On living and dying
Brilliant article about "dwindling". I hope never to be in theposition of Wolff's mother, nor in that of Wolff, but I've seen in my
own mother how easy it is to lie to yourself about an ageing parent,
and how hard it is to accept that they are done. Seeing my granddad
beg for death has made me a staunch believer that medicine has its
priorities entirely wrong. Let's not try to keep each other alive as
though we were chunks of meat. Let's show a genuine love for who we
essentially are.
http://nymag.com/news/features/parent-health-care-2012-5/
posted by Dr Zen @ 4:07 pm
1 Comments:
You know, Health Care Professionals, especially in a Sue-happy place such as the USA cannot speak what they really think.
As a cardiac nurse, I think it is cruel to perform surgery on half of our patients. BUT I will tell you WHO is driving the surgery - THE FAMILY.
Notice how in that article, the sister keeps wanting to get the mother back to what she was. She is the one consenting to all of the medical interventions.
And you would lose your job if you said to families, what are you doing, let them go peacefully. What is wrong of dying..we all have to do it at some point. There would be complaints and law suits, so you tell me, whose fault is it?
At work last night, there was an program on the television (I was feeding a 93yo dinner, which only takes 1.5 hrs of frustration - she doesn't want to eat, and the family insist you keep going til it is all gone - a continual fight, where the nurse has to be quiet and do as told.) about centegenarians.
The daughter of the patient asked me what would I be doing at 100? And I said, I don't plan on living to 100.
We shouldn't hide old age and the horrors of it after a certain point. If people knew how difficult it can be, especially now we nurse them so well that we can keep people alive for years and years with dementia (they previously died of the disease, forgetting to eat, or wandering out into the bush/river/car), they would actually understand the need to remove active medical care (not nursing care, you cannot neglect someone.)
Don't give even aspirin, let the stroke come, as nature intended. Harsh? You go work in aged care for pittance, take the violence, poor working hours, poor conditions and unbelievably poor pay, added to the media telling the world continually how bad you are.
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