Posted on 09/03/2014 11:16:03 AM PDT by chessplayer
Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds–from 5 percent to 15 percent–albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn’t spend much on him.
It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.
Of course, doctors don’t want to die; they want to live. But they know enough about modern medicine to know its limits. And they know enough about death to know what all people fear most: dying in pain, and dying alone.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Same here. I’ll give the cancer doctors one good chance, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll die as well as I can.
Same here. I’ll give the cancer doctors one good chance, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll die as well as I can.
Thats what my sister did. When the treatment failed, she opted for pallitive care in her own apartment. No chemo.
You can’t sell death panels until you convince Americans that dying without fighting, is noble.
Who said anything about not fighting? We’re talking about EXTRAORDINARY to keep a shell of a body “alive” when there is no hope whatsoever the person will ever get better/cured. If you want to hang on as long as possible in an ICU bed with tubes sticking out of you, crapping your diaper, in constant excruciating pain, and pumped so full of drugs you don’t even know your name, then hells bells, go for it. Be as “heroic” and “dignified” and “noble” as you wish.
veteren veterinarian?
I was going to say the same thing. The government wants you ti live and die in pain. All for a failed drug war. It’s just like banning guns for the law abiding. Too many here will cheer over your pain as a win against drug war.
That wasn’t the case with his doctor friend, and it isn’t what the left (and time) has been pushing for 40 years.
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