Re: Mayo Clinic Opposes Obamacare

Hal Hanig wrote:
"Evelyn" <evelyn.ruut@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:h49jru$4nl$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Hal Hanig" <halhanig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:wOCdncPVS4JPuvXXnZ2dnUVZ_q6dnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Jean Smith" <gotermite@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:gotermite-C9BB53.01281823072009@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Snip)
Hi Hal,

Having discussed end of life issues at length on the alzheimer support group for several years now, I can tell you that if you have all your proverbial "marbles" it is a vast difference from taking heroic life prolonging procedures for someone who say..... has alzheimers, or a condition that will definitely bring about someones death anyway sometime soon.

It would seem from reading your posts for a couple of years now, that you definitely have a good mind. Unless a person is in some horrible pain, a little extra length of life might be worthwhile to pursue, especially if you have loved ones who would like you to remain.

What I don't understand is when they take ridiculous measures doing very nearly elective kinds of surgery for a person who has a severely mentally debilitating illness like alzheimers. But they do it sometimes, and it is horrible and inhumane to prolong a persons life when they have a disease like that.

Tube feeding is especially awful. Picture this; A person who is unable to eat at all, so they give them a tube directly into their stomach through the abdominal wall, so they can pump food into them. Fluid into the veins is the same thing. A person who cannot eat or drink due to massive brain damage from an illness who is fed and watered through tubes, is a horror. Yet there are many families who will insist on things like this.

I don't think the government or you and I should have to pay for this kind of thing, nor should an insurance company. We have come to a place in science where we can keep a body alive long after the brain is dead. We have machines to breathe for them, we give them fluids and food when they can no longer eat, and their brains are already shrunken to a fraction of normal size from organic brain illness, yet by nature that person would be allowed to die naturally when these conditions occur in times past. Nowadays their suffering can be prolonged for years on end!

Again, pardon the rant, but I think as long as you have your mind and it is working well, which yours seems to be, you ought to do whatever is recommended to hang around a little longer.

Well, perhaps I omitted a part of the equation that might help you understand my decision a bit better. The option presented to me was, as I indicated previously, performance of a diagnostic biopsy. What I didn't tell you was that, in the process of performing that procedure, I would more than likely end up with the malignant kidney totally removed and forced to rely on a marginally functional remaining kidney. That is just about a lead pipe cinch guarantee that the rest of my life would have to be spent hooked up to a dialysis machine somewhere for three to four hours per day for three of four days of every week. My son, who is an RN, told me that whatever information I may have received about the dialysis process, he never saw a patient undergoing that treatment who was happy about the restrictions imposed on the rest of his life by the process. For that reason, he told me that he respected my decision and would certainly honor it and wouldn't try to dissuade me from it.

IOW, the prospect offered by that process was not one that was compatible with my vision of quality of life that I wanted for myself.

Hal


Did you get a second opinion?
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