The medical establishment will do all in its power to cure you, right up to the point till the money runs out.
Then it’s, “God’s Will”.
Fucking :rolleyes: times a million.
I ain’t goin’ out like that, I assure you.
You can express your strong opinions here (or PM me to vent). There are strong opinions I have about my brother in laws death that I only shared with my own side of the family - its been four years and I still haven’t really shared them with my husband. He doesn’t need to hear them - he knows enough about them to know if he has to make decisions for me - they aren’t the ones his brother made.
This sort of thing is so intensely personal - and we don’t have ‘right’ answers. And it comes at a time when stress and guilt and sadness and regret are all part of the package.
A very good book about the sorts of issues being raised here is Atul Gawande’s “Being Mortal.” Thoughtful, compassionate, and not by any means inclined to accept the standard medical views, even though the author is a surgeon.
OP–I wish things were different for you and yours. So often things just suck. And this for all sorts of reasons is one of them.
I’m probably going to sound cruel for saying this, but still… I absolutely do not understand people’s desire to drag the process out. I get that nobody wants to die, and nobody wants a loved one to die, but at a certain point you are just looking at a corpse hooked up to a machine. I’m completely baffled as to why we refuse to let people with painful and terminal conditions end their own suffering, and I can’t comprehend how you would watch a loved one degenerate past the point where they lose what makes them human and still think it needs to be prolonged.
An from a purely objective point of view… Every human being on this planet is taking up resources other humans need. The economic costs associated with treating the elderly (not just in medical supplies but also pensions and social security etc.) are insane, and they are only going to get worse as lifespans increase and the elderly population grows. At a certain point, we are going to have to start making some very hard decisions about how these resources are rationed out… And if people are irrational now, wait till you see what happens when our resources start to run out.
Untrue.
Neither of my parents was “hooked up to a machine”, and dad was speaking coherently (if infrequently) three days before his death. That is not an inevitable end, self-murder is not required, nor is delibrate killing of the elderly and terminally ill (which is far, far worse than killing yourself), to avoid your horrible scenario. What is required is not intervening - something modern medicine is, admittedly reluctant to do. Don’t hook them up to tube feeding when they are no longer interested in eating. Don’t drag them to dialysis. Don’t fill them full of needles and tubes and monitors when death is inevitable and fast approaching. Pain medication, yes, and other comfort measure but stop the interventions.
I don’t want a society that promotes killing the helpless as a “solution” to anything. The world has been down that path once and I don’t want to see that happen in my lifetime.
Don’t know if this was sarcastic or not, but I agree with you 1000x
The reason Dr. Kevorkian was so scary to the established medical community is because he provided a sane, humane way for people who were mentally capable of making their own choice to end their own life of pain and misery. The “system” is a powerful money machine. If death does not come before, as soon as they suck the last drop of money from the “patient”, the end will come quickly.
Before anyone comes screaming at me about how “miracles can happen” and “medical ethics”, spare me. The medical community looks at beds the same way an auto garage looks at their service bays. If one is empty, that costs them money. If one is being used, money is rolling in. Keep the beds full as long as the profit is there.
I’d love to see the statistics of how long the terminally ill survive after their insurance/personal/family funds are exhausted.
Dinsdale, only one thing I’d push for. Get your MIL morphine. If she is in as much pain as you think, that is NO way to go. No one should needlessly suffer their last days in agonizing, constant, irreversible pain for a few more moments on this earth. That is unforgivable.
I wish you and your family all the best in this difficult time.
Resources are already running out. The problem is, with the infinite growth of profits paradigm, there is no way out. Everyone will hold on to whatever is making them money until the system collapses.
As long as we permit this insane system to continue, competing forces will fight to keep their own profit center grinding along. I can’t see the long-term care industry giving up their business without a fight. Nor can I see anyone making a rational decision based on ethics.
This is going to end badly for the vast majority of us. Unless, of course, you believe you are living on a planet of infinite resources.
In my grandmother’s case, 8 years, to age 98. Was the long-term care facility where she lived as nice as her own home, or my aunt’s homes, and was the food as good? No way in hell. Did living there hasten her demise? Not except in the sense that I think she would have been happier to live with family, and she might not have essentially willed herself to die. But she really needed someone to be with her full-time (though she really didn’t need much in the way of actual nursing care until the last year or two), and all the adults in the family were working elsewhere. Her vision and hearing were practically gone, and her memory was shot to hell, but she was in pretty decent health for someone her age.
About the only “good trend” I have seen was an attempt at least, at discussing why the “Last 6 Months” of life is so obscenely expensive.
Good old USA - forget “Quality of Life” nonsense - we’re talking about MONEY!
We have to get serious about Advance Directives, Limited Powers of Attorney for Healthcare, and all the other “I’ll get to it sometime” preparations.
How many people do you suppose will actually sign up for “Do every last thing to keep pump going” care if they have ever seen a shriveled-up, empty husk of a human being kept “alive” by machines they never even knew existed.
Those poor people with the brain dead daughter desperately shopping around for a place to maintain blood flow.
THAT is MUCH more “Scary” than “Pathetic”.
Someday, I want to look at the “success” rates for chemo, radiation, surgery and whatever else gets tacked onto the end of life.
“You’ll be able to see the TV for another 4 months, but your hair will fall out, you will be too weak to stand, and you’ll be stuck with needles 6 times a day” is NOT “success”.
I am terrified that I will linger. I want the end to be slow enough to get things settled and quick enough that it will come as a surprise.
/babbling
That particular case gets as much into black fear of medical neglect or even malice (of which there is a long history) as much as end-of-life issues. After a couple centuries of that sort of thing yes, the families are much more likely to cling to every last hope and technology.
Wife visited her yesterday. Said she looks weaker, thinner. Was unable to wake her up (and didn’t try as hard as the previous time.)
In my mind, MIL has ceased to exist some time ago. Which was pretty much my choice instead of thinking about her more - which would get me mad, frustrated, sad, etc. Of course, having essentially “numbed” myself, I have to be somewhat careful of what I say to anyone else, as it comes across as horribly insensitive.
Here I am being a jerk, looking ahead on my calendar, guessing when would be the most inconvenient day for MIL to die… Fortunately, we haven’t much on the calendar…
Just in case anyone is curious, SIL agreed to start morphine yesterday.
Thank goodness!
And here’s my prediction - when MIl dies soon, SIL says, “See, I told you it would kill her!” :smack:
SIL conveyed the news in short text before leaving town for vacation. Bitch. Wife is meeting w/ hospice cnslr this p.m., then shooting over to see mom while hospice nurse is there.
Well, in this instance hospice was a week or 2 off. Yesterday they said they did not think she would pass overnight, but would within 1-2 weeks. Wife just got the call that MIL had passed. What a relief.
Thanks all for your thoughts and ideas. Has been of some benefit to post here.
Our condolences to your wife. No, it’s not a regal plural, I’m just naming myself spokesperson 