January 7th, 2011 by Debra Gordon in Better Health Network, Opinion
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My cousin’s mother-in-law is in her late 90s. She had horrible osteoporosis and can barely move. She has little cognitive function left. She requires nearly 24-hour care and no one would even attempt to say she has any quality of life left. She told her son years ago that she was “ready to go,” and had had enough.
And yet when I asked my cousin’s husband if his mother had any do-not-resuscitate orders, or had ever completed an advanced director outlining her wishes of what kind of end-of-life care she wanted, he said no. His sister, he said, just wasn’t ready for that yet. So what, I asked, will you do when/if your mother gets pneumonia? Will you treat it with antibiotics? Will you put her on a respirator? If she is no longer able to eat, will you feed her through a tube?
He couldn’t answer. And he was clearly uncomfortable with the questions. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at A Medical Writer's Musings on Medicine, Health Care, and the Writing Life*
December 17th, 2010 by DrRob in Better Health Network, Health Tips, True Stories
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Everyone liked him. Though his later years (the only ones in which I knew him) took away his ability to do most things, and though he was in great pain every day, it was easy to see the mischief in his eyes. The subtle humor was still there, coming out of a man who was weak, in pain, dying.
She lived for him. She was always telling me of his pain, frustrated with the fact that he didn’t tell me enough. She was anxious about each complaint of his, wondering if this was the one that would take him away from her. Many of her problems were driven by this anxiety and fears, and she spent many hours in my office giving witness to them through her tears.
As his health failed, I wondered about her future. He was the center of her life, the source of her energy, joy, purpose. How could she manage life without him? How could she, who had so much lived off of the care of this wonderful man, find meaning and purpose in a life without his calming presence?
Then he died. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*
January 27th, 2010 by DrRob in Better Health Network, True Stories
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One of my favorite patients died last week.
My reaction to this was not quite what you would think: I smiled. No, I didn’t smile because of his death; I smiled because of his life. I smiled because I got to be a part of that life. His death wasn’t his tragic end, it was the exclamation point to his life.
I am around a lot of death – it’s one of the things that makes being a doctor different from other jobs. My goal with all of my patients is to keep them healthy, to relieve their pain, and to do my best to keep them alive. Ultimately, though, it’s a losing battle; 100% of them will eventually die. That’s why I don’t like statistics about how many people who die due to inadequate doctoring. Our job is to resist an irresistible force. We are standing up to the hurricane, the avalanche, the flood. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*
