As the school bus rolled to a stop outside her Lake County home, Beth Jones adjusted the bright yellow document protruding from the pouch of her daughter's wheelchair, making sure it was clearly visible. Posted on 12/10/2007 10:11:05 AM PST by Sopater
As the school bus rolled to a stop outside her Lake County home, Beth Jones adjusted the bright yellow document protruding from the pouch of her daughter's wheelchair, making sure it was clearly visible.
In bold letters it warned, "Do Not Resuscitate."
The DNR order goes everywhere with Katie, including her 2nd-grade classroom at Laremont School in Gages Lake. The school is part of the Special Education District of Lake County, where an emotional two-year discussion ended this summer when officials agreed to honor such directives.
Now, district officials find themselves in the unusual position of having planned the steps its staff will, or won't, take to permit a child to die on school grounds. Although DNR orders are common in hospitals and nursing homes, such life-and-death drama rarely plays out in schools, where officials realize how sensitive and traumatic the situation could be for nurses, teachers and students.
Katie's brain was deprived of oxygen before birth. She can't walk, talk or do anything for herself. She is fed through a tube in her stomach and has an increased susceptibility to infection. Violent choking and coughing spasms have signaled a turn for the worse in her condition.
A Do Not Resuscitate order is a doctor's directive, issued with the consent of the family, that cardiopulmonary resuscitation will not be used if the patient suffers from heart or breathing problems. It can also prohibit using such devices as a defibrillator or an intubation tube. 
The new DNR policy puts Katie's school district at the forefront of a growing national debate about severely disabled and chronically ill children whose lives have been extended by medical advances -- and whose parents must face heart-wrenching decisions about the future.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Then we'll have to take this to the federal level.
I pay to send my children to a parochial school where that is not a factor.
So, anyone who disagrees with you has a "misguided opinion"? Has it ever occured to you that you might be wrong?
Hospice is dangerous — a slippery slope to euthanasia. Try thinking about that. And read those links I sent you.
I already told you I had read them, and found them totally unconvincing.
Have you any experience with hospice care, other than reading about Terri Schiavo?
You are dangerously deceived about hospice-—it is far from being a warm fuzzy institution where people “go gently in the good night”-—although it consciously portrays itself thusly-—very good PR-—......I only wish that you could take a second look at the hospice movement and its raison d’etre.
Have you had any personal experience with a hospice program?
Is my situation not normal? It is the only one I have been involved with, so it is my only experience.
” (particularly since they are claiming she is near death).”
once again i said not in this particular case. i was more focused on the broader statements of “no handicapped facilities in public schools!” etc. that you and a few others seemed to espouse.
You should know better than that.
I avoid revealing personal experiences. Why? Because general beliefs, verdicts, opinions etc should not be necessarily based on one’s personal experiences...but on philosophical precepts. Facts help too but should not be used exclusively to form one’s outlook.
My response to this hearfelt experience is in 368.
I also have worked and continue to work in facilities with hospice beds, plus have several friends who are hospice RD’s, Nurses, Admins etc. I’ve even participated in ‘Dream Catchers’, a hospice version of Make-A-Wish where last dreams were granted (if possible). Usually they’ve been very simple-— flying in an airplane, going to the beach for a day, seeing a relative across country. And one last guys wish to have dancing girls (That was a hoot and one of my favorite pictures).
I won’t lie and say everything has been perfect all the time. Professionally, there have been a few bad moments, a few questionable instances or a few times I’ve thought “HUH?” etc. But that’s been in every facet of my life and job. And all of us have voices and we use them...and they are heard. The mantra is “We can’t stop the dying, but we can treat everything else.” So weight loss, eating issues, depression, pain, bedsores etc are all addressed aggressively.
HOWEVER, when a patient tells us to leave her the heck alone, she doesn’t want to eat, she doesn’t want to wear a diaper, she doesn’t want to be weighed anymore (like one we’re working with now). We honor those wishes.
Though we do go and talk to her and ask “What do you need today.” and if she tells us we are major PITA’s, we smile, and come back to ask the question the next day.
At least around here, the overall attitude is care and dignity for the dying-— and their families. Peppered heavily with common sense.
I will say that my personal experiences with Hospice have been more than great. The caregivers were gentle, kind and made sure that the family was cared for, given a shoulder to cry on and the patient was kept as comfortable as possible. Like others have said, death comes, and it’s how you address death and they dying that marks you as a human.
I find your post disturbing...not you, just the post.
We have come to the point in our society where to “go gently into the good night” has becomee normalized and accepted.
I grieve for that. Even more so, I find that attitude highly destructive and inhuman.
http://www.bigeye.com/donotgo.htm
That someone with Huntington’s Chorea we try to keep from dying?
Or end stage Cancer? Or end stage Parkinson's?
What? CPR’em every time their heart stops? Vent them when their lungs don’t work? Tube feed them and when their gut no longer works....Start TPN?
MAKE them live so WE feel good about US?
I remember the bad old days when terminal folks weren’t given pain killers for fear of ‘addiction’. Now we live in another set of bad old days when we keep corpses alive so guilty family members can think they did everything they could. Sheesh.
THAT is ghoulish!
What do YOU think our ancestors (even 50 years ago) did when grandma stopped eating? Or when Grand Dad’s COPD got to the point he couldn’t get out of bed? Or Mom’s ALS had her choking constantly?
Where do you think the Parlor came from? Doors that lifted on the hinges? Family members following loved ones into battle?
“OUR” society embraces death? Heck no! We fight it to the point that we would rather see someone suffer a weeks after all organs have stopped.
In the past, we knew death understood it and accepted it...... We bathed and dressed our own on those lifted doors, laid them out in the parlor, made their coffin buried them.
AFTER caring for them and holding their hand until they died. Feeding them and giving them something to drink if they could, leaving them alone if they couldn’t
Or picking up their dead body from the battle field. Those people knew death, understood it and embraced life.
Your post brings back memories of a bat-chit crazy half-sister forcing pudding down my dad when his entire gut, liver and pancreas was eaten by cancer comes to mind.
She kept yelling “We can’t let him STARVE!”
Sheesh...ya gotta have organs that can absorb the food....even TPN wouldn’t have worked at that point.
I find YOU disturbing.
Period.
If you understood that I was saying no handicapped facilities in public school, I apologize for not being clearer. I am only refering to severe cases such as this girl's
Your ravings are just what we get when almighty hospice gets pricked.
I cannot ( and would not) add a thing to your outburst.
You have made my case.
Thanks
It’s obvious from all your posts that you can’t give an intelligent, articulated or well informed response involving this issue. It’s all emotion, innuendo and web links. Ironic, since Conservative debate is supposed to be logic driven.
Do your research and respond to me. But get your ducks in a row before you start blinding slinging mud on a topic where you ignorance is breath taking and only eclipsed by your arrogance.
Otherwise your responses sound like a spanked child calling Mama a big ‘ole meanie because she insisted she do her homework.
Right, except when it suits your agenda and purposes.
My conclusion is that all you know about hospice care, you've learned on some conspiracy-theory website, probably one created after the Terri Schiavo affair.
You'd think they thought they or their loved ones were not going to partake of eternal life.
Are you a public school teacher?
There are lots of pro life organizations that have fortunately predicted and analyzed the dangers inherent in a health system that has infiltrated by pro death movements mainly in the form of so called “palliative care” solutions for patients caught up in the talons of the medical system.
One of the worst examples of this infiltration is the Project on Death sponsored by the Soros organization. Have you heard of him or know about his activities?
You need to for all our sakes...
Yes, there's no way that God could have foreseen chemotherapy or all the other advances in medicine.
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