Re:Palliative sedation, an end-of-life practice that is lega...
by wpietri on Sunday July 08, 2018 @01:39PM
(#17485055)
Having been legally required to make the decision of when to withdraw care for three different relatives, I think this is nonsense.
When someone is going to die, there is no good way, no good time. But there are worse ways and times. As technology gives us more power to extend life of body, we are forced to considered what that means, and how to use that power wisely.
Three times I have had to decide when somebody's life ended. I think their are practical differences between deciding to withdraw care and choosing more active measures. But I think there is no moral difference. Either way, somebody vulnerable has placed their life in your hands. Either way, your only real choice is when to give up hope, and how much suffering they endure between that point and death.
I honestly don't give a fuck whether you're a better person for it. Or whether I am. It's not about us. The important question is whether you have done the best you can for the person. And "best" here, I think means something like "in accordance with their informed preferences, or as best as we can guess".
To that end, I strongly encourage everybody to get their families together and have real discussions about this. The Five Wishes framework is one good option. [1] The best thing my mom ever did for me was to have a frank conversation with me and my brother about her end-of-life preferences well before she was sick. Don't make your loved ones guess. And don't put yourself in the position of having to guess for them.
Personally, if I end up with something gruesome and terminal, I aim to die well before things get awful. Like Brittany Maynard, [2] I'd much rather go out on my terms than suffer pointlessly until my body fails, consuming absurd amounts of medical effort. Others can do differently, of course, but there's no way I'd want a doctor who frets they're going to die "a little on the inside" by following my advance care directive.
When someone is going to die, there is no good way, no good time. But there are worse ways and times. As technology gives us more power to extend life of body, we are forced to considered what that means, and how to use that power wisely.
Three times I have had to decide when somebody's life ended. I think their are practical differences between deciding to withdraw care and choosing more active measures. But I think there is no moral difference. Either way, somebody vulnerable has placed their life in your hands. Either way, your only real choice is when to give up hope, and how much suffering they endure between that point and death.
I honestly don't give a fuck whether you're a better person for it. Or whether I am. It's not about us. The important question is whether you have done the best you can for the person. And "best" here, I think means something like "in accordance with their informed preferences, or as best as we can guess".
To that end, I strongly encourage everybody to get their families together and have real discussions about this. The Five Wishes framework is one good option. [1] The best thing my mom ever did for me was to have a frank conversation with me and my brother about her end-of-life preferences well before she was sick. Don't make your loved ones guess. And don't put yourself in the position of having to guess for them.
Personally, if I end up with something gruesome and terminal, I aim to die well before things get awful. Like Brittany Maynard, [2] I'd much rather go out on my terms than suffer pointlessly until my body fails, consuming absurd amounts of medical effort. Others can do differently, of course, but there's no way I'd want a doctor who frets they're going to die "a little on the inside" by following my advance care directive.
[1] https://fivewishes.org/five-wishes/advance-care-planning
[2] https://www.kqed.org/perspectives/201410280735/its-brittany-...