End of Life: A Process, Not An Act

This is what this country desperately needs and this is exactly what has been under attack – the recognition that every one of us dies and that perhaps it isn’t best to die in an ICU with doctors trying to bring you back when you are terminally ill. That’s what they did to my mother, even though I thought we had that covered. It’s not my idea of a good death and since we all die, I do believe there is such a thing as a good death. And I think secretly most people feel the same but are afraid to even think about it.
America is the most death-averse culture – no one wants to talk about it reasonably or deal with it. I have friends who actively hid the fact of dying from their children which I think is obscene. We need the kind of end of life discussion that leads to this kind of care at the end of life instead of the way it is now – thousands upon hundreds of thousands of dollars spent trying to keep people alive another 5 minutes when they would die naturally if left alone.

I had to sign a release to let them take off my mother’s leg and the only thing I was sure of at the time was that if they did take it off and she lived, she would never forgive me.
But of course, they carved her up like a salmon and then she died. Which I could have told them was going to happen. My long term health care plan is to be left alone when the time is getting there. I really have almost a horror of the idea of being poked and prodded when I’m dying. No thank you.

sarah palin and the loony laurouchians keeps citing (and twisting it out of context) writings from dr. ezekiel emanuel (rahm’s brother) to support their claim that obama plans to form a death panel with the purpose of killing off the elderly and the infirmed.
turns out ezekiel is not only OPPOSED to euthanasia, but his own sister suffers from cerebral palsy.
“I couldn’t believe this was happening to me,” says Emanuel, who in addition to spending his career opposing euthanasia and working to increase the quality of care for dying patients is the brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. “It is incredible how much one’s reputation can be besmirched and taken out of context.”
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1915835,00.html
how many people with handicapped children or sick parents have bought into rightwing smears and have been needlessly been terrorized? political terrorists like palin, bachmann and grassley have no conscience.

I am a physician–one of my former mentors used to say –”we need to make sure the things we are doing TO this patient are really doing things FOR this patient” (meaning the whole patient, not just the respiratory parameters on the ventilator). Often physicians feel like they have failed if they don’t continue to do “something”. Our culture here in the US is very interventional. Obviously the wonderful staff depicted in this photo essay are continuing to do many things FOR these patients. Stopping futile treatment and focusing on spirituality, family, and pleasurable experiences like music and massage are life affirming even when death is inevitable.

Thanks for posting this. I hadn’t seen it until today.
I’m going to post a brief summary and link at my blog for end of life care nurses, Death Club for Cuties.