The article linked to at the beginning of this thread states very clearly that he HAD expressed his wishes to never live in a wheelchair prior to the accident. Everything longer than a soundbite I’ve seen/read about this case states that he HAD expressed his views clearly to multiple family members well in advance that he did not want to live in a wheelchair.
Why do people not seem to see/hear that part of the story?
Don’t get me wrong - personally, if I found myself disabled after an accident I’d want to give rehab a try. Then again, I’ve met and interacted with disabled people who seem to have a decent life, I’m married to someone disabled (even if not in a wheelchair), and I’ve even spoken in person to a ventilator dependent quad who wanted very much to live and had managed to find a way to support himself in a house he owned with attendants he employed with his own money. I’d want to give it a go and try to adjust to different circumstances. But I have no illusions that everyone would feel the same. I have a good friend who is very much an athlete even in middle age who has written advanced directives about not wanting to live in a wheelchair permanently. He’d rather be able-bodied with a dementia/brain injury problem than clear-headed and lucid in a wheelchair. That is his choice. He’d probably be willing to hang around to see if/how much he could recover but if he couldn’t I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he ate a shotgun. Or asked for life support to be withdrawn.
My biggest reservation with this story is that the decision was made so very soon after the accident (people can and do change their minds, as Ambivalid points out), but we don’t really know the whole story. What is very clear is that he had thought about this in advance and the decision was in accord with his prior viewpoint. It wasn’t a whim, it was entirely consistent with his pre-accident position on the matter.
I fully understand he had apparently discussed it before hand. However, I am also fully aware that quite frankly, I don’t know *anyone *that says, when discussing this in a hypothetical manner, ‘keep me alive, hooked up to machines, no matter what’.
This was no longer hypothetical; they needed to spend some time - days, at the very least - to fully grasp the new reality.
Yes, I’m well aware that the vast majority of health care personnel would choose not to have some things done to extend their life that may be more common among the general population. I’m sure we listened to the same RadioLabpodcast.
First of all, I strongly disagree with the hypothesis. I don’t know -anybody- that would ‘want everything’ in that scenario. Secondly, we’re talking about a completely different situation here. No brain damage. Full ability to recognize people. Ability to speak. Thirdly - and the whole point here, in my opinion - is that whatever the patient ultimately decided to do, not near enough time and information was given to him and the family to make any sort of reasoned decision.
I’ve discussed the “what ifs” of various scenarios and have recorded my thoughts via Advanced Directives. How dare anyone question my decision if I found myself in a similar situation.
So clearly you would have been perfectly fine with them pulling the plug without waking him up right? I mean, the family knew what he wanted. Why wake him up?
Nice. But on the other hand you have that in the same thread :
[QUOTE= Gingerb, apparelized forum]
I wanted the same thing when I came to. I even told them I was a DNR, but my mom told them not to listen to me because I was on to many meds. I went from being a totally independent woman to being treated like a child less than a child actually. Since my accident I have had my wedding ring/engagement ring stolen, silver bracelet stolen, everything personal to me gone through, treated like I have no voice, put down every day, family doesn’t like to see me, but they wanted me to stay alive(selfish of them seeings they don’t visit me or talk to me at all) my husband never wants to be around me, I feel like I’m a big piggy bank even though I got nothing from my accident (get a very little bit from WCB) the caregivers I have had have treated me like shit and never listened to me, when I had the “home care company” some of them never did anything while here, never showed up, showed up intoxicated, (i live outside of a city so bad situation with no help at all for a whole day) and the best for last being sexually assaulted by a female caregiver and the “home care company” lied about it and she is still working for them.
[/QUOTE]
I’m pretty unconvinced I would want to try for 3 years in the hope that I would end up with only a bad quality of life like in your example rather than a terrible one like in mine. I’m not terribly interested in spending my last days paralyzed from the neck down, so I might want to make the experience as short as possible. Providing I’m in my right mind when woken up, I’d like them to abide by my decision (knowing that, in all likelihood, they won’t)
Yes, no doubt there are people in very bad places, which is tragic…yet read your post again, and it’s clear that the problem is the lack of a loving family around them, not necessarily (or only) the physical condition they are in.
She’s complaining that her family treats her like ‘less than a human being’. Would her outlook change if she -did- have a loving family around her?
For every one of her posts there are dozens of ‘I only wanted to die immediately after the accident, now I thank god nobody gave me the chance’.
By ‘right mind’, I assume that means ‘not under the influence of heavy sedative drugs, having had time to get a complete diagnosis from multiple specialists, and sufficient time to talk things over with my wife alone’.
Personally, I think it makes some difference to have committed those instructions to a signed writing. Consider conventional wills (for property disposition) by comparison. The law generally doesn’t accept a verbal will, deeming it too open to ambiguity and to changing one’s mind.
Absent a previous written directive from this man, it seems reasonable to me for them to have awakened him to confirm his wishes. I do still wonder whether his capability was clear, so soon out of anesthesia, but perhaps different drugs work differently.
