within the past few days. The 43-year-old Killeen man had been hospitalized since March 6, when he went into cardiac arrest and hit his head on a concrete floor.
After receiving a phone call Monday morning from Mace’s father, Casey went to the hospital and saw the tubes had been removed. Mace’s father got a doctor to reconnect the hydration tube Monday afternoon, Casey said. Mace died about 1 a.m. Tuesday. The hospital’s director of communications, Adrienne Lallo, released a statement Tuesday afternoon saying the hospital had cooperated with Mace’s family.
Some cooperation.
Apparently the hospital didn’t adequately explain that “comfort care” actually meant in Mace’s case, ”dehydrate to death:”
Doctors had told Mace’s family over the weekend that they were providing “comfort care” to him, meaning they were keeping him sedated and making sure he wasn’t choking, said Casey. Mace’s parents might have been confused about what kind of treatment their son was receiving, their lawyers said.
This is how trust in our health care system is being steadily destroyed.
But Obama said there still are no death panels...
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Sounds like they’ve broken the law. They should be arrested.
My instructions to my wife and kids are a more direct way to ending my life in such an occasion, involving a claw hammer.
I don’t know about it, but it seems par for the course today in America, which sorely needs spiritual revival.
Isaiah 59
1 Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear:
2 But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.
3 For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.
Just another reason that EVERY ONE (regardless of closeness of death) should have a specific POLST. This is the only thing that will guarantee that YOUR wishes will be followed
Schiavo II
First i’ve heard of it—and I’m near Austin.
“Ma’am, if you were my wife, I”d rip out my own feeding tube.”
For murder one.
I know this hospital as it’s within 5 miles as the crow flies from me. Sounds to me that I’d rather take my chances at St. David’s than Seton. If that’s the level of “care” they provide I’m taking my business elsewhere.
except the hospital didn’t let it drag out.....they just let him die before too big a stink could be made by the legal guardians.
I thought Seton was a Catholic Hospital. Sheesh.
Yikes!
Sounds to me that she wanted him dead so she could file on his social security and get more money.
The article doesn’t say if she is collecting insurance on his death or if she is still vindictive or both.
This woman sounds like the typical “American” today - there to collect some kind of “windfall”. But she probably supports windfall profits taxes.
Happened in my family....horrible to go through.
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