Posted on 12/03/2022 7:35:23 AM PST by DoodleBob
My dad died from this. He lost the will to live and then the ability to live.
I can see someone not wishing to be poked and prodded with the needles necessary to feed someone dying intravenously, but even if I didn’t want that, I wouldn’t want to be denied food and water I could eat on my own!
A few years ago I developed sepsis and was given a less than 1% chance of survival, was on a ventilator and my organs started failing. The doctors all wanted to pull the plug, they’d call my sister in the middle of the night saying his heart stopped again and we might beak his ribs trying to resuscitate him, and again asked to stop treatment. She refused. The next day they said my brain didn’t receive oxygen for 15 minutes on several occasions causing severe brain damage and that it was likely I’d be a vegetable, and that it was cruel that my sister wouldn’t accede to stopping treatment.
Fortunately my sister is very pro-life and didn’t give in, and I’m grateful for that. I was in my early 60’s at the time and got the feeling that if you are over a certain age, they start taking the attitude of “well he’s lived a long life, let’s not bother taking extraordinary measures to save him”. Now I’m afraid to be hospitalized for anything.
Can’t judge this by one case. Each case is not at all the same. A whole lot of personal beliefs and ideology change when a loved one screams and moans in pain 24-7 for a month straight. There comes a time when you want to make it stop for them as quick as possible and in anyway possible that is legal.
Some have even confessed after a loved one passed that there were times they wanted to put a pillow over their face a few times to put them out of their misery. It is an absolute moral dilemma when the best thing would be for them to go because living those last days are even more torturous than anything the caretakers could do that might be considered immoral.
There is indeed a time when anything that can hasten the inevitable is the right thing to do. We sometimes selfishly hold on for us, not for them... For them extending the agony and suffering can be even more cruel.
“I will NEVER sign a DNR.”
After my last hospital experience I told the medical staff to just tatoo “full code’ on my forehead instead of pestering my relatives as to whether treatment should be stopped lol.
She was unconscious for the last three days.
Shortly after her death, it suddenly and shockingly occurred to me that she did not die of cancer.
She died of thirst.
When my time comes, I want a big blast of fentanyl on DAY ONE!
“When my time comes, I want a big blast of fentanyl on DAY ONE!”
That’s the way I’ve always thought too, there’s no excuse that anyone should be suffering pain when effective painkillers are available. But you have to be careful making such a request because they might just use that as an excuse to give you a near lethal dosage just to allow you to pass. Doctors told me that they had given me enough fentanyl to knock out an elephant, yet I was still struggling around pulling out my iv and other things they had attached to me because of my delirium. But in defense of doctors, it’s not always an easy call to make they just make the best decisions they can. My concern is that some within the medical establishment seem to be moving to the idea that any sort of heroic treatment of older people is not cost effective and therefore are beginning to limit the treatment they give to those over say 65.
A lot of people have living wills/advanced health care directives that state that if they can’t eat, drink of breathe on their own due to a persistent condition (something they aren’t expected to get over), they don’t want or IV feeding or hydration or artificial ventilation. If medical staff complies, it’s denying them something necessary to sustaining life, with a foreseeable consequence.
Legally it isn’t euthanasia but the end result is the same.
Palliative sedation also can be used to hasten death without crossing the legal threshold to euthanasia. If the patient has chronic pain they can give more and more pain medication until the pain is under control. If the patient dies from an overdose before their pain is relieved, at least they got the pain to stop.
I have known a few critical care RNs who confided in me that it isn’t uncommon for a nurse to deliberately administer a lethal dose when a patient is end-stage of a condition and suffering terribly because they know their death won’t look suspicious and isn’t likely to trigger a coroner’s autopsy.
We’ve had the equivalent of euthanasia for some time but nobody wants to know how the saugage gets made.
It was miserable when I had surgery and not able to drink for a week.
I also remember the death cultists declaring how euphoric it was for Terry Shaivo to be killed in such a way.
I recall, as I lived in Florida then.
I can’t seem to recall who was Governor then...
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