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I am certainly not able to offer up a deus ex machina for your brother and having only two sisters, I don't know what it is like to have brothers. Let alone three, but I have some friends who have brothers. Some who also proved "difficult" in one way or another. No helpful insights I can offer in any case, but I am wondering if this thread has helped you in any way you thought it might. Did you manage to get anything off your chest?
Sometimes writing about such things helps that way. Regardless where you put the words. Aside from all that, I don't think the world is descending into madness. The world has always been a pretty mad place, and I think those of us who's turn it is to spend some time dealing with the madness tend to see it as worse than before. Those of us in the west tend to give Jesus more credit and/or blame than people in other parts of the world too.
Where does that leave us?
Best to you and your brothers. May I have the inclination to go on about whatever into my 80s let alone when facing the likes of a quadruple bypass...
Yeah I mostly needed to vent. He's not going to change or become more self aware, more open minded, or less obsessed.
Spoke with him last night; apparently the stents often don't last for 6 months and one of them would be difficult to place properly at all, so now the surgery makes more sense as his only option, especially since he won't be eligible for the surgery in a year or two anyway.
Just as a sidebar, my mother had a quad bypass a couple of months before her 87th birthday. She got four and a half more years, during which she saw two granddaughters married and her seventh great-granddaughter born. Died in her sleep at 91.
They do these surgeries on old hearts all the time.
Just as a sidebar, my mother had a quad bypass a couple of months before her 87th birthday. She got four and a half more years, during which she saw two granddaughters married and her seventh great-granddaughter born. Died in her sleep at 91.
They do these surgeries on old hearts all the time.
Thanks, that is nice to know :-)
If your mother got it done at 87 then I don't know why they're telling him 82 would be the outer limit unless the actuarial tables are different for men, or have changed since your mother's surgery, or *ahem* unless they are pushing him subtly toward the procedure that will make them the most $.
I suspect though that if he were "too old" he could find a surgical team somewhere that would disagree. And if what they are saying about just placing stents is even half true, he's probably making the right call.
Surgery has slipped to Monday the 22nd now so everyone will just have to cross their fingers for a few extra days.
You know for all his wooden, ham-fisted, tone-deaf approach to life, it's not like the guy has never done anything nice for me. It was he who recognized my early precociousness and sat teaching me my ABCs, introduced me to the piano, etc. I think he was too hard on my parents but his notion that they weren't sufficiently enriching / encouraging his education made him determined to compensate for that with me. It was largely misguided love, but love nonetheless. He invited me to live with he and his wife the summer after high school. Yeah he did it so he could lecture me about his ideas about living but ... he meant well.
Siblings are sure complicated. Everything he saw in me, he did NOT at ALL see in the brother in between us ... and I am much closer to that brother and see a lot to admire in him. Oil and water, those two. I have told them I am not going to be in the middle of their spats anymore, they will have to figure it out for themselves. Couple of stubborn old coots, lol.
If your mother got it done at 87 then I don't know why they're telling him 82 would be the outer limit unless the actuarial tables are different for men, or have changed since your mother's surgery, or *ahem* unless they are pushing him subtly toward the procedure that will make them the most $.
I suspect though that if he were "too old" he could find a surgical team somewhere that would disagree. And if what they are saying about just placing stents is even half true, he's probably making the right call.
Surgery has slipped to Monday the 22nd now so everyone will just have to cross their fingers for a few extra days.
You know for all his wooden, ham-fisted, tone-deaf approach to life, it's not like the guy has never done anything nice for me. It was he who recognized my early precociousness and sat teaching me my ABCs, introduced me to the piano, etc. I think he was too hard on my parents but his notion that they weren't sufficiently enriching / encouraging his education made him determined to compensate for that with me. It was largely misguided love, but love nonetheless. He invited me to live with he and his wife the summer after high school. Yeah he did it so he could lecture me about his ideas about living but ... he meant well.
Siblings are sure complicated. Everything he saw in me, he did NOT at ALL see in the brother in between us ... and I am much closer to that brother and see a lot to admire in him. Oil and water, those two. I have told them I am not going to be in the middle of their spats anymore, they will have to figure it out for themselves. Couple of stubborn old coots, lol.
I'm not sure my mother, now 92, would get there in the first place. Not sure how many other states have DNRs, but my mother has had hers in effect for many years now...
