Posted on 04/14/2015 1:21:06 PM PDT by Kaslin
Those who say don’t know
Those who know don’t say
My 92 year old mother was on a breathing machine and could not be removed. She was suffering terribly. She was given morphine and the machine turned off. She closed her eyes and passed away quietly and peacefully. It was a blessing.
Lethal doses are not medicine, they are murder
That's my favorite quote from the Tao Te Ching, although it's not the same in all translations. It applies to many things.
These things are not just black and white.
Doctors should not be killing people. Period.
THERE EXISTS IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE a certain Promethean attitude which leads people to think that they can control life and death by taking the decisions about them into their own hands.…What really happens in this case is that the individual is overcome and crushed by a death deprived of any prospect of meaning or hope. We see a tragic expression of all this in the spread of euthanasia-disguised and surreptitious, or practised openly and even legally. As well as for reasons of a misguided pity at the sight of the patient’s suffering, euthanasia is sometimes justified by the utilitarian motive of avoiding costs which bring no return and which weigh heavily on society. Thus it is proposed to eliminate malformed babies, the severely handicapped, the disabled, the elderly, especially when they are not self-sufficient, and the terminally ill. Pope John-Paul II, —Evangelium Vitae §15
We don’t let our pets suffer, yet we let our loved ones suffer. I am torn on this issue.
Lethal doses are not medicine, they are murder
So if you’re the doctor, you let them lie there, screaming and writhing in pain, because you know that the amount of morphine or whatever, needed to relieve the pain, will kill them?
Is that it?
Doctors should not be killing people. Period.
So if you’re the doctor, you let them lie there, screaming and writhing in pain, because you know that the amount of morphine or whatever, needed to relieve the pain, will kill them?
Is that it?
Let the patient or someone else do it, doctors and nurses should not.
“So if you’re the doctor, you let them lie there, screaming and writhing in pain, because you know that the amount of morphine or whatever, needed to relieve the pain, will kill them?”
Those who say, don’t know
Those who know, don’t say.
My mother was dying; her own body killed her. The doctors just made her passage comfortable.
Let the patient or someone else do it, doctors and nurses should not.
And if a family member (non-doctor)injects them and they die, what are the chances they would charged with murder?
And how does a doctor legally just give a Schedule II drug to a non-patient?
Well you can thank Big Pharma that you cannot easily get Cannibis oil which is curing cancer right and left.
I know and I will say. No one will like it. No one.
I spent nearly a decade of my life in neurosurgery. Been there, done that. Got a shelf full of coffe cups. Used to have a closet full of scrubs. The mind set required had to be 100% affirmative. You had to counsel the family at or near the point of utter futility but until everyone was agreed you have to be “all in”. To get up at three AM after two hours sleep in the last 40 and go to the bedside as the ICP climbs into the 80s and the vent requires 15 cm to deliver any volume and try to “do some magic” is impossible otherwise. As much as I would rather not YOU deserve it.
To undercut this rationale, this philosophy of the “healing art” turns it into something none of us wants or has any use for. Mercy on a case by case basis when appropriate is justifiable and my conscience is clear. Accuse me of playing god, if you will but someone has to do these things. When my time comes I want to get as good as I gave. I want to be able to look my doctor in the eye and know that he is still “all in” if I am.
Ah, and the mythology of cannabis grows.
There is no proof that cannabis does anything curative, but plenty of proof that it is harmful. There is, furthermore, reason to think that marijuana is a carcinogen.
All of the scientific evidence doesn't matter: with marijuana, the push is for use based on anecdotal rumors. That's not the way drugs should be included in the pharmacopeia!
BTW, there is a marijuana oil (THC) extract that is prescribed and sold. It is, of course, packaged, quality checked, and sold by pharmaceutical companies.
But, as you point out, when your ICP is in the 80s and you're on 15 cm of PEEP, you won't be able to do that, and, if your doctor is your REAL doctor and not a guy at the other end of the helicopter flight path, he will have to make some decisions.
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