Just Killing Time

With resources supposedly dwindling, it is the most vulnerable who will be written off first. I had once heard that what you do to the least of these yo do "unto Me". Failing to prolong life that could be preserved is already here.

Relaying the Facts

Hospitals are no longer a refuge or sanctuary but a place where the utterly defenseless can be targeted for extermination. If you were not gravely ill (or having elective surgery or a baby), chances are you would not be in hospital, and if you are gravely ill, chances are you will be incapacitated and unable to leave, making you a virtual prisoner of the hospital. I consider it horrific that you now have to hope your hospital has a reverence for life (which used to be self-evident).

Conduct So Outrageous

Is chronological age the only determining factor in whether we will receive life-sustaining treatments or have that care denied? Would Grandma Moses have had medical treatment withheld from her simply because she was aged?

Finishing Off Patients

What a feeling of satisfaction a surgeon must have knowing his skilled hands have saved a patient's life. How can a so-called palliative care physician ever feel anything but utterly useless, knowing that they never will experience the satisfaction of saying "I saved that patient". I always had the quaint notion doctors and hospitals existed to sustain and preserve every individual human life if at all possible. My Dad fell prey to the same "care" a race horse receives if it breaks a leg on the track. I will always be filled with revulsion over the brutal treatment we and he suffered at Vanderbilt.

Pulling the Plug?

My Father was not on "life support" as most would conceive of it, only intravenous hydration and a feeding tube through which he was nourished. Vanderbilt took away those very basics of human survival, thereby causing death faster. If we had starved and dehydrated Dad to death in the home, we would rightly be facing prison. The recent Liz Klimas article in The Blaze on Australian ethicists pondering killing babies after birth ends with a statement on the ethically-accepted and common practice of dehydrating the persistently unconscious to death. My Father was not unconscious, in fact he was lucid Saturday before Vanderbilt finished him off on Sunday.

Did You Know . . .

Did you know doctors could ignore your advance medical directive? Were you aware physicians are allowed to go against your Living Will if you actually want them to fight for your life? Did you know doctors can overrule the wishes of your surrogates (family) and take away measures including food and hydration without which the patient can not survive? My family knew none of this until Vanderbilt medical staff orchestrated and hastened my Father's demise.

Save Our Souls

Most of the people with whom we have discussed my Father's passing have never heard of "futile care policy". They are blissfully unaware that their lives and those of their loved ones are now possibly subject to be forfeit as victims of "medical futility policy". My mother and I are serving as a signal beacon as Mom said, "as warning not mourning".