"The Prehospital Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) Form is an official State document developed by the California EMS Authority, in concert with the California Medical Association and emergency medical services (EMS) providers, for the purpose of instructing EMS personnel regarding a patient’s decision to forgo resuscitative measures in the event of cardiopulmonary arrest. Resuscitative measures to be withheld include chest compressions (CPR), assisted ventilation (breathing), endotracheal intubation, defibrillation, and cardiotonic drugs (drugs which stimulate the heart). The form does not affect the provision of life sustaining measure such as artificial nutrition or hydration or the provisions of other emergency medical care, including treatment for pain, difficulty breathing, major bleeding, or other medical conditions.
The DNR must be signed by the patient or by the patient’s legally recognized health care decision maker if the patient is unable to make or communicate informed health care decisions. The patient’s physician must also sign the form, affirming that the patient/legally recognized health care decision maker has given informed consent to the DNR instruction. The DNR form should be clearly posted or maintained near the patient."
-- California Medical Emergency Services Authority
I'm inclined to think I'll go the same route when it comes time I think my quality of life would not warrant resuscitation, and to think my mom is in better shape/health than most people her age and most people who are even in their 80s for that matter.
I'm not sure my mother, now 92, would get there in the first place. Not sure how many other states have DNRs, but my mother has had hers in effect for many years now...
"The Prehospital Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) Form is an official State document developed by the California EMS Authority, in concert with the California Medical Association and emergency medical services (EMS) providers, for the purpose of instructing EMS personnel regarding a patient’s decision to forgo resuscitative measures in the event of cardiopulmonary arrest. Resuscitative measures to be withheld include chest compressions (CPR), assisted ventilation (breathing), endotracheal intubation, defibrillation, and cardiotonic drugs (drugs which stimulate the heart). The form does not affect the provision of life sustaining measure such as artificial nutrition or hydration or the provisions of other emergency medical care, including treatment for pain, difficulty breathing, major bleeding, or other medical conditions.
The DNR must be signed by the patient or by the patient’s legally recognized health care decision maker if the patient is unable to make or communicate informed health care decisions. The patient’s physician must also sign the form, affirming that the patient/legally recognized health care decision maker has given informed consent to the DNR instruction. The DNR form should be clearly posted or maintained near the patient."
-- California Medical Emergency Services Authority
I'm inclined to think I'll go the same route when it comes time I think my quality of life would not warrant resuscitation, and to think my mom is in better shape/health than most people her age and most people who are even in their 80s for that matter.
I was talking about the hospital guidelines not to perform some complex surgeries past a certain age as a matter of resource triage and also probably relating to odds of survival. Do Not Resuscitate orders are a completely different matter.
Yes if they wouldn't do his bypass then it is in a sense sending him home to die and THEN he might want a DNR in place. Although any fundamentalist having a DNR order would be way out of character.
I was talking about the hospital guidelines not to perform some complex surgeries past a certain age as a matter of resource triage and also probably relating to odds of survival. Do Not Resuscitate orders are a completely different matter.
Yes if they wouldn't do his bypass then it is in a sense sending him home to die and THEN he might want a DNR in place. Although any fundamentalist having a DNR order would be way out of character.
Sorry. I wasn't wanting to argue with you. Just sharing another state of affairs for me here having to do with this sort of thing more generally speaking. I realize how these matters are not one-and-the-same. Quite varied actually, but there is a common theme or thread about how medical emergencies are dealt with as we get on in age.
Re the DNR, my mother's dialysis doc recommended she NOT get a DNR. He said, "If you were here at the dialysis center and your heart stopped and thump on the chest could bring you back right away, wouldn't you want to come back? You still have a good quality of life."
She said "yes, as long as I wouldn't be put on a machine to be kept alive..." and he said that's not the same thing as a DNR, which it is not. That's your medical Advance Directive, which she did have.
Fast forward four years to the early morning hours of March 28, 2020. Mom had come home from dialysis that day very tired, and by 10:30 she asked my brother and I to help her get to bed. I was staying there because she had hurt her knee somehow when turning in bed and needed help dressing and such. (She'd wanted to go to the ER to get her knee Xrayed, and the dialysis center called me in a panic saying, "WE DON'T WANT HER TO GO TO THE ER. IT'S OVERLOADED WITH COVID PATIENTS, AND THEY ARE JUST GOING TO TELL HER TO ELEVATE AND ICE IT.")
At 11:30 p.m. I looked in at her, and she was fast asleep, breathing deeply. At 2:30 a.m. I woke up and went in and looked at her, and she was not breathing at all. Her head was warm, but her hand was cold, I could feel no pulse, I pulled up her eyelid and her eye was fixed, and she was gone. I called 9/11 ("it's not exactly an EMERGENCY, but I just found my mother dead...") and then all the COVID questions before the EMTS got there, and then the question, "Did your mother have a DNR?" "No." "Well, then, we have to try to resuscitate her." WTF ? SHE IS DEAD. HER BODY IS COOLING. So they pulled her out of bed, I walked out and turned around to look and saw them making a half-assed attempt to do CPR, and about 30 seconds later they came to me and said, "Do you want us to continue." NO. SHE IS DEAD. LET HER GO.