I think these arguments start falling into one of two camps:
Those that can understand suicide
Those that can’t understand suicide
To those in the second camp, no amount of waiting will likely be long enough for them to think the decision was fully thought out. OK, he waited for his kid to be born and the doctors are saying maybe in another year he might be able to breathe on his own. There’s still going to be people saying he has to wait, wait, wait because there are possibilities and they think nobody should ever “give up” so quickly.
Frankly though for some people they do not want to live that way, ever. They don’t want to wait and see if they get a fraction of their ability back. They don’t want to deal with what ifs and possibilities when the fact is they know they can only be happy living a life fully mobile. And the point is he knows that far better than you do.
He made his decision. You can think poorly of it all you like because you can’t fathom why he would choose that, but it was his decision to make. I think rather poorly of those who would pick apart his decision in a way that implies everyone involved should be ashamed for letting him choose.
In the immediate aftermath of a spinal-cord injury, it is simply unknowable (barring a complete severing of the spinal cord) whether the person will regain function and walk again, so it would be unwise-either way-for a doctor to tell a patient any sort of definite, concrete diagnosis.
I think you’re absolutely wrong about your “two camps” hypothesis. I don’t think poorly of his decision and would probably make the same one. I just think it was made too quickly based on the details in the article.
But no one wants to live that way, ever (well, except those with BIID who are able-bodied but WANT to be disabled). I think most people believe that it is only possible to live a happy life while fully mobile but the fact is you become aware that life is more than the sum of all your parts when some of those parts are taken from you. And he also doesnt really know better than someone else, not really. All he knew was that he had a catastrophic accident and that he faced an uncertain and perilous future. He hadn’t even experienced life with or without any limitations post-accident.
I’m not sure if I can offer anything of worth here or just add to the muddle, but I was on life support for almost a month once. Trach, feeding tube, etc. The whole experience was awful (torture) and if anybody had asked me if I’d rather die I would have said Oh HELL yeah, NOW, but they didn’t. That was many years ago.
If I’d had an Advance Directive would they have not fought for my life FOR me? Some people do recover, some with various levels of disability, but how do you know it’s something you can’t cope with without time to find out? What if a person has a DNR but would have come through and then led a reasonably decent life? Even though I hope to never have to go through that again, that’s why I can’t sign a paper that says Yeah, just let me go.
They woke him up, the day after, to ask him if he wanted to die. He was druggy and…what if he just “woke up on the wrong side of the bed”? What if he’d been allowed some time to get over the initial trauma before being told something like Because, of course, you won’t even be able to hold the baby…
It just seems too soon to me and, as has been mentioned, his situation was presented to him in the worst possible light. I don’t see how he could have been in the right frame of mind to make the decision at that time.
I know you’re trying to illustrate your point by posting an absurdity, but I think we should have quick access to suicide assistance in hospitals. Not at every street corner, but in terminal wards. It is a fact that there are lots of people politically motivated to stop any kind of suicides, any kind of assisted suicide, or euthanasia. Witness the long battle between over Terry Schiavo. Nothing would ensure that had he not killed himself then, that the story wouldn’t have gotten out and outside pressures would have kept doctors or his family from letting him go.
They’d point to people like Christopher Reeve who lived for years and say his life is exemplary or that you could still read and watch TV or movies and look, Stephen Hawking’s breaking scientific ground while paralyzed! You can do that too! Lawmakers like members of Congress may idiotically diagnose you through watching a video of you (ie. Bill Frist) and say you’re totally fine. They may try to pass laws preventing doctors from making the decision, or criminalizing anyone helping an assisted suicide.
This wasn’t a whim, despite the short time frame. One can have a reasoned and thoughtful argument in a short amount of time. He made his decision and that should be the end of it. We should not have any laws or rules preventing people from making this decision in the future and make this guy the last one able to freely exercise his ability to choose.
So the guy dies by his own choosing, what’s it to you? I mean, seriously, so what if he made a bad choice in your eyes? It doesn’t harm anyone else except emotionally, so let people make impulsive suicidal choices. And I doubt it was even that impulsive, he took a look at his situation and decided he didn’t want to live like that. How long is he expected to be just a talking head (literally) until you think he’s not unduly influenced? A week? A month? A year?
You have a problem with the truth? You want them to dress it up in a pretty pink bow, ribbons, tell him everything’s gonna be alright, and within a few months he’ll be walking and then running again? You want them to lie to his face?
It looks to me like they told him the truth. They gave him all the information he needed, even though it was harsh, because they wanted him to know fully what he would be getting into. You rather they lie, I suppose?
The “truth” was not able to be known one day after his accident. To act as if it was is simply preposterous. I have no issue with suicide. But I feel that it is a decision that should be made knowing all the facts first. And I don’t think having a person saying “If I ever become paralyzed, kill me” counts as knowing what that person really wants when that formerly hypothetical scenario becomes reality. I think if a poll were to be taken with the public at large, many people would choose to die rather than spend the rest of their lives in a wheelchair. This is because the IDEA of spending life in a wheelchair is NOTHING like the reality.