Watching 60 minutes. The first clip was about elderly people living their last days, weeks, and even months out in the ICU, in comas, and we're keeping them alive artificially. Is there a time when too much is too much?

yes,yes,yes. It seems people have forgotten that it is right that people die.

It all boils down to people being afraid of death and afraid to die…or let their loved ones die. They’d rather see Grandpa be hooked up to machines while in a coma or braindead than to pull the plug.

It’s sad but we’re a death-denying society and I don’t see this going away anytime soon.
We need to educate more elderly people about DNRs and their importance. DNRs granted in advance would stop this nonsense for sure.

@Val123 Did you happen to notice if there was a doctor on the program named Ira Byock? He was in my high school class and is big in the field of death and dying.

@janbb No, I didn’t. Actually, I got a phone call soon after it started, missed a lot of it. :( It was the best spot on the show, too. The call was from one of those people you can’t say, “I’LL CALL YOU BACK!! 60 MINUTES IS ON!” (That, and 20/20 are my two favorite TV programmes of all time.)

Miracles happen all the time. I once cared for a child that fell off a third floor building and landed on the top of his head. He was in a coma and the docs insisted he was brain dead and the mother needed to make the decision to pull the plug. She refused and when he was stable he came to our section of the hospital and eventually he went to a chronic care facility for children. Today he rides a bike, walks, talks, and goes to school.

Why have we invented all this technology anyway? Since the world is so overpopulated, why bother with CPR? It is not only the old that die.

@Flo_Nightengale In my detail I noted that “It’s not like they’re 20 years old and a miracle could happen, so you can’t give up.” We’re talking about people who will never get any better.

Drew Carey once said “What if being in a coma is the best thing ever?”

I wouldn’t unplug a loved one unless there was absolutely no hope left and keeping them alive was only causing unnecessary prolonged suffering.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic That’s what this is all about. People in their 70’s, 80’s and 90’s who aren’t going to get any better.

I worked on a palliative care unit and some patients went thru everything and anything for their families’ sakes. Some families were never told their loved one could not get better. And I’m sure some just blocked it. There is a sad lack of acceptance in this techno age. Some of the most beautiful moments I’ve seen were families who accepted and talked with their loved ones in reality.

With some people “Too much” is never Too much
People will do whatever they can do (and what ever they can force others to do) to keep someone alive. you can’t let someone die for any reason. yes most are not that extreme “yet”

Like seekingwolf said “People are afraid of death (for themselves and for their loved ones)”
but it’s not just that it’s not going to go away or continue but it will get worse with “advances” in medical technology… this fable of living forever is sickening

I think Medicaid aside (and for elderly, it’s actually Medicare…65 or older, I believe.) we keep too many people alive artificially. I believe people who believe having children is the source of overpopulation seem to forget about the thousands on life support, taking up lots of resources. It’s painful to say, but sometimes people should just be let go. They should be allow to die with dignity and not be kept around for selfish reasons of the family.

I do understand completely how painful it is to let someone go, but not many people would want to live that way. It’s reasonable and logical, but emotions getting mixed in make it feel impossible to decide. But, so much goes into keeping someone alive.

Yes, there is definitely a time when too much is too much. That’s why I love Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. Not exactly the same as elderly people being kept alive by machines, but it enables people to end their own lives if they’re going to die within 6 months anyway. You have to have a terminal illness, and I don’t think dying of old age would count as one, but I definitely think they should just be let go. It’s humiliating, disrespectful and completely selfish for people to keep them alive by machine alone.

