Catholic nurse recounts hospice horror, says doctor euthanized priest

Renew America ^ | 4/1/11 | Matt C. Abbott

[Cinderella32]

Funny how adamant you are to defend doping up a dying person and hastening their death. It is one thing to ease a person’s pain. It is another to dope them up so severely that their system shuts down before it is their time to die.

I am working in a nursing home now. And in just the past few months have seen several elderly patients who are fairly thriving and active, be put on morphine and rapidly decline, within days, to a horrible death. Who is deciding it is time for these people to die? Why are they being “forced” to become terminal? Who is profiting off of this? Yes, hospice seems to be involved but it is more than that. The average lifespan of my patients after being put on morphine is only 2-3 days. We had our head nurse in meeting tell us firmly that “morphine is not killing these folks”. But I cannot deny what I have seen. We have an elderly person, who yes has some health issues, but who is surviving, living peacefully in the home. Then, someone decides they are in pain, and the patient is forced to take injections which leave them completelly debilitated, unable to get up, eat, or drink. I feel the morphine is so strong that the person is forced into a coma, and they eventually die of dehydration and cardiac shutdown. I have seen this in at least 4 patients in just the past 2 months. I feel in a way this is legalized “murder”! I am afraid to tell anyone though... I feel I would put myself at risk. This is a large business involved and I am just a nurse. They are a million $/month business.