End of Life and level of medical care

[faith]

When I think of “end of life care”, the hospice program is what comes to my mind. Although I had heard about hospice on numerous occasions, this past summer was the first time that I had up close and personal interaction with the program. I was extremely impressed with the program, and I would happily pay more tax dollars to see that everyone who has a family member who is terminally ill and approaching the end of life has access to such a fantastic program. Never have I encountered such compassionate, helpful nurses. It is such a painful process to have someone you love die, and the hospice nurses helped our family better understand and cope with the process of dying. They helped alleviate the suffering of our loved one, and helped her die in more comfort than she would have otherwise. I <3 hospice.

I understand the financial and dehumanization arguments against unnaturally prolonging life, yet dying seems like such a personal and individual experience that the idea of legislating or making any sort of generalization about at what point enough is enough seems wrong to me. It seems like a decision that individual families need to make when the time actually comes, becoming educated on the medical reality of their loved one, taking all the various factors of their specific situation into account, and trying to be respectful of all involved, especially of the one that seems to be at the end of life.

[doctorcoug]

No trach? That is hilarious.

You place the fistulas, I deal with them. Take notice of all the dialysis patients on an SSRI. I see things a little differently than you do because the patients are different in the PCP office than the surgeon's office.

[CardiacCoug]

When I think of “end of life care”, the hospice program is what comes to my mind. Although I had heard about hospice on numerous occasions, this past summer was the first time that I had up close and personal interaction with the program. I was extremely impressed with the program, and I would happily pay more tax dollars to see that everyone who has a family member who is terminally ill and approaching the end of life has access to such a fantastic program. Never have I encountered such compassionate, helpful nurses. It is such a painful process to have someone you love die, and the hospice nurses helped our family better understand and cope with the process of dying. They helped alleviate the suffering of our loved one, and helped her die in more comfort than she would have otherwise. I <3 hospice.

I understand the financial and dehumanization arguments against unnaturally prolonging life, yet dying seems like such a personal and individual experience that the idea of legislating or making any sort of generalization about at what point enough is enough seems wrong to me. It seems like a decision that individual families need to make when the time actually comes, becoming educated on the medical reality of their loved one, taking all the various factors of their specific situation into account, and trying to be respectful of all involved, especially of the one that seems to be at the end of life.

I agree completely. Hospice is great and is usually exactly what patients and families need and want for end-of-life issues. It is too bad that hospice is really mainly used in cancer patients because ideally it would be used for many more people with a wider variety of diseases and for almost all elderly people with poor quality of life who want to die in their own homes and own beds instead of in a hospital ICU. Expanding hospice utilization would be a big money-saver, too.

[CardiacCoug]

San Juan:
Life expectancy is still less than five years, some live longer others shorter. All (yup, I'm calling all) dialysis patients I have cared for hate their life. There are many reasons why they continue, revolving around fear of the unknown, worrying about their loved ones, religious beliefs, and pressure from their kids (as you mentioned).

There are plenty of dialysis patients who have very good quality of life. Do they wish they didn't have to be on dialysis? Of course and almost everybody on dialysis tries to get a kidney transplant if they can.

Do they wish they were dead? Usually not.

[Uncle Ted]

I'm sorry if I offended you; that was not my intention AT ALL. I deeply apologize.

I posted this here, this discussion is a spiritual one, not a religious one.

No offense taken.

The ironic thing about my father is that he was expected to live. He had something over 90% chance or at least that is what the doctor said his success rate was, if I recall correctly. (It was about 25 years ago.) However, he got pneumonia during his stay in the hospital and never recovered from the operation. My mother decided to pull the plug on his life. My FIL, on the other hand, wasn't expected to recover but did. Multiple doctors said they were very sure he wouldn't, however, my MIL wouldn't pull the plug because she was convinced that the blessing I gave him was a good one for some reason. Honestly I don't even remember even what I said. That was about eight years ago and he is still going today.

So the question is where you draw the line. If my FIL's life was given to a "death board" then he would most likely would have never came out of the hospital alive. However, the government shouldn't be responsible for the entire bill, IMO. In other words, this is mostly a government created problem, IMO. My FIL was smart enough to have supplemental insurance to his medicare and ended up paying very little (if anything). Of course, the government still ended up paying the majority of it.

[wuapinmon]

My father received a blessing that he would be healed and go back to his calling as ward clerk. After he died my bishop told me that priesthood blessings are only valid if they conform to the will of the Lord.

Since we're having a spiritual discussion about this stuff, I have to confess to feeling spiritually wounded by the experience. I get what SJS was saying about his process of offering blessings. I guess I'm just a little bitter towards God that we have this putative power to act in his name, to give utterance as moved upon by His Spirit, to pronounce healings and blessings upon people outside the power of medicine and learning, but none of it matters if it's not God's will. It feels trite, like circular logic.

