I came across this article about end of life care…from the perspective of a doctor.
This could so easily become a rallying cry against doctors and “the medical establishment”. But I’ll try not to let it. I’m not going to give you platitudes about “dying with dignity” because I’m not certain there is such a thing.
Pain control isn’t perfect. You seem to have few choices:
-you’re unconscious from medication,
-you’re more lucid, but in agony,
-or you’re somewhere in between and unable to be awake enough to enjoy the useful and productive time you have with your friends and family even though your pain may, for the moment or a few hours, be under control (Hey, I can think straight! How much can I get done before this wears off! Should I work or play?)
You start measuring time by “when can I have my next dose of painkiller?”
The excerpt from this article speaks for itself:
Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people. That’s when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life. The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines, and assaulted with drugs. All of this occurs in the Intensive Care Unit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist. I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, “Promise me if you find me like this that you’ll kill me.” They mean it. Some medical personnel wear medallions stamped “NO CODE” to tell physicians not to perform CPR on them. I have even seen it as a tattoo.
Even when the right preparations have been made, the system can still swallow people up. One of my patients was a man named Jack, a 78-year-old who had been ill for years and undergone about 15 major surgical procedures. He explained to me that he never, under any circumstances, wanted to be placed on life support machines again. One Saturday, however, Jack suffered a massive stroke and got admitted to the emergency room unconscious, without his wife. Doctors did everything possible to resuscitate him and put him on life support in the ICU. This was Jack’s worst nightmare. When I arrived at the hospital and took over Jack’s care, I spoke to his wife and to hospital staff, bringing in my office notes with his care preferences. Then I turned off the life support machines and sat with him. He died two hours later.
One of the most basic human rights is, all too often, staved off by medicine: the right to die. Hopefully this article makes you think about some of the issues you may face if you’re ever diagnosed with a terminal illness.
