It should be a crime
We have had a massive influx of Nursing Home patients lately that have had G-tubes and DNRs.
The majority of them not only have advanced dementia, but they have various other serious chronic conditions that cause their quality of life to be horrendous. More than one have cried out at regular intervals some variation of "Please let me die," or "I want to die."
It is my opinion that if you cause the absolutely miserable existence of another human being to be unnecessarily prolonged against their will, you should be prosecuted for cruel and unusual punishment and should go to jail.
9 comments:
Amen.
One of the reasons I left the MICU was due to working one holiday season where we admitted 2 SNF pts in their 90s and proceeded to intubate and start pressors on them. I could no longer be a part of the team that tormented and abused them.
CardioNP
I work in long term care and agree that the health care proxys should have to suffer the same pain they inflict.
TrayG
And let me "third" that:
Amen.
Not easy to experience that (or live that), I'm sure.
My grandmother's greatest fear was that she would end up bed-ridden in a nursing home for years w/o the ability to communicate, etc. like her mom had. Unfortunately, it's exactly what happened.
This is AMERICA, MG! We torture our old people before they die, don't you know that?
There's a reason I keep my .45 handy.
Amen. Thank you, MG.
I've told my friends and family to keep heroic doctors way from me when it's my time to go. I didn't have tubes in me when I was born, and I don't want them there when I die. I also told them that I will come back and haunt them if they do not follow my wishes. And they know I mean it!
My mom, age 79 and in ill health fell and broke her hip a few weeks back. He last lucid communications were to let her die - and not force her into a nursing home existence. Fortunately for her, she started bleeding internally after the surgery, and then her kidneys failed. We could have done lots of medical intervention, I'm sure, but changing her DNR to Hospice status, and pulling out all the tubes made her smile for the last time. Her heart failed 22 hours later- 6 days after the surgery. She was one of the lucky ones. We'll miss her.
My grandmother had severe dementia but a relatively healthy body for being 92 years old. Every time I visited her, she begged me to let her "go home" and be with her parents. She lingered for 10 years, barely knowing anyone she had lived her whole life with. One day she was left alone in her room at the nursing home with the bed rail down (and didn't realize that she was completely unsteady without a human aid). She tried to get out of bed, fell, and got a subdural hematoma. She mercifully passed away the next day. If it had been legal, my father would have put her out of her misery when she first started getting severely demented, like she had always asked him too. Instead, she just existed for ten years in an old person warehouse.
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