I don’t have to “sugar coat” anything. He didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t “kill himself” any more than a person with terminal cancer who declines chemotherapy has killed himself. Nobody is under an ethical, legal, or moral obligation to take extraordinary measures to keep themselves alive. To be allowed to die with dignity is as important as the right to live with dignity.
If you don’t believe me that there’s a huge difference between the two, ask your friendly insurance agent if he’d pay out a life insurance claim: a) If a person shot himself in the head; and b) if he got into a accident and asked for his ventilator to be removed. Go ahead. Report back!
Really? I don’t think that many people who choose to die rather than spend their lives in a wheelchair. That is quite different than having to live your life hooked up to a ventilator, though.
There’s a big difference between, "It’s not always possible to predict the extent of functional impairment in the long term, "and, “We can never predict the extent of functional impairment in the long term.” Sometimes, we can’t, and when we can’t, when there’s swelling that may subside, or when hard work at physical therapy may make the difference between moderate (or even zero) impairment and massive impairment, then I think those things need to be clearly articulated, and there is an argument to be made for delaying decision making for some period of time. And I absolutely agree that doctors shouldn’t be telling people they will never walk again when there’s some hope that they may. But sometimes, there really is no hope. Sometimes, spinal cords aren’t impinged with swelling, or twisted or crushed, they’re severed. If a cord is severed, that’s it, with current technology, they really won’t be able to walk again, or breathe without a vent again, and no amount of wishing it were otherwise will change that prognosis. When there is no hope, there is no hope and to delay telling a person that isn’t delaying to make them feel better, it’s delaying to make you feel better, because that’s horrible, painful news to deliver.
Am I making the assumption that this sort of prognosis was what we’re talking about? Yes, I am. I haven’t seen the guys chart, obviously. But I’m making that assumption because this quick resolution only happens when that sort of prognosis is present. No one is running around hospitals pulling vents for fun. We pull vents and then go home and cry about it to our family, because we wish it could have had a different, happier ending.
It really ends up being none of your f**king business in the end. You can opine this way and that, but once your opinion starts stretching into someone else’s life and wishes, I got a big problem with that.
I personally don’t fault this man for his decision to die whatsoever. Like I’ve said before in this thread, many, many people in similar situations to him would and do feel similar feelings of wanting to die. What I do question is the doctor(s) and family’s decision to rush to judgment as to this man’s fate and their rush to inform this man of that determined fate. Now, of course, I’m not privy to any private details of the situation and I can only form my opinion based on what I read in the article. But that being said, this is a very sad and unfortunate situation all around. A young man is dead, a child will be raised not ever able to know his/her father, a wife lost her husband and a family has been broken up. I don’t understand it.
As I wrote above, those people are those who didn’t want the plug to be pulled, since they’re still around.
Yes for the first part (“not under the influence…”) but no for the rest. As I wrote above, I wouldn’t necessarily want to be made to wait for months until I have a complete diagnosis unless nearly complete recovery is a possibility, and it presumably wasn’t in this case. What right would have the medical staff to impose this waiting time on me? Presumably, as an adult, I’m fit to decide whether or not I want to wait it out on the off chance that I could change my mind at some point in the future, or that I could end up “only” severely disabled.
I agree that it was quite hasty, but I’m not fully convinced it was too hasty, providing the man could think clearly.
I suspect you aren’t too strongly influenced by your own experience. You stated that you wouldn’t have thought you would want to live disabled, and you want people to avoid the mistake you could have commited. However, maybe I’m pretentious, but I believe I’m more realistic than you were.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to die if I were to become paraplegic. I’m also pretty sure I would want to if I were to become quadraplegic. I doubt I would change my mind. I doubt mentioning whatever possible small improvement would make me change my mind. And as I said, I’m not particularly interested in spending my last days on a breathing machine, let alone my last weeks or months. I might or might not make a quick decision, but as a competent adult, I wish this decision be respected, even if it took me only 5 hours to make my mind. Not doing so because you think I might change my mind next year is inflicting undue suffering on me. Giving it a shot is my decision to make, not anybody else’s (or rather, should be).
