OK, so my dad, once again, decided to have aspiration pneumonia and landed in the hospital for a couple of days. The Doc comes in to talk to me the first day he was there, he was only there 2 days, and says we may need to "consider different options."
What were those options? He mentioned hospice and palliative care. It aggravates me no end, every time he ends up in the hospital, they think he is demented and doesn't really understand what's going on. Every time, I explain to them, no, he is not normally confused, demented, whatever you want to call it. He is sick, and he does get "crazy" when he is sick.
I blew it off, did not want to deal with his suggestion, sorry, but we aren't there yet. I told Carol, my sister, about the conversation. Today, she asked him what he meant by palliative care. He said we would just not treat any future pneumonia, we would provide care to make him comfortable, but sort of "let nature take its course."
What???
Would anyone really do that? Could anyone really do that? How would you let someone lie there with pneumonia and just die? How cruel would that be?
I'm a little worried about the future now. I would be the first one to say that, if I were in a lot of pain, had a terminal disease, something like that, just make me comfortable and let me go. But if I am lucid, not terminal, if I'm not in pain, I really don't want to be lying there, miserable, dying from something like pneumonia. I can't imagine how miserable that would be.
I think I'm afraid.
I hate that with a passion!!! I would be contacting a lawyer to have on hand. That is murder if you ask me. That dr does not deserve to be practicing medicine anymore. He lost his passion for what the medical field actually does. THEY HELP PEOPLE, NOT KILL THEM!
ReplyDeleteI really think you should report this doctor to someone. That's an awful suggestion to make when there's an entire world of options.
ReplyDeleteWe eventually ended up doing that with my dad, but he cancer in his lungs that spread to his brain - just keeping him comfortable was the only option. I can't imagine if the doctor had suggested just letting him go when he was first diagnosed 6 years earlier.
It almost makes it feel like they're talking about a pet . . . but not even. They'd call it animal cruelty if you just let it suffer. You can go to jail for something like that, but not when you do it to a human who is perfectly capable of knowing exactly what is happening.
I don't know who you could report him to, but there has to be someone. No one who appreciates life and healing would make a suggestion like that. This man's job is to heal - and this is what he suggests. It's wrong.