Doctors' Secret for How to Die Right

reply to post by Pardon?

It's not perfect but little is.
We had a favourable experience with it (as much as we could given the circumstance) but maybe that was because my sister was in the Marie Curie Centre in Liverpool which was the joint pioneer of the scheme.

Absolutely...
it's a very GOOD idea. I don't mean to criticize.

Another thing that Europe/the UK practices is "harm reduction" for treating addiction, rather than pushing 12-step "total abstinence". I think this is appropriate, too.

Thanks for pitching in here. It's a work in progress, for sure - but great strides are being made in end-of-life thinking and practice.

Cheers

reply to post by wildtimes


Yes, but not gonna talk about it cuz I'm already in enough trouble.

lol

wildtimes
reply to post by schuyler

 

OP and I don't agree. What a shock. But this thread has been informative. In my father's last days I had to move him to the local nursing home. There simply was no other choice.

Really?
"There simply was no other choice"

You could not have taken him home and nursed him yourself?
You "had to move him to the local nursing home"?

Where he had much better care than what I could possibly have provided myself. My choices were to put him on the living room floor, a guy who outweighed me by half, was incontinent, and unconscious. I couldn't even have gotten him to a bathroom. There he had attendants who could take care of him, provide him with a bed and clean linens, and make him comfortable. It was ABSOLUTELY the best choice ever--not even a little question about it.

And yet you begrudge my mother making a decision to allow family to be there before she TOOK HIM BACK HOME to die peacefully in their bed.

Yes, I do. Your mother prolonged his life artificially so you gawkers could come home and watch him die, expressly against his stated wishes. He resisted as much as he could yet you still forced him on a respirator when he didn't want that to happen. And that's simply disgusting, not to mention completely selfish.

Wow, wildtimes

Yeah, we disagree. What a shock.
:eyeroll:

The lesson i learned from my grandfather:

He had always been very healthy, excepting his persistent hearburn.

When he was nearing 70 he was still running his air conditioning business and was very active. They discoered polyps in his esophagus, near the cardiac sphincter. They did a biopsy and discovered it was cancerous.

So his choices: try chemo, which likely would not work in the end. Or to have the esophagus removed in that area. He chose the latter of the two, and regretted every moment thereafter.

I was 27 when he died, and was not allowed to see him for the last week of his life. The cancer had severely effected his brain and he was aggressive and inappropriate. It hurts me to this day to think of what my wonderful grandfather had to go through in his final days.

reply to post by schuyler


He was not unconscious or incontinent. He wanted to be at home.

I was not the one who put him on a respirator; that was my mother, his wife of over 50 years. Thanks for your input, though. Sorry for your loss.

This is a great thread that opens up discussion on a topic that is usually avoided. Thank you OP for starting this. There seems to be as many opinions as there are people here! I have personally gone back and forth on what I would want. Last year I saw my grandmother pass away. She was 78 at the time of her passing, close to the same age her mother was at her passing. I was there for that one also. My great grandmother had a stroke, then blood clots that caused another stroke. My grandmother had an annurism, they operated and she was out for several days while we all visited her daily. Then one day I walked in after work and she greeted me, "Hi mijo, sit down the coffee will be ready in a minute. Its good to see you." I was shocked. It was the last thing she would say to me. I often wondered if it was the medication that was keeping her unresponsive and the staff realizing she would not recover took her off the meds long enough for us to talk to her again. Strangely enough, when my great grandmother was in the hospital, and had her second stroke, the staff was trying to take care of her and she became combative. My grandmother called for me to go in the room and told her mother that I was there. She calmed down and said, "Hi mijo, it's good to see you!" those were her last words. I know first hand that morphine does little to ease pain and more accuratley it makes it so you don't care that you are hurting. I was on a morphine drip after a truck rollover that tore me up pretty bad. They gave me a lot of morphine, but I was still in pain. I was just high. I am glad people are voicing their thoughts and opinions on this as it will no doubt help me figure out what I want. I want for it to be clear to my children so it relieves them of that burden while they deal with my passing.

reply to post by borracho

I know first hand that morphine does little to ease pain and more accuratley it makes it so you don't care that you are hurting. I was on a morphine drip after a truck rollover that tore me up pretty bad. They gave me a lot of morphine, but I was still in pain. I was just high. I am glad people are voicing their thoughts and opinions on this as it will no doubt help me figure out what I want. I want for it to be clear to my children so it relieves them of that burden while they deal with my passing.

I'm glad that you chimed in here.

End-of-life issues are quite pertinent, in my opinion.

I don't want to leave my kids without "directions" - my mom has also made "directives"; who to call, what to do....

I will do my best to honor her wishes. I can only hope my brothers will do so as well.