End of life counseling

If I want end of life counseling, I will consult spiritual implications with my pastor and medical implications/options with a doctor.

We are in a very pro-death culture here and there is a lot of pressure to "let people go" if they are old and sick, even if they can live longer. I saw this with both of my parents. In my father's case, a nurse came in the room and actually said, "If he were my father, I would just let him go." Yet the doctor has told us (thank heavens) that he thought we should continue treatment as my father still had strength in him to live awhile.

 

You are correct Hardsheller!

 

Tom

To me this is a wonderful testimony of the limitless Grace of God!

 

Yes, there should be counseling but the government shouldn't be involved in it.

 

Each family/person should be given the option for "end of life" counsel, but it should not be mandatory.

I just literally came down this path with my dad. We received said counsel four separate times on different occasions... but only the last time was because we asked for it. The other three consisted of a doctor or doctors trying to tell us what to do based on their interpretation of the data. All three of the first attempts were based on either the wrong data or the doctor(s) incomplete understanding of the data. the last time came from the doctor who knew the case and was open and caring.

Let's be honest here. Most "end of life" counsel consists of a doctor or doctors telling you and/or your family that you should opt to end the life of the person in question. Up until the point that my dad's body could not handle dialysis, there was hope in spite of everything else. Once dialysis was no longer an option my father's renal failure became the hammer that drove the nails of all his other problems into his coffin. It no longer mattered if they kept pumping him full of pressors or antibiotics as he began to drown from the accumulated fluid.

To have opted to end his life would have been the same as if I took a pistol into his hospital room and blew his brains out. God took that decision out of our hands and let my father pass peacefully out of this life and into His arms.

While I understand why "end of life" counsel is offered, I do not agree with the reasons behind most of it or the "reasons" many doctors give.

 

When all else fails, blame the victim?

HankD

 

Yeah right, and next they will be making soylent green wafers...

 

True, and I agree somewhat with you and others who pointed this out.
Like you, I have a will that says if for any reason doctors should advise my family that my miserable life can be extended by attaching me to tubes and bombarding me with medication that my family has my expressed permission to say "no, no, no, let him go home with the Lord and there will be no liabilities by you or anybody else".

They'd be better off without bills from the hospital or anybody else other than my burial. Fact, my will also states that my coffin should be made of cheap pinewood or such like, or if my family is really in dire straits, wrap me in a blanket and drop me into that hole, the real me will long be with my Savior before then.

 

PB, I'm with you 100% on this! What happens to this old vehicle I'm travelling in right now is totally immaterial, cuz as you say:

I'm a firm believer that it's just as wrong to artificially sustain life physically, by all the medical apparatus that is capable of such, as it is to euthanize. This of course, when there is nothing there BUT physical life, and the withdrawal of said methods would result in death.

 

My husband had some things to say about this that I thought were pretty profound...he brought up parts of the issue that I wouldn't have thought of at all. In fact, EOLC sounded like a decent idea until he explained it!
They didn't use it on CNN (or maybe they will, they've used my other ones on there) but here's a link to the I-report I did on this topic with him: http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-325781