I have been a nurse for three years and spent the first year and a half on a med-surg/oncology unit. All life is precious and valuable.
When there is an anminal suffering, in agonizing pain, nothing can be done, and the medications does not allow for comfort, why are pet owners given the opposition and made to feel bad if they allow there animal to suffer. Why are we allowed to end the suffering of our beloved animal but not a beloved family member.
Why are the humans that want to end their suffering not allowed and the doctors that want to help persecuted for helping. YES I KNOW IT IS A MORTAL SIN IN GOD'S EYES, so no I do not need or require a bible lesson.
But I am just curious what others think on this issue from a medical stand point. Am I totally wrong for feeling as I do. The first thing a vet says to a pet owner is "Is it right to allow him/her to suffer"
QUESTION: Why is it humane to euthanize a very sick animal but not allow the same choice for an A&Ox3 individual with a living will?
I fully understand the need to euthanize animals, d/t the fact that there are not the same medications for them and they truly are better off. But, it is against the law to commit suicide, if people would like to end their life because they are in pain, and dying than they should consider hospice, and comfort measures. I have worked in a nursing home for two and a half years and have seen people "will" themselves to die. I don't believe the doctors should have the right to decide. would you please reply with your thoughts?
This is where hospice comes in. When a patient is terminally ill, with less than 6 months to live, they can choose to become a hospice patient. Hospice nurses will come to the house for visits, and provide a family member with morphine and/or other medications as needed. When the death is emminent, a hospice nurse can come out and be with the family. They will give morphine to control pain, and since the patient is comfort care only, the nurse does not have to count respirations before giving the morphine. This will keep the patient comfortable, and MAY cause them to die sooner than they would have without the morphine, but it will be a peaceful passing. I once heard a hospice nurse say that morphine dissconnected a patients mind from what was happening with their chest. So that they don't feel air hunger that they otherwise would. As far as I am concerned, dying at home with your family present and hospice support is the kindest way to go.
Well, my religious beliefs do not support euthanasia for humans, and I know you don't want a religious viewpoint on it, so I won't respond to the human factor of euthanasia.
However, I have had to have a precious pet put to sleep.
He was a minature dachsund, 15 yrs/old, and started to have some kind of brain deterioration {sp?} causing seizures. He was no longer himself and was so miserable. It was very difficult to do.
Because, unlike animals, humans have souls and free will.
If you want to understand this concept, you have to look at what is different.
Or to ask this question differently: why is there a much greater punishment for killing another human than there is for killing an animal? Because there is a signficant difference between the two.
Most people instinctively understand that there is a huge gulf of difference between the two concepts.
It's the comparing of apples and oranges.
Alone of all the animals, man was made in the image of God.
I think it should be ethical to euthanize a terminally ill patient. I am an aide in a LTC facility, and have had to face many patients dying very slowly. Wants a resident stops eating/drinking and has basically reached the last days, sometimes it can take weeks for them to finally pass. I don't understand the point in keeping someone alive just so they can slowly starve to death. Why not just let them go? Thankfully hospice does do excellent care in easing the suffering of a terminal patient. The morphine doeses really do disconnect them, and sometimes it does expedite the death process. Thank god we have that option to ease their suffering at least.
On another note with regards to suicide, I have heard and have no proof that the highest suicide group with respect to age is the 65+ group, and I can completely understand that. I have some residents who become so completely dependent on others, and their mind is so far gone, that I sometimes wonder whats the point.
You have to suffer to sing the blues….A blues singer said this many years ago, but I find parallels with that in Christianity. A lot of Christians believe that life is supposed to be suffered through…like the more suffering you endure the more brownie points you get in heaven. The Jesus I know would disagree.
There is a flaw in your thinking. You assume it is better to be dead than to be in pain. This is a contemporary thought. The Bible (and I only quote it here as you recognize it, and as an old text) states "it is better to be a living dog than a dead lion." Read the book of Job in the Bible. Christian, Jew, or if it's not your book at all. It is still an OLD lesson about unbearable pain... the answers there may not be what you think they would be...
I believe that passage in the bible your talking about is what your abilities are before death, they become completely useless after death. Use your life while you have it.
Someone dieing a slow painful death who wants to pass on is using their abilities to the fullest in making a decision like this.
After nursing for years and years, I've seen too many patients without advance directives, no living wills. Or if the Pt has one but the family strongly disagrees with it, the doctor may overide it.
I have no terminal illness, no DX of a fatal illness. But I do have directives in place, and my family members know exactly how I feel about life support in the event I am rendered ..........
Anyway, I seen so much needless suffering. For both the patient and their families.
And no, it's not recent thinking to allow people to die with dignity. If one looks back through history, you would find the opposite. I think it's rather recent that we have had the ability to sustain one's life by artifical means.
