End of life, what are your preferences?

So yea, after working taking care of sick elderly people for the last few years ive been wondering things like, "why the fuck do people allow this". Health care is so fucked up. The whole health care debate going on for the last few years is all shit I don't care which side of the aisle your on. It sucks with or without obama's new rules and regulations.
And here's why: All health care has done is complicate our lives and made us miserable. How does it do this? Well look at it this way, think of all the shitty miserable diseases out there that ONLY are a problem because we can live too fucking long. Now I have no issues with longevity, hell ill live forever if life is good to me. But shit, theres an end and theres nothing we can do about it. Ive seen some of the most horrible suffering working with the sick and elderly. Some can't walk, talk, eat, think straight, or do anything that they did when they were young. They get bed sores, and die from them. They may have dementia and have a spouse that lives outside of the nursing home(which to them is a prison cell) who does not have dementia. Its the biggest crock of shit ever.
And you know what? If we just didn't develop the things that prolong life in the first place, we could just die!! Actually, you can still just die today by refusing treatment, but your going to have to fight hard. Peer pressure gets this people to allow the doctors to turn you into a fucking crippled miserable cyborg so they can keep making money taking care of you dead-alive.
So what do you all prefer? Do you want to get all the tubes, colostomy bags, and AV fistulas installed to prolong a shitty existance? Or do you want to die like people died 150 years ago before modern medicine(its such a peaceful way to go! you die and it isnt dragged out for years).
I myself am not going to let any doctor load me up on pills and bullshit ever. Now, im not totally turning down health care, if I become diabetic ill manage it with diet and insulin, this is reasonable. Or if I break a bone, sure ill get a cast, or if I need joint replