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Would you ask for the same treatment to be allocated onto your mother or father...............?
Being very opinionated on this subject, this has been asked to me before. My mom just turned 50 last week and my Dad will soon follow her being 50 in a little over a month.
My parents are still very much young. They could have easily another 30 years left in them---I'm not even 30 yet! If my mom started to have a fast heart beat or SOMETHING like that.. I do believe insurance money should go used to figure out and treat the problem.
If my mom is the SAME person she is in 30 years (of course, wrinklier and slower ) I would feel the same exact way with trying to get her problem solved and fixed. HOWEVER, when she is 80 she is just. ... a body whom can no longer even wipe her own ass and feed herself... I still don't agree with it. I love my mom so much and the thought of her leaving makes me crazy!.. but.. my mom is so fun, vital, and active.. i can not and will not want to see her anything BUT that. That is not her, at all.
I just got in from work, btw, so I'm a bit frazzled.. lolol.. if that doesn't make sense, I assure you it does in my head!
Why do we waste all that time & money searching for a cure for AIDS? Why do we even treat homosexuals who have AIDS - they're going to die anyway, ya know! Why do we allow them these ultra-expensive reverse transcriptase inhibitors, and for what? Another day? They're going to die anyway, for crying out loud!
I feel the same way about drug users. Let 'em kill themselves. Legalize all drugs, let addicts buy their drugs on the open market. It would be a major industry and profits would be HUGE. Free enterprise at its finest! A side industry would spring up, composed of perople dedicated to "saving" them from themselves. Think of it!
As an added benefit to society, crime rates would drop because drug addicts won't need to steal (and murder) to get money to buy their next fix. This is already happening in places like Switzerland. Read about it.
Being very opinionated on this subject, this has been asked to me before. My mom just turned 50 last week and my Dad will soon follow her being 50 in a little over a month.
My parents are still very much young. They could have easily another 30 years left in them---I'm not even 30 yet! If my mom started to have a fast heart beat or SOMETHING like that.. I do believe insurance money should go used to figure out and treat the problem.
If my mom is the SAME person she is in 30 years (of course, wrinklier and slower ) I would feel the same exact way with trying to get her problem solved and fixed. HOWEVER, when she is 80 she is just. ... a body whom can no longer even wipe her own ass and feed herself... I still don't agree with it. I love my mom so much and the thought of her leaving makes me crazy!.. but.. my mom is so fun, vital, and active.. i can not and will not want to see her anything BUT that. That is not her, at all.
I just got in from work, btw, so I'm a bit frazzled.. lolol.. if that doesn't make sense, I assure you it does in my head!
You know, DH had felt the same about his mother...that is until it was sitting there facing him. The death angels had been trying to take her for 20 years but she overcame all the odds and kept on going. She was in her 40's when she had DH so by the time he got to his high school years, she was already in her 60's and had been facing blows for years already. She had a few things she wanted before she died. She still wanted to be there to see DH grow up, get married, have kids. She wanted to own her own home in the country, she did not want to end up in a nursing home. She wanted to see her brother one last time. By the time DH and I had our first child, she was already having dialysis once a week because her kidneys had shut down. Her diabetes had taken her most of her eye sight. And had to have surgery to put stints in her heart. But that did not stop her from coming up to the hospital to see her baby ganddaughter and to make sure her son knew what to do for me while I healed. She lived nearby and I would take DD in a stroller to go visit her. We had many conversations about her family, history I can not cherish and pass to my children.
As time when for those 7 years after DD birth, we watched as she ended going up to getting dialysis three times a week. She had more stints put in. While she was transported to and from the clinic she used a wheelchair, at home she insisted on using her legs. You'd visit one day while her daugher/nurse was out running errands surprised she was alone but she'd get up and go the bathroom, get herself things just fine. Finally she got cancer. They did stress tests to see if chemo was worth it. Her doctors even recommended it because she was a strong woman and her mind was still there. We did not think it would extend her life at all and would lower the quality of life for her but her doctors encouraged it...yet she wanted to try. Yet she was strong until finally one day she got a pain in her leg. Turns out she needed an angioplasty.
They gave her pain meds to ease the pain....but the side effect was that it lowered her oxygen levels so they put her on ozygen. She detested that thing on her face and knocked it off in the night......her oxygen levels never recovered and we lost her over that. She a lot of things happen to her healthwise but it she was not suffering greatly with it until those last moments. She did not have a long drawn out painful passing. It was quick and DH was the one with the courage to say to let her go...and she waited until her kids left the room. They were two blocks from the hospital when they called them back.
The other stuff was slowly killing her but finally it was the medicine that did her in. IF the doctors had decided to let her go the first time things went bad, DH would have grown up without his mother. If they would have let her go the second time, her grandkids would have never met her, which was VERY important for us because she would be the ONLY blood grandparent on either side of that my kids could remember for not being abusive to them or their parents in any way.
The impact she had on our children was well worth it. She got everything she had wanted in those last ten years...right down to seeing her brother one last time...which happened a couple weeks before her passing, at her sister's funeral.
If there was ever a woman who life dealt bad blow after bad blow, despite what a wonderful person she was, despite everything positive she had to offer, it was her. But it was her attitude that kept her going. She was an inspiration and I learned so many things from her that I could not have learned from my abusive parents. Even her doctor cried when she passed. He had really cared for her and even called her mother like the rest of us when she went in to see him and hugged her every visit, which made her day because she thought he was so hansome. He'd go out of his way to visit her when she was in for dialysis just to say hi.
She lived long enough to see our children. She had only one grandson until we gave her two more. Our daughter was a spitting image of her when she was her age and loved her soft blonde curls. My kids will remember a gentle, loving grandparent who never passed judgement on them, who loved them for who they were. She never introduced me as her daughter in law but as her daughter and I always called, and will always call, her mother.
When people say that she suffered all those years, she never did. She enjoyed life to the fullest she could and loved every single moment. She had a lot to offer. She was loved deeply by everyone who knew her. I ask, who is anyone to say that she should not have had those wonderful things in her last years, especially with all the trials she had in her life? She deserved every minute she got.
They gave her pain meds to ease the pain....but the side effect was that it lowered her oxygen levels so they put her on ozygen. She detested that thing on her face and knocked it off in the night......her oxygen levels never recovered and we lost her over that. She a lot of things happen to her healthwise but it she was not suffering greatly with it until those last moments. She did not have a long drawn out painful passing. It was quick and DH was the one with the courage to say to let her go...and she waited until her kids left the room. They were two blocks from the hospital when they called them back.
The other stuff was slowly killing her but finally it was the medicine that did her in. IF the doctors had decided to let her go the first time things went bad, DH would have grown up without his mother. If they would have let her go the second time, her grandkids would have never met her, which was VERY important for us because she would be the ONLY blood grandparent on either side of that my kids could remember for not being abusive to them or their parents in any way.
I have seen where doctors refused to give pain meds because it might cause terminally ill patients to fade away slightly faster so they make them suffer through it.
And it should not be the doctors decision on these things, it should be either the persons or their families. Which is why my husband and I have a will and we have end of life provisions in it.
Depends on quality of life. And does the elder feel ready to go or still getting a kick out of lving?
My MIL just passed on. 91. She got a pacemaker when in her mid 80's. Lived to see her first grandchild born. Was sharp as a tack, lived at home by herself. But when her congestive heart failure caught up with her and she had to go to a rehab and it became clear she wouldn't be able to go home due to her weakness, she told us she was ready to go. And she did, rather quickly. But I think she very much enjoyed those last 7-8 years.
I think this question posed is a huge one and needs to be considered on a case by case scenario. Vegetable or enjoying life? In pain, or pain-free? Lonely or engaged in society?
But prolonging someone's existence in a vegetative state while collecting medical fees seems very wrong. Wouldn't want it for myself--how about you.
However, she managed to surprise the medical community even with her limited treatment. She lived another 10 months before passing on this spring. She did not want further treatment, made that quite clear as she did not have dementia, and had a very solid DNR/advance directive regarding her treatment. While I did have her Healthcare proxy and could have overridden her wishes, I did not even consider it.
OK, so you have a solid DNR/advance directive regarding end of life treatment and you're saying you could have overriden her wishes. This is the part that scares me, being single, no children, and the final decisions left to my extremely religious sister, who, I know, wouldn't even honor my desire to be cremated.
And whom do you choose then whom you think is going to outlive you in the end? Big, big question!
I work in a LT care facility. There's an elderly woman, been severely contracted for 7 years now (since I've been working there), being tube-fed, receives no visitors. She does have a daughter. One of my co-workers ran into her somewhere one day and gently asked: Aren't you ever going to visit your mother? She said: The way she treated me over the years, let her suffer!
Knowing my sister, she would probably have them do anything possible to prolong my "life" as the Christian way of doing things, leave me in a nursing home with a rosary around my neck 'til the last day.
[quote=Pandamonium;11505584]
Honestly, I think that people need to die with dignity. /QUOTE]
I was reading in The Economist magazine, no too long ago, about Dignitas (I believe that's the name of it), a suicide clinic in Switzerland. The cost is $9400. It's a non-profit organization which distributes the profits to charitable organizations.
This clinic goes well beyond our two Right-to-Die states, Oregon & Washington, in that you need not be terminally ill to end your life.
A 23 year old British soccer player who was left paralyzed in a game, utilized this clinic to end his life, with the support of his compassionate parents who accompanied him to this clinic. He simply couldn't conceive of a life any other way, being dependent on others, or for whatever reasons.
We need to open a clinic or two like this in our own country for those who choose to end their lives, other than from complications from aging.
Then the real question is should any drug overdose be saved from self induced death?Any gang member?Heck you can include any long term unemployed that can't cover their medical billsLots of freeloaders to fill the bill if you want that approach.Its would be easy to put into effect.no insurance ;no cash ;you die as nature intended you to in the game called survival of the fittest.
I remember reading about that clinic. I think that it is an excellent idea.
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) I would feel the same exact way with trying to get her problem solved and fixed. HOWEVER, when she is 80 she is just. ... a body whom can no longer even wipe her own ass and feed herself... I still don't agree with it. I love my mom so much and the thought of her leaving makes me crazy!.. but.. my mom is so fun, vital, and active.. i can not and will not want to see her anything BUT that. That is not her, at all.
