mns2k

Interesting that Oregons "Death With Dignity" act considers it assisted suicide and nothing more.

ajlafleche

My father had severe emphysema (unfiltered Chesterfield for 45 years will do that to you) with as littel as 10-15% lung function. He was hospitalized in March 1990 for a gangrenous toe. His compromised lung function preclueded surgery. He was in the hospital 4 months before he died, and for htreeof those he was essentially non-reponsive and going through a plethora of problems including MRSA.

Had he been able to ask for an end of treatment and done so, his survivors wouudl have suffered considerably less than we did when he finally died. Every late night wrong number...was this it? How many times were we called half-way across the state because he had taken a turn for the worse and this could be it?

Survivors will suffer the loss sooner or later. To loosely paraphrase the Bard, survivors die many times before their deaths.

I get really upset when the phrase "playng God" is tossed out. Does the surgeon doing emergency surgery to save the crash victim not play God? is CPR not playing God in resussitating the dead? Is not all of medicine not essentially playing God, from aspirin for a headache to heart transplnats?

cordycord

I also agree with RC regarding the government's role in this very personal question.

Traveler

This story left me with a few questions. Why were the doctors talking to her kids instead of to her? And if she signed a DNR order, is that something her kids can override? Or is intubation not something that a DNR would cover?

plankfarm

[QUOTE=Traveler,Aug 14 2009, 04:36 PM] This story left me with a few questions.

MsPerky

It is so important for people to make their wishes known before something happens. And to get the legal and health care POAs. I'm pretty sure a DNR order cannot be overridden. Auntie had one tacked to the door in her room at the assisted living place. It had to be renewed yearly or so.

RC - Ryder

Traveler: Good question. The real fact is that, despite her having signed a DNR, she was not imminent with appropriate treament. She had good heart function and treatable pneumonia. From a treatment standpoint the intubation would enable positive pressure ventilation with lung expansion; sedation to limit struggle and diaphramatic exhaustion; and especially continuous aspiration of fluids blocking breathing efficiency. As such, intubation would enable most effective treatment and best likely outcome. Unfortunately, intubation is most often confused with "life support." And, her children in their ignorance of sorts, viewed this only as life support and life sustaining, with no guarantee of being able to be weaned off and total recovery. Their cousin - my physician son - implored them this was standard of practice. She was not given the option; her kids made the decisions; and this did not become a DNR situation for another 8 hours when while under morphine she went into the terminal suffocation stage. DNR is a failure to act at the very moment of brink of death. Typical DNR examples resulting in death are multiple organ failure, heart arrythmia and/or fibrillation, final stage of non-feeding starvation, below O2 saturation minimal threshold, uremic toxicity endstage, acute potassium imbalence. There is a big difference between do not treat and DNR. Know what you are asking for! Who in their right mind would want a binding DNR for massive, acute trauma until the final outcome was certain??

mikegarrison

Your story tells me that it is very important to have someone who can speak for you who you trust absolutely and who you assign legal rights to. And that you need to explain to that person what it is that you want. Not just in a particular situation, but also in general.

Otherwise you leave things up to people who possibly wish you well (or possibly don't), but are left guessing about what you would want. Or perhaps are just making decisions based on what is easier for them.

However, I once again want to point out that the original topic of this thread is VOLUNTARY euthanasia (aka suicide, whether assisted or not). I don't mind if the thread moves around to related subjects, but it needs to be clearly stated that these are in fact different subjects.

mikegarrison

In fact, the same reasoning that leads me to support the right of people to opt out also leads me to support the idea that the default stance of health care should be "best possible effort to prolong the best quality of life for as long as possible".

Each of us has the legal (and possibly moral) right, I suppose, to stand by and do nothing as someone else suffers or dies. (Well, licensed medical providers may have different legal obligations than random people.) But we don't have the right to direct other people to do that -- unless we have been assigned that right by the patient.

Never Quit

Yipes what a tough subject.

As most of us have unfortunately had loved ones go through something on the list of terminal, it becomes readily apparent - why in the heck do we drag the dying process out for humans compared to our pets?

If your dog is on his proverbial last leg you can go get him a checkout cocktail at the vet because it's the right thing to do and people pat you on the back for doing just that - the right thing. Your grandparent, your aunt, your mother-in-law (which just happened a few months ago to us) you have to dope them up on pain meds and wait for the inevitable to happen.

They each fought a brilliant fight. Did the chemo, did the radiation, had operations to remove various parts of their anatomy...it didn't work, it's going to happen but we have to extend the process...for what? If they, as the patient can in sound mind say, hey my times up, this stuff hurts, it sucks, I don't want to go, but they keep putting me on this stuff I'm basically in an altered state of being anyway, it's not like it's really me, I've checked out other than a faint pulse...lemme go while I can still recognize you and you can remember me as me versus a ghost of what this stuff has lead me to become.

Okay...I'll step off my box. This stuff is still fresh in my mind and heart. My mother-in-law just passed on 5/3. She was "My Favorite Mother-in-Law". That was a joke between us because early on she called me her "Favorite Son-in-Law" - the thing was I was her ONLY SIL so I turned around and called her much the same on a regular basis because I've never been married prior to meeting her daughter 10 years ago.

She was an amazing woman that fought every round with the ultimate grace and dignity but those final months were just messed up looking back. It's like all anyone can do at that point is just keep them hopped up on morphine or whatever. They aren't even "there" except in body for the most part. If it was her decision to say goodbye prior to 5/3 then we should have been able to give her that no matter how hard it would have seemed at the time.