In all fairness, doctors have been doing this longer than any of us have lived. It happens at a point when doctors admit to themselves that they are powerless to stop the inevitable.
Family members and especially parents may want extraordinary measures to be taken, but it is truly malpractice to carry out surgery or prescribe treatment that is painful, dehumanizing and meaningless.
A good example is a surgeon who cuts into a patient only to find that they have advanced, metastatic cancer. So they discontinue the surgery and close the wound. If a doctor is a person of faith, they would typically say that the patient “is in God’s hands, now.”
The real anguish happens when we try to cling to life when it is time to die, for others or ourselves. Life is not ours to give or take away, nor to cling to when it is over.
My aunt was terminal. They still insisted on operating one more time. 40 stitches and nothing but pain for her and the family. She died two weeks after the surgery. I swear they do it just for the money.
Having been at this point with my parents, who were not as bad as this young man. They made the decision to do Hospice, when they were diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Watching them slowly die was torture, but it would have been worse if they chose the few extra months Chemo would have bought them.
I just had my beloved Freedom’s Rocket a mini poodle of 13 yrs I’d had since he was 3 months old in for what the Vet thought was a kidney stone. She found wide spread cancer. She wanted to know If I wanted to wake him to say goodbye.
I thought that was cruel, and told her just to love on him a little and let him drift off to the Rainbow. They made me a clay imprint of his footprint. It was painful to make the decision, but it was for the best.
This is not a Terry Shivo Case.