@faye Thank you….thing is, from what I saw, these are patients (like my Mom) who can longer tell people what they want…..my Mom was in a vegetative twilight stage for over a year. She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t move. Occasionally she opened her eyes, but they didn’t focus on anything. Sometimes she’d groan and make unintelligible noises. The thing was, her body was healthy. She wasn’t hooked up to a single thing. However, to feed her, they had to force some milk-shake like food down her. Make her sit up and pour it in her mouth…and she would swallow. Physically she was healthy…..the crying part is, there was no way to really know how much she understood. ...I was only able to get to her, in the end, one more time (she was moved 2000 miles away about a year before this) and I’d talk assuming she understood…..Certain members of my family told me I was an idiot. The end came when one morning she flat refused to open her mouth for the “food.” She clenched so hard they thought she was going to break her teeth. The decision was made not to force her (she had a DNR.) She died a week later, having never woken up. The fact that she made the decision to quit eating tells us….what…..

@Val123 I’m sorry you had to go through that. Don’t listen to anyone who called you an idiot, because she very well may have been able to understand you. She chose, you know she chose, and that’s all that matters. Some part of her said “enough is enough”.

On the left coast here, so I haven’t watched it yet, but I will.
As I have written about before, I had to take my Mom off the machines. Toughest thing ever. I still have nightmares about it (4 years later), but I am still confident it was what she wanted, and the right thing to do.

@Val123 I’m sorry, too, you had to go thru that. I often dread that happening to me, being in that twilight state. I hope she was reliving happy times. I’ve said dnr to everyone I know for me and it’s in my wallet. But in an emergency situation, that’s going to go by the boards. My kids will unhook me tho and I sincerely hope they don’t have nightmares @filmfann!

@janbb

I believe that was the Drs. name. He was the primary one being interviewed. He mentioned several factors which contribute to this, the primary being money.

Apparently many Drs. are paid on the basis of how many patients they are caring for. Hospitals also need to keep their beds full in order to make maximum profit.

Some of this is attributable to both Medicare and HMO policies. That was the main gist of his premise.

@Buttonstc thanks.

@DrasticDreamer. Thank you so much. I KNOW I did the right thing. I remember, I spent a whole week with her, just sitting by her bed, talking, rambling, and as I easily entertain myself all by myself, I re-told one of my funny kid stories to myself, quite forgetting that I was talking to mom! I was cracking myself up and I am not kidding…she started chocking and making noises that she didn’t usually make, and I swear she was laughing too!

(She never opened her eyes during that whole week. One time (not during the laughing thing) I peeled her eyelid back once, just so I could see in her eyes…nothing there, nobody home, nothing but….the lovely gold-brown that they were. My mom’s eyes….I probably shouldn’t have done that, but I’m glad I did. Fighting tears right now…)

@filmfann This stage of life sucks…and you know what we’re in for next…our kids to be in OUR stage of life. Shudder…..
@Buttonstc Thanks for filling that in…

@Val123 After going thru that with my Mom, I have vowed to make things much easier on my kids.

That’s why those advance directives are so important. So we can decide for ourselves if we want to be kept alive like this. Thanks Sarah Palin, for distorting their purpose.

What did Sarah Palin do?

She called provisions to pay for advance directive consultations death panels, and trying to kill grandma. They killed that provision.

@Buttonstc I haven’t seen the precise episode, but I can tell you from my personal experience over 10 years that the vast majority of the time, it is NOT the doctors trying to keep patients alive indefinitely as some sort of golden goose, but in fact, is the other way around. Doctors will plead with families that there is nothing left to do, that ICU care might be causing excessive suffering, and that transporting grandpa from the nursing home to the ICU (back-and-forth, back-and-forth) does no one a service, least of all the patient. Yet, with the emphasis on “autonomy”, families are given the ultimate decision, and many choose to proceed with every available measure (though on rare occasions, doctors will say that they are not candidates for dialysis or surgery, for example, and that death is imminent).

Indeed, I’ve witnessed many occasions that when families are faced with the prospect of actually having to pay for (some of) this expensive care, that suddenly the emphasis changes from “do everything” to “grandpa lived a good life….”

Yeah that death panel nonsense made my blood boil.
Palin really did a great job of f*ing up this issue and getting people scared.

Had to give a GA @alll. @shilolo In all fairness, if you look at some of the Q’s I’ve posted recently, if you have just one family member who doesn’t want to face it…well, situations like this are NOT a “majority rules” situation….