So, just keep that in mind. If you don't have one, they are obligated to try to resuscitate you, even when doing so is stupid.
Ii's upsetting reading of the op's problems w/ a family member who was, and apparently still is, losing it. That could be more of a mental health issue than a religious one, although it can often be hard to discern the difference. At some point, the difference between them seems negligible.
I live in a very large Christian Ecclesiastical retirement development in Arkansas, seemingly as it's only Zen practitioner, which in many ways is the very definition of agnosticism. Having grown up in the Deep South, it's almost impossible to avoid religion down here. I was lucky enough to have grown up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which has always been an island of fun loving, sinful, beach worshiping Catholics as opposed to the state's extremely conservative Baptists.
In my old folks home here (probably 1500 people in several different types of housing) I've seen how medical issues can change people drastically. From Dementia to strokes. The latter can have huge effects on our sanity as the brain is often the area which receives the most sudden damage. I've witnessed extreme changes when people became delusional and/or even violent afterwards. Someone that you knew became someone you didn't. When this happens, the people get sent to Assisted Living, which is closer to hospice if there are no family members living or willing to take them in. Seeing this sort of thing happen makes you aware that every day is to be enjoyed, as it could happen to you, me or anyone right out of the blue w/ no warning.
Last edited by stephenMM; 01-19-2024 at 04:51 AM..
Ii's upsetting reading of the op's problems w/ a family member who was, and apparently still is, losing it. That could be more of a mental health issue than a religious one, although it can often be hard to discern the difference. At some point, the difference between them seems negligible.
I live in a very large Christian Ecclesiastical retirement development in Arkansas, seemingly as it's only Zen practitioner, which in many ways is the very definition of agnosticism. Having grown up in the Deep South, it's almost impossible to avoid religion down here. I was lucky enough to have grown up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which has always been an island of fun loving, sinful, beach worshiping Catholics as opposed to the state's extremely conservative Baptists.
In my old folks home here (probably 1500 people in several different types of housing) I've seen how medical issues can change people drastically. From Dementia to strokes. The latter can have huge effects on our sanity as the brain is often the area which receives the most sudden damage. I've witnessed extreme changes when people became delusional and/or even violent afterwards. Someone that you knew became someone you didn't. When this happens, the people get sent to Assisted Living, which is closer to hospice if there are no family members living or willing to take them in. Seeing this sort of thing happen makes you aware that every day is to be enjoyed, as it could happen to you, me or anyone right out of the blue w/ no warning.
Even if it's related to dementia or some underlying health issues, I doubt this kind of thing manifested in a vacuum.
I have an old high school friend who has always been bent toward conspiracy theories. He was kicked out of college back in the late 2000s for selling drugs. There wasn't enough evidence to file criminal charges, but enough to kick him out of school. He always maintained it was an NWO conspiracy against Christians. It obviously wasn't, but you could never convince him of that. That was before these ideas became fashionable over the last decade or so.
The guy's mental health has deteriorated over the last five years or so - sometimes his ideas are even more exaggerated than back then, but he's basically the same guy he was twenty years ago.
Even if it's related to dementia or some underlying health issues, I doubt this kind of thing manifested in a vacuum.
I have an old high school friend who has always been bent toward conspiracy theories. He was kicked out of college back in the late 2000s for selling drugs. There wasn't enough evidence to file criminal charges, but enough to kick him out of school. He always maintained it was an NWO conspiracy against Christians. It obviously wasn't, but you could never convince him of that. That was before these ideas became fashionable over the last decade or so.
The guy's mental health has deteriorated over the last five years or so - sometimes his ideas are even more exaggerated than back then, but he's basically the same guy he was twenty years ago.
Being in thrall to conspiracy theories and obsessive thinking about them can certainly get all tangled up in multiple things that are hard to tease apart. For example, is my brother batty about this because of religion, or attracted to it because he's batty?
Just got word today that this brother's wife fell at home and so thoroughly fractured her shoulder that they are recommending a shoulder joint replacement as the best way forward. So now both my brother and his wife will be in the same hospital for different surgeries, likely on the same day. I would not wish either surgery on my worst enemy, much less my annoying brother and certainly not his long-suffering wife.
This does seem to be bringing out the best in my brother, he's almost managing to be funny trying to keep his wife's spirits up. BTW she just got the all-clear after chemo, and now this.
I guess Jesus really has their back!
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