CMA Oncology Rant

[prowlingMA]

I just need a place to rant with those who understand.

As I have stated before I am a CMA at an Ocology/Hem. tx center.

Lately we have seen a very high accuity of patients that I feel we are just keeping alive because the

patients family is in denial. We have patients that are in their 80's and 90's and being given chemo for stage IV and X cancers. They come in so "out of it" due to all of the pain meds thay are on, being pumped full of transfusions to keep their blood counts in the range to get treatment ( which makes them sicker).

If feels like we are just torturing them.

It makes me want to scream " leave them alone and let them die in peace".

Thanks for letting me rant.

[RADIATION_RN]

As long as they have good insurance, there will always be doctors willing to treat. I see this everyday as I work in a radiation therapy clinic and some of the patients we see are so sad. They are so old and their families drag them here and make them lie on the hard treatment table. The trip to the clinic and back takes more out of them than the treatments.

[carolinapooh, BSN, RN]

I've seen this - sometimes you just want to grab these people by the shoulders and say, "hey, GENIUS - they're going to die, they ARE dying as we speak, and nothing you do is going to stop that and you're only making them suffer".

Sometimes I think we should be ALLOWED to pull people's chains. I get sick of this sort of stuff - I mean, really, would THESE people want this done to them? Sometimes beating around the bush just doesn't cut it; when I worked at Duke we had a doc who would actually just flat-out tell people, hey, mom/dad/grandma's gonna die, and patient families hated it, but sometimes people need a kick in the pants.

Sometimes you gotta STOP THE MADNESS. I understand what you're saying all too well.