So, I'm left to wrestle with and do the mental gymnastics of what's the point of a priesthood blessing inspired by the Spirit (hopefully) if God gets to go against it anyway?

I hate feeling this way, but there's something in my soul that was crushed when my father died after getting that blessing. I guess I'm just angry with God about it. To have hope and faith in something, and then find out that the priesthood doesn't really have the power that I thought it did, that I was led to believe it did, well, that's a blow that I'm still hoping will heal.

[doctorcoug]

My wife and I have differing views about blessings. In her mind, every sniffle should get a blessing. In my mind I should give a blessing when I don't feel like I can manage it without divine intervention. Because of this, I've only given one blessing to my kids.

The only other blessing I've given was on my mission. The guy died that day. I now know, however, that the Brazilian doc killed him by misdiagnosis. Still, why didn't he get healed?

I wonder if these blessings happen because we have a difficult time making the disconnect between what we want to happen and what should happen.

[grapevine]

My wife and I have differing views about blessings. In her mind, every sniffle should get a blessing. In my mind I should give a blessing when I don't feel like I can manage it without divine intervention. Because of this, I've only given one blessing to my kids.

The only other blessing I've given was on my mission. The guy died that day. I now know, however, that the Brazilian doc killed him by misdiagnosis. Still, why didn't he get healed?

I wonder if these blessings happen because we have a difficult time making the disconnect between what we want to happen and what should happen.

I do not believe in blessings for every mundane thing. Either does BRM. Of course for sickness need one. I have not read it yet but DAllin just wrote a book and told of how his father was real sick and were plenty of prayers and blessings. But they cannot override the will of the Lord who is in charge of life and death. same for disabilities too.

[wuapinmon]

My wife and I have differing views about blessings. In her mind, every sniffle should get a blessing. In my mind I should give a blessing when I don't feel like I can manage it without divine intervention. Because of this, I've only given one blessing to my kids.

The only other blessing I've given was on my mission. The guy died that day. I now know, however, that the Brazilian doc killed him by misdiagnosis. Still, why didn't he get healed?

I wonder if these blessings happen because we have a difficult time making the disconnect between what we want to happen and what should happen.

I gave a blessing to a woman on my mission one night in October 1993. I was being transferred the next day, and she was a grandma who was the legal guardian and only relative to her 10-12 y/o granddaughter. She had been diagnosed with some kind of malignant abdominal cancer. She begged me to give her a blessing. I agreed with a sad heart, doubting the entire time that it would do any good. So, it was to my complete surprise when giving her the blessing I felt compelled to say that she would be healed completely. I had zero faith in what I had said, and I actually felt guilty about giving her hope in the face of a death sentence.

At the end of my mission, my parents came down and got me, and we went to church in that ward. I hadn't been back since Oct. 1993. It was Feb. 1995. She was there, looking great. When she had gone back for treatment, they couldn't find any trace of the cancer. She claimed that it was unmistakable before the blessing, and that the blessing had cured her. In my darker moments, I often doubt that she had had cancer, but when I think about how hurt I felt by the outcome of my father's, I sometimes think about that sister, and I can't square the feelings.

[LA Ute]

On the subject of blessings, this DHO talk has been discussed extensively on the board. It is already a classic after a little over a year. I'm linking because I was reminded of it yesterday - one of our sacrament meeting speakers (a nurse practitioner) used it as the basis for her talk and it was a smash hit in our ward:

http://lds.org/general-conference/2010/04/healing-the-sick?lang=eng

[Donuthole]

On the subject of blessings, this DHO talk has been discussed extensively on the board. It is already a classic after a little over a year. I'm linking because I was reminded of it yesterday - one of our sacrament meeting speakers (a nurse practitioner) used it as the basis for her talk and it was a smash hit in our ward:

http://lds.org/general-conference/20...-sick?lang=eng

I'm having a lot of fun trying to picture the type of reaction her talk must have elicited in sacrament meeting for you to label it a "smash hit".

[LA Ute]

I'm having a lot of fun trying to picture the type of reaction her talk must have elicited in sacrament meeting for you to label it a "smash hit".

It seemed to mean a lot to many people who had questions about blessing, end of life, etc. We saw many in the congregation who were very moved during the talk; many came up to thank the speaker at the end of the meeting; and the subject (and people's gratitude for the talk) came up repeatedly in Sunday School, priesthood, and RS lessons latter in the day. I guess I should have said the talk made a big impression. Our speaker combined the principles DHO taught with some very powerful personal experiences.