concernedperson said:
MSM, I won't quote your entire post but I know what you say is true.The patient is the most importent person. The doctors have to make decisions after a certain point and then the advanced directive comes into play. Where the patient actually says what should be done or not. Suffering is not acceptable after a long and lengthy illness.The patient doesn't want it and the medical practitioners don't want to see anyone suffer. The family clings to unrealistic hopes sometimes. I know this personally so don't bash me.
The meds you speak of are only part and parcel to what can be administered. Some work better than others.....morphine doesn't work for severe pain. I know, my daughter has been in a hospital for over a month. Had cancer surgery to remove a kidney and a bypass from her bile duct. Her guts have been layed open and fluid build up is causing many complications. Her pain is extreme. I dare anyone who hasn't experienced seeing a loved one suffer give an opinion on who is humane.
With that said....she needs drugs. Pain will make you not heal. Complications are a and everyone is doing what they can. But we aren't having A HURRICANE in Atlanta, Georgia tonight.
I won't bash you. I've been in your daughters shoes. They didn't close one of my bile ducts after removing my gall bladder and my whole insides filled with burning bile. That was the worst pain in my life. I lay in er for 10 hours before they even gave me morphine, this on the day they had released me from the hospital from having the gall bladder surgery. I ended up with 4 surgeries in 3 months just to fix the damage and live with it everyday. I know suffering. I know my husband felt helpless, but ya know, it was my pain, not his and my shot on if I wanted to relieve that pain, not his.
But I never lost sight of the fact that I didn't want extra meds in my body, not once. Each person is different as to how they handle pain. I wasn't willing to take it just to stop my husband from feeling bad. After the doctor nearly killing me from a silly mistake, I wanted to be awake as possible to know what they were doing to me. As it was they gave me meds I was allergic to twice in a row and touched me with latex, even though I had a cart outside my door and had been in hospital for a month. And that was when I was coherent enough to pay attention.
Just for the sake of argument, because I'm close to this subject, what if, just an if, the patient had a dnr, plus had a directive that due to their religious beliefs wanted nothing heroic done in the case of extremes. Or didn't want to be part and partial to what some may say is assisted suicide and this happened to them, what then? Because believe it or not, I don't think doctors are G-d's, they certainly aren't a replacement to my G-d in any way, shape or form. And as such, have no right to make decisions that I am not informed about to my person. Esp if they knew before hand that I felt I may go to hell if I gave in and helped them kill me by agreeing to accept the meds, even in pain, even in danger, even if they didn't mean to overdose. Then it would be MY soul in the balance on one hand and theirs on the other.
I don't see how people can say, this doctor knew better than me or they wanted to end suffering but they didnt know the meds would kill them. You can't be that smart on one hand and that dumb on the other. They knew, I'm pretty sure, that giving someone an overdose would kill them. Sorry, in my book, ending suffering, under any circumstances put themselves out of the suffering, not the person in pain. I call it murder and I hope to heavens I never run across a nurse or doctor who plays G-d. Sometimes there are reasons to not want help, sometimes, as hard as we try, we have to understand that doctors are humans with book learning but still have the same fallible instincts that the rest of us do. I don't look up to doctors or place nurses on pedestals. My own grandmother was a nurse but she was just herself first with the same human faults as the rest of us.
Not saying those doctors and nurses didn't do something wonderful by staying, it's their actions during that staying that worry me. I saw many courageous people doing the same thing as far as staying and helping that never resorted to taking a life. I know someone who stayed 17 days next to his wife who was bed bound in knee deep water after he'd pulled her to the second floor. He swam in those nasty waters to walmart twice just to get her something to drink. She died, but it was G-d's will, not his.
Maybe I can't seperate my religion from what others may deem as fact and make sense out of it. Maybe I think G-d's law before mans law and maybe I see it as they played G-d and I feel that is wrong.