Replies

You are really taking offense at the wrong thing.

I cared for my mom who died from cancer after a three years of a valiant battle.
I was up 23 hours a day towards the end of her precious life. I gave it all I had and it was my blessing.
She was a very religious woman who became a nun after my dad passed away from an industrial caused illness. She went into the prisons to help convert people to Christ and so on.

The DNR is considered by most religious people to be the most natural way to handle things if they do go beyond a fair chance at recovery.
Nobody is going to try and take your husband out and what the young person trying to get you to sign IMO is honestly trying to help you do a helpful thing.
It means that if you loved one happens upon deaths door, do you want to let them go with dignity or die a thousand deaths with mega bills on machines before they go anyway?

If there is no DNR, then they will be BRUTAL in trying to save the life, even when there is no chance of recovery. (I've seen that in cancer wards with others)

The machines are so good today that often you will have a person all but dead on machines with no chance of recovery who are just in place for when they do pass at a cost of perhaps $100k a month to the family in debt.

The DNR goes into effect when all vitals are crashing, the body is giving up everything there is with really no chance of recovery.
They do NOT try and kill anyone of give up on them unless it has really gotten to that point.
Most consider it dying with dignity if it comes to that point.

My mom had a DNR, and nobody killed her. They tried to the end. She was bad off and if her heart stopped or she stopped breathing, she did not want to make the dying process a number of deaths for her and the family. She also did not want to make fruitless expenses for no reason to the family.

Most people I know would want the DNR because it only means if you are too far gone, don't be outrageous in efforts to save that is going anyway.

I've been there in a big way already twice in my life with loved ones.
Once with my mother who was very young when she died of breast cancer and a dear older friend who was 96 wanting to make it to her 100th birthday who broke an arm, but quickly died of something else.
They both wanted to die with dignity if it came to that.

My prayers and all my love are sincerely with you in the hope of a full recovery, but please don't think people are being evil presenting the DNR to you, it is considered compassionate in letting people die with dignity if they have no real chance should it come to that.

God bless, you and yours are in my prayers tonight and you have all my love in this hard time. I hope they recover.

She's not taking offense at the wrong thing. If her instincts tell her that her husband is in a hostile environment he probably is.

Some doctors and staff do, indeed measure their patients for a coffin, bending the rules and "taking shortcuts" because by law-of-averages they will be right, say, 80% of the time. Of course, that means 2 in 10 times they will be wrong and "innocent" lives will be lost.

You were lucky with your mom and with your older friend, but not all hospitals work that way. Each has a culture of its own and it even varies from ward to ward within a hospital. Sometimes arrogance, sleep deprivation and "paternalism" get the best of the doctors and staff. I speak, unfortunately, from experience. I'm fighting an uphill battle to hold the doctors and hospital that treated my father accountable for their actions.
http://users.starpower.net/neustadter/menu.html

So my thoughts are with this woman, and I would tell her to have your husband transferred out of there or walk into the hospital’s Risk Assessment office with a lawyer in tow.

She's not taking offense at the wrong thing. If her instincts tell her that her husband is in a hostile environment he probably is.

Some doctors and staff do, indeed measure their patients for a coffin, bending the rules and "taking shortcuts" because by law-of-averages they will be right, say, 80% of the time. Of course, that means 2 in 10 times they will be wrong and "innocent" lives will be lost.

You were lucky with your mom and with your older friend, but not all hospitals work that way. Each has a culture of its own and it even varies from ward to ward within a hospital. Sometimes arrogance, sleep deprivation and "paternalism" get the best of the doctors and staff. I speak, unfortunately, from experience. I'm fighting an uphill battle to hold the doctors and hospital that treated my father accountable for their actions.
http://users.starpower.net/neustadter/menu.html

So my thoughts are with this woman, and I would tell her to have her husband transferred out of there or walk into the hospital’s Risk Assessment office with a lawyer in tow.

Maybe I didn't explain this correctly...

The resident HOUNDED me. ALL day. I mean ALL day. I said NO. He didn't give up.

That's unethical and CRUEL. He made that first day about a million times worse, hovering over me like the Grim Reeper.

I had to scream at him, "What part of 'no' don't you understand? End of discussion!" He saw he was upsetting me, and he REFUSED to stop. THAT is "compassionate care"? That's CRUEL and INHUMANE. This guy should be working on computers. He should be NO WHERE NEAR human beings!

Then when Junior saw it wasn't going to work with me, he started in on my husband's son. Absolutely unbelievable.

I also told that resident NOT to go NEAR my husband. When I saw him near the room a few days later, I told him I would file a complaint against him and have his license suspended. NO ONE has the right to harrass a person under severe duress into signing a DNR order that my husband DID NOT WANT. And someone who isn't interested in preserving life but making a bad situation worse shouldn't be near sick people.

Interestingly, I've never seen Junior in ICU since.

Oh, and yes, I do intend to file charges against him when all this is done. Junior needs a refresher course in human compassion.

And just to let you know, part of the reason why the little monster might've been so insistent is that he's from the same chemo group that accepted my husband into the hospital. The main dr. went on three-weeks' vacation when my husband was admitted to the hospital. Apparently NO ONE from the group was overseeing him as he developed sepsis and went into septic shock.

They ignored all of the signs of sepsis. I have no idea if anyone even saw him, and that might include this particular little geek.

I don't know if it's malpractice, and frankly, I don't give a rat's azz at this point. All I care about is my husband's life.

I'll make sure this little bastard can't do this to anyone else LATER.

I hope that sets you straight.

Simplemines, I'd be sure that everyone does know your and your husband's occupations. Somedays, I think the media are more powerful than the lawyers. (Then I get on FR and remember that we have all the power, here.)

Second, insist on seeing the attending and tell him/her about the haunting. Skip the higher-up residents, they're probably the problem behind the problem, although it could be the attending.Someone's pushing the haunter.
Nevertheless, I would insist on seeing the supervising attending. Especially on Saturday and Sunday, you'll get more respect and action from the attending. Everyone else will step a little more lightly if you are certain and they know that the attending is aware that you are aware.

At the same time that you're asking for the attending, you need to get in touch with your husband's family doctor or internist, or his oncologist - whoever you feel was the "captain of the ship" before this admission.

I would sure like to know why there are plans for a tracheostomy if they plan to wean your husband off the ventilator. Why would he need an artificial airway, then? Also, I'd review with the oncologist what the prognosis after successful pancreatic cancer surgery - It would be rare for that to mean that there's no more cancer.

I'm afraid there are poorly trained doctors and some with a bad ethics base. But, think about doctors you've known in the past and the nurses who keep us straight. Does it really make sense that any of them would act to cause death or fail to act to delay it? That's just not how most of us are motivated.

Finally, CA Guy has a point worth thinking about. "Everything" these days can be pretty extreme, especially in light of pancreatic cancer and the usual progression. When your husband's a little stronger, y'all may want to ask someone about the usual course and whether you want to add dialysis, a feeding tube, and what to do in case of complications that require a transfusion or other blood products