I would note that I would probably fear that a small improvement could result in me being unable to be allowed to die, for instance because I would breathe by myself, and instead of (lawful) removal of life support, it would become (unlawful) assisted suicide.
I also see you reiterated your belief that most people, hypothetically, would rather be dead than in a wheelchair. I believe you’re completely wrong. Maybe you should start a poll.
There are some people who can’t bear the thought of a loved one having to feed, clothe and wipe their ass for them for the rest of their days. So even having a loving family around you wouldn’t do the trick. Sure as shit wouldn’t for me.
So a soldier who jumps on a grenade to save his buddies is doing something wrong because he did not have time to think about & get all the in’s * out’s sorted out in full detail?
People should be prevented from attempting top save people in distress?
Why, going in there would be suicide… We will prevent you from doing that for your own good. I am sure that I will not allow extreme measures, not because I don’t think your opinion matters to me but for not bankrupting my family. Oh, you are picking up the bills? OK, we’ll talk about it. Oh, you will carry my pain & suffering for me? Oh, that will change my mind for sure.
I have not been under the illusion, IMO, that all human is worth unlimited expenditures of time, money, work, or the feeling of you for me or my opinions since about 14.
If my family is allowed to be not responsible for you going against my wishes, you have until I wake up in any state of mind, I will start removing people who are in my way.
Human life is not infinitely valuable to me. Nor is it scared.This is not a case where the hurt person never made his wishes known. If it was in writing & notarized & carried on his person, would you still object to this exact situation?
Mostly, I do not understand your right to question this situation. You are of course entitled to your opinion & to post about it.
But your, IMO, trying to make it some kind of law or enforceable or prosecutable event, is way, IMO, over the line. Trying to subvert the wishes of younger people who have not made out a will is the same as trying to support cruel & unusual suffering to people you have no right to do.
I have to believe that the DNR’s are actually aimed at misguided people who try to force their ideas on me & mine. As much as I hate the need for laws & laws & laws, I am glad I have a defensible way to fight these people without me having to resort to killing them.
Ah, yes. And we’ll never hear from the people that -did- pull the plug but might have wished they hadn’t later, 'cause they’re dead. Last time I checked death was fucking permanent.
Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, are you being obtuse on purpose? I don’t need anything tied up in a bow. I don’t have a problem with the truth. I most certainly do not have a problem with death with dignity - I am 100% for it, in fact (and Macca26 is completely wrong in thinking that apparently people can’t see shades of grey with a complex issue) - and it’s still suicide, btw, insurance be damned.
I have a problem with the notion that, less than a day after the accident, there was no ‘absolute truths’ to give, and the man was almost certainly in the completely wrong frame of mind to base any sort of very, very fucking permanent decision on the possibly crap ‘truth’ being fed to him by the family. He’s in the worst possible mental state you can think of in terms of dealing with such devastating news, he’s drugged up, he’s told 'you’ll never ever hold your child who’s being born fairly soon but you probably don’t want to wait around for that ‘cause your (and my) quality of life would be shit, so, you really want to live?’
The ‘truth’ was ‘You’ve had a severe injury. You may well be paralyzed for the rest of your life, and you might need a ventilator to breath, but there are options, and really, it’s far too soon to know anything for sure just yet, plus you’re still probably drugged up from the sedatives - in fact, why the hell did we even wake you up? Go back to sleep for now. In the meantime, we’ll call a couple of specialists; in the morning you won’t be drugged up, you can talk to the specialists, spend some time with your wife alone talking things over, and then you can decide what you want to do’.
I’m shocked that anyone wouldn’t think this -wasn’t- the vastly preferable way to handle it.
I can understand this - hell, I definitely thought so as well -it’s the age-old dilemma isn’t it? Nobody wants to feel like they’re a burden to anybody, least of which the kind of care involved like in this case. And then I met my darling wife and we had kids, and I love my family more than life itself, and I’d take care of them because she’s my wife and they are my kids…yet I still abhorred the idea of them taking care of me. And my darling wife had to gently explain that if I loved them, I had to accept that maybe they loved me too, and I had to promise to try and understand that letting her take care of me could be ‘love’ just as much as me taking care of her.
