By the way. I just read of a woman who was experiencing pain so bad she just couldn't sleep, and she spent her nights crying and pacing the floor. She didn't trash her life, though. She kept working with her doctors, and eventually they found a way to to alleviate her pain. What scares me is that most of the people here would have seen her dead insisting she had the right to die
You are [wrong]. I am a physician who has worked with cancer patients for 40 years, some of whom have to live with excruciating pain for which there is no relief. There is only so far you can turn up the titration on the dilaudid or morphine IV without risking putting the patient on a ventilator, often without touching the pain. And that is all you can do. You disrespect and dehumanize all of these people and minimize their experiences with your shitty little stories and your shitty little preachy attitude.
Not only that, but my father died of cancer. The morphine wasn't to the point of threatening respiration but it was to the point it took his ability to form long term memory (although, admittedly, that had been in decline for some years.) If it wasn't in the room it didn't happen--he would recognize me, but if I wasn't in his line of sight he would ask when I was coming (the decision to throw in the towel was before the morphine so he knew he was dying. Large, inoperable tumor separate from the one that was initially diagnosed and removed.)
What's the value of life in a situation like that?
(And I don't think a US hospital would accept what I would want that situation: Ignore the maximum safe dose, use what's needed to control the pain, if that causes an overdose so be it.)
I just read a great article in the February 2024
Scientific American about the decline in the quality of hospice care. According to that article this decline can be attributed to for-profit providers and a lack of regulation to require those providers to deliver good care. In fact, that "care" is described as "abysmal." The care offered by nonprofit hospices is much better.
So it's what I've argued on this board all along. We need better care for end-of-life patients and all other patients for that matter. There's tons of room for improvement in the US healthcare system. It's shocking to have a presumed retired doctor on this board who rants and curses at anybody who would educate others here on how good that care can be. "Money is the root of all kinds of evil," and cutting costs by cutting people is one kind of evil for sure.
I will post the OP of that thread soon.
I read that short article in SA, too recently, but the problems in hospice care are more complicated than simply needing better regulations. For example there is a huge shortage of nurses wanting to work in hospice care these days. Profit making is a huge part of the problem too, of course. I worked as an RN in home health for several years, prior to the time when hospice was even approved by Medicare. Home health nurses visited patients who are now eligible for hospice care, along with a multitude of others. it's also not always easy to enforce regulations. I've seen that many times.
Both of my parents had hospice care for a very short time prior to their deaths. My father's hospice care was very good, and my mother's hospice care was terrible. It had more to do with the shortage of staff and what appeared to me, to be a lack of experience and knowledge on the part of management. But, even when it was all non profit, hospice staff members sometimes got burned out. A burned out provider is unlikely to provide good care. I admire any nurse or doctor who can manage providing good patient care for their entire career. I couldn't do it, which is why I spent so many years working in QA, providing iservices and doing assessments on residents in an assisted living facility, an easier type of nursing compared to home health or hospice.
While I only did a limited amount of hospice visits, I interacted with the hospice nurses who visited my patients in long term care, where I spent the final years of my career. Some agencies were excellent and some were terrible. The idea of hospice is to provide emotional support and comfort care during the end of life, which often includes providing drugs that might hasten death. Very few people I cared for wanted their lives prolonged with aggressive care. My late sister was an exception, but she died earlier this year after dealing with aggressive care for metastatic cancer. She finally became resolved that she was going to die and chose hospice care. From what I heard, it sounded l like she received very good care. I live far away from her, so I can only go by what I was told.
Yes. I think we all know that our health care system needs an overhaul, but I've yet to meet an oncologist who was part of the problem. They are usually among the most compassionate of physicians, yet you think it's just fine to insult someone like Eric because he doesn't share your irrational views about voluntary euthanasia. Nobody is making you choose suicide, but it's none of your fucking business if someone else chooses that option. We are all going to die and we should have the right to end our suffering, if we are nearing the end of life. It's cruel to insist that someone continue to live when death will provide them the only relief possible.
And, Eric is correct about pain control. Sometimes absolutely nothing works to control pain. and that's not even always related to cancer. Everyone's perception of pain is different. My mom had a very high tolerance to pain, while my father had an extremely low tolerance to pain. As long as I can remember, he complained of being in pain, then later in life, he suffered from complex regional pain disorder to make things worse, and had to take lots of opioids as well as anti anxiety agents for the final 20 years of his life. Nothing relieved his pain, although he never chose to end his life. Someone else might have felt that death was better than suffering. He had been a Marine with severe PTSD from brutal combat during WWII, so his life was quite a mess for most of his adulthood. I think, despite being an evangelical Christian, he had a fear of death. But, I digress.
I was just telling some friends earlier tonight about a man who I cared for, who was reaching the end of his life and asked for hospice care, as his suffering had become unbearable for many reasons, related to severe COPD, diabetic neuropathy, and heart failure. His PA tried to extend his life, which is not what he wanted, if she had been successful, it would have only prolonged his suffering, for a very short time.
Eric isn't the problem here. You are the problem as you have a long history of projecting your own insults on others and twisting the meanings of what others have said here. We are well aware of your nasty posting style. Now, you attack a former physician who you don't know, who chose to work in one of the most difficult areas of medicine, just because you seem to feel like he's insulting you too much. I thought you had learned how you come across here and you were trying to change your posting style. Wrong!