And I think it's a really western style of thought that fails to recognize death as a part of life.
because animals were put into subjection to humans not other humans.
we don't have the right to decide who lives or dies that is purly the right of the creator. as for humans, animals were put into our care and stewardship or rulership if you will but other humans were not put into subjection to other humans. any subjection that humans have over others is relative.
but the individual has to decide for themselves what they will do.
that is why humans commit no wrong when they kill an animal for food or to protect themselves as long as it is done with the least amount of suffering.
because animals were put into subjection to humans not other humans.
we don't have the right to decide who lives or dies that is purly the right of the creator. as for humans, animals were put into our care and stewardship or rulership if you will but other humans were not put into subjection to other humans. any subjection that humans have over others is relative.
but the individual has to decide for themselves what they will do.
that is why humans commit no wrong when they kill an animal for food or to protect themselves as long as it is done with the least amount of suffering.
RR
The beauty, then, of free will....and the fact that God gave us common sense.
I'm thinking God was grateful when we let my Daddy go. Sit around and watch someone struggle to breathe, and know that they face a life in a medically induced coma, with a trach, potentially for YEARS, racking up medical bills that eventually insurance may refuse to pay...my mother is seventy one. Is that fair? Is it fair to my father, who used to get so frustrated and upset that at only 74 he couldn’t even pick up a small bag of groceries and walk it from the car to the house due to advanced peripheral neuropathy (of unknown etiology, I might add – that he probably got from being sprayed with sarin gas by his own government or from Agent Orange) - to leave him stoned on Ativan, enduring dangerous rounds of antibiotics to try and kill S. aureus that refused to die, and hooked up to a vent through a trach?
THAT'S INHUMANE!!!
If you hit a deer with your car, and it survived the impact (sometimes they do) and it was writhing in the middle of the road in unimaginable pain, you wouldn’t allow the sheriff/trooper/cop who arrived on the scene to shoot it in the head and end its misery? REMEMBER – THAT DEER IS NOT SUBSERVIENT NOR SUBORDINATE TO HUMANS. HE’S WILD and belongs to no one but God.
EQUALLY INHUMANE!!!
God was there the day my father finally, MERCIFULLY was allowed to go. If you're unable to sustain your own life....are you really living?
Couldn't you say that with all the antibiotics / antivirals/ chemotherapeutics/ dialysis machines/insulins /gene therapies/ clean rooms for folks with SCID (which I think they can cure now)/the old iron lungs/ hyperbaric chambers/organ transplants…..
Given all this MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY we have now, couldn’t the argument be made that, in its purest form, we keep people alive by artificial means EVERY DAY??? If you take penicillin for that ear infection, you're killing a bacteria that, sixty years ago, could have easily killed YOU instead, right? But you're not TERMINALLY ill, and unless you have some other problem, chances are that the penicillin (Or in my case, a cephalosporin since I'm allergic to sulfas, cillins, and all that) will allow you to get over the ear infection and get on with your life.
What if that wasn't the case?
When the quality and meaning of life is over, as in my dad’s case (oh man I wish we could have given him something to prevent him going through that last three hours of gasping for air; I will never forget that sound) – why keep them alive artificially on a vent – because although he was not brain dead, the vent WAS keeping him alive?? He could no longer be helped by medical technology and he could not sustain his own life unassisted.
What the heck is NATURAL about that????!!!!!!
We'll spend sixty bucks to put our dogs out of misery, but there are folks who do not want someone taken off of a ventilator when all hope and all options are gone. I can't believe that these people - many who have never faced such an awful decision - would think it was OK to keep them on vents when they cannot breathe for themselves, and put their families through the stress of that (trust me, it’s a kicker), plus rack up potentially – and easily – millions in medical bills that eventually insurance may refuse to pay. All to keep their heart beating and lungs expanding, when if you took them off, they would die.
Sounds like interfering with God to me. Don’t get me wrong – if you have a chance – stay on it. I don’t mean kill the person; that’s a different ball of wax.
My father was a staunch Catholic, who told me – and told the nurses when they brought in the Advance Directives when he was admitted and before he was intubated – if you’re taken off the machines, and you live, you’re meant to live. If you’re extubated, and you die, then you were meant to die. And we were not to feel guilty about any of it.
What I feel guilty about is that to put him at peace, I had to make him suffer. WHY????? I think Congressmen and other legislators that have been in our position feel a bit differently than those who have not. And I think either witnesses to what I’m talking about (so many nurses!) or family members put in this position also feel a bit differently.
I wish people didn’t have to make a decision. And I hope that whatever decision people make, they’re at peace with it. But think – if it were you, and you were no longer you, would you really want it?
I'm sorry about the rant; my father's birthday is coming up next week and I'm having a hard time right now. Thanks for listening.
.thumb.gif.09f7460d3e1ff8d6732564d77b5465cb.gif){kind=avatar}
MJH
4 Posts
I fully understand the need to euthanize animals, d/t the fact that there are not the same medications for them and they truly are better off. But, it is against the law to commit suicide, if people would like to end their life because they are in pain, and dying than they should consider hospice, and comfort measures. I have worked in a nursing home for two and a half years and have seen people "will" themselves to die. I don't believe the doctors should have the right to decide. would you please reply with your thoughts?