It was a very difficult, powerful conversation, but it laid the groundwork for the agreements we have should something happen to the other (we’re both proponents of death with dignity, if it comes to that, FWIW).
But I can guarantee you one thing we’d never ever do is make such a decision less than 24 hours after the accident, when the other person was still drugged up.
Speaking of drugged up - **GusNSpot **you may want to put down the pipe. Your post makes no sense; your examples are so completely irrelevant to what we’re talking about here I don’t even want to know how they’re connected in your mind. Just for starters, think about the assumptions of the soldier going off to the battle field…
There is a big difference between loved ones taking care of you and loved ones being responsible for every aspect of your existence indefinitely. I can’t even bring myself to put “IMHO” in that sentence.
Why do you think he wouldn’t be “drugged up” in the morning? If he’s still on the vent, he’s still going to be sedated. And when sedation is lifted, there are very specific tests they do to assess level of consciousness and ability to give informed consent, so the idea that he was too drugged up to understand what was going on is also incorrect, as is the idea that a patient coming off sedation needs a lot of time to clear his head. Remifentanil, one of the many drugs used in ICUs for sedation, has a half-life of 3 minutes. It doesn’t take long at all for it to be entirely out of the patient’s system.
I agree with you. Morally, they should have waited.
Practically, however, it may have been that there really was no hope of getting any sort of bearable life (like Why Not said), and perhaps waiting would have made the choice legally impossible. If that’s the case, then I do understand their hurry. But it shouldn’t happen like that - the laws should allow him to make that decision later.
His child wouldn’t have benefited from him waiting to see it born, though. That’s a terrible argument. The odds of the child actually ever knowing their father sound miniscule.
As its been stated elsewhere, sometimes you can know after 1 day. You don’t think this was one of those times, I do. Because those things were said by the doctors. Unless you think they were incompetent or had some political agenda, why would you even question what they said to him?
And I do think having a person establish prior to a medical emergency what their wishes are counts as knowing. How else would one “know”? You just said that you don’t want people making decisions in the heat of the moment! Having prior wishes established while they were lucid and not on a ventilator or dying in a hospital counts in every respect as the man’s proper and well-thought out wishes! Having a document stating one’s wish is supposed to prevent all of this last minute speculation!
And as to your last point, while its commendable that you want to clarify the misconception that a wheelchair equates to a bad life, I don’t think in cases like this you have either the moral high ground nor should you have the political/legal ability to force someone to reconsider. He’s dumb to do it quick, but so what? It was still his choice. And may I say that being an atheist and not believing of any afterlife, once he’s dead, it shouldn’t matter if the choice was bad or not. He’s not around to suffer the consequences of that choice therefore suicide, like death, is NEVER harmful for the recipient (can’t harm a dead person).
As its been stated before, yes, sometimes you can know absolute truths. Besides, it was what his doctors said and barring any evidence of an ulterior motive, I don’t see why you should have any reason to reject their medical advice. And also, he had made his wishes known prior to the accident. Put these two together and I see no question to do it immediately.
Who said it wasn’t preferable? You must have confused me for someone else
The only way I’m influenced by my own experience is in the context of all the experiences of others to which I have been witness. I don’t know how I would have felt if I had been told, immediately upon waking up in the hospital, that I had permanently lost the use of my lower body and was going to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. All I said was what I imagined I would feel. I actually was spared this bleak and many times incomplete/incorrect prognosis. And I consider that an immensely positive thing.
And I don’t think a poll on the SDMB would be very representative of the feelings of the public at large (especially if that poll were to be conducted by me). And I should further clarify, I don’t think everyone would consider death preferable to living life as a paraplegic but I think the percentage of young males (which both I and the man at the center of this story were at the time of our accidents) who would consider death to be preferable to such a life would be fairly high in a hypothetical poll.
Yep. I’ve had 55 good years. My Advanced Directives specifically disallow tube feeding, a tracheostomy, pretty much anything beyond simple care. It’s been a good run and I’m not one to tolerate suffering. Please respect my wishes.
You must have confused me for someone else