And, if you’re new to the Q, we aren’t talking about relativity young people, say people in their 50’s, or even 60’s, who really could have a “miraculous recovery.”....

Here’s the story. I haven’t watched it yet, but I found it.

@Judi GA! Thanks! I really gotta go to bed before I get hit with ICU syndrome! but thank you so much for finding it. I missed much of it, so I’ll check it out tomorrow…

This reminds me of something my fiance’s family had to recently deal with. His grandfather was very sick and very old. He had been dying of cancer for years and years. His poor wife took care of him and it was by no means a nice or easy lifestyle. Eventually he got so sick he was hospitalized. Right before he went into a coma, he made it clear that he did not want to be places in a home or Hospice. He knew his time was coming and he was tired of fighting it. He didn’t want to be saved or kept alive anymore.

Once he entered the coma, talk of Hospice, nursing homes, and life support was thrown around. The family voted on what to do and I was involved in the discussion. My fiancé and I were the only two who reminded the family that those were the exact things he didn’t want and that it was time to let him die naturally. But they out voted us.

The day he was supposed to be moved to a home, he started slipping and eventually passed. The family figured that was his way of telling them “I told you to just let me die. No homes!” We can laugh about it now. But the point is, why keep someone alive that doesn’t want to be alive? Why even keep someone alive who has very little chance of coming out of their coma? Or recovering? Or has been on their death bed for years? It’s out of selfishness. And because we are scared of letting go. But it’s for the best.

@shilolo I agree with you. I jus had a hypothetical talk with my doctor about my own feelings if I had a terminal illness. I said that I would not want heroic measures to keep me alive. He said what you said, that it is not the doctors trying to impose this but often family members who wish it and that advance care directives and health care proxies – which we have – are what’s most important.

@shilolo is right. When my Mom was in a coma, it was the doctor who told me “Why are we still here?” He made sure I understood that she wasn’t going to recover.

@Val123 ; We killed the cable about a month ago, so I have gotten pretty good at finding my favorite TV shows online.

@Judi Ya..but it’s just not the same, watching on a computer!

I would like to thank everyone for sharing their stories. It’s such a heart breaking, difficult thing to go through, and if you’ve never been faced with it, it can be hard to understand why you wouldn’t do everything you could to keep someone alive…...This is the kind of thing that started that bullshit, “Pull the plug on Gramma” crap, insinuating the the health care reform would pretty much murder fairly healthy people who had a chance to get better, just because they’re elderly. Well, to put it bluntly, there comes a time when it IS time to pull the plug on Gramma…..

We don’t keep those people alive for them, but for ourselves, obviously. My mother is a nurse in a geriatric facility where people go to die. Sort of like the last train station for dying people (that doesn’t mean they are hooked up to machines). I’ve been with her to work on several occasions, but the first time I was completely utterly shocked.. The patients don’t know who they are, and because of that some become very aggressive and scared, most of them relive their childhood (in the most literal sense of the word), and some are just vegetables (that don’t need machines YET).

If you ask me, once the lights go out in your brain, the rest of your body should comply. That’s why after that first night I spend with her at work, I promised that I love her enough to not let it get that far, for her or my father. Also gave me a newfound respect for my mother, but that’s another question.

@Val123, We have the computer hooked up to a big ol’ plasma

@Judi That’s cheating!! I think…yeah, why would you have any need for cable, anyway?

Go Judi! :)

@Judi Thanks so much for posting the link. That was a great program and the lead doctor, Ira Byock, was my classmate. I thought what he and the other doctors said was brilliant. We really need to be having these discussions personally and collectively.

I really thought I was going to catch hell for posting it! But…I think all of the personal stories told on the link gave everyone, who might want to protest, pause for thought.
BTW, any one see in the news were that guy who was in a coma for 23 years was actually fully alert and able to understand everything, but nobody knew it??? What a nightmare.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34109227/ns/health-more_health_news/