I read they are going to DC her feeding tube again. This is such a sad story. I was wondering what nurses are thinking about this?
I know as far as quality of life some may say she would be better off, but seeing the family's emotional response to this makes it kind of hard to know what would be the best in this situation.
How do we know someone would be "better off"? Maybe they would be by our standards, but I have seen people who didn't have much quality to life cling to their last breath. How can we know what is going on in Terri's mind?
I don't know the answer any better than any of you, true, but even with all the news reports I'm a tad amazed that they keep leaving out that one important piece of information: Mr. Schiavo is a practicing ER nurse. You don't get to work in this state as a nurse--or if you do, you don't practice for very long--if you're as cruel as he was reported to be in that article.
... or at least not without some word leaking out. This has been such a high profile case you'd expect some reports from patients or colleagues if there was any dirt to dish.
The Terry Shivago case was closely covered in one of my classes last year - we were looking at ethically issues in the news, and it was int he lead up to Jeb Bush saying no to pulling the PEG. In all that discussion and close reading of many news articles I never read a hint that he was a nurse.
Specializes in LTC,Hospice/palliative care,acute care.
I have seen the sacrament of the sick administered to the dying and have seen the wafer just touched to the lips and afterwards the priest takes it and disposes of it in the manner accepted by the church.The priest in this case was insisting on placing a piece of the wafer actually in her mouth-when he would not consider just touching it to her mouth he left.This particular priest would NOT compromise................as far as basic care I have seen many advance directives that call for No Antibiotics....many of our resident's families have made the difficult decision to not put their loved on through things like a dental exam-that is not the same thing as routine mouth care-which she receives......When you have a loved in a PVS or with dementia no one else can understand what you are going through.I have a PVS fella now-trached and has ventilator acquired P. aeruginosa pneumonia -treatment has failed and his family has accepted this.In the meantime his foley became blocked with the nastiest urine I have ever seen-the family wanted to let him go untreated...The nurse on duty guilted them into them treating the UTI...meanwhile he continues to deteriorate and he is aware of his surroundings to a certain extent (very similar to Terri ) He would have been gone by now ...What one may call cruel is kind by another's standards...
talaxandra
3,037 Posts
... or at least not without some word leaking out. This has been such a high profile case you'd expect some reports from patients or colleagues if there was any dirt to dish.
The Terry Shivago case was closely covered in one of my classes last year - we were looking at ethically issues in the news, and it was int he lead up to Jeb Bush saying no to pulling the PEG. In all that discussion and close reading of many news articles I never read a hint that he was a nurse.
Very interesting!