Nothing new, dirty littlle secret in hospital ICUs. If you ever have an unresponsive loved one they want to “make comfortable”, this is what that means.
The end comes for us all and it can be painful and long. If you haven’t been through this with a loved one, you probably shouldn’t comment on it because you don’t know what you’re talking about.
In conversations with various EMT’s I’ve generally come to the conclusion that if your condition is absolutely hopeless there is a significant percentage of them who will not force you to stick around in senseless agony, and Lord bless every one of them.
Hospices face this situation almost daily - Mrs. Dementia goes into a coma with half her organs failing and she’s already on enough pills that she rattles when she walks, when she CAN walk at all. None of her family contacts on record can be reached. What to do? Rack up an ungodly medical bill on the faint chance she comes back to ‘normal’, which for her is a 5-minute memory due to severe Alzheimer’s and wheezing for every breath...or bump the morphine up a notch and let the poor soul pack up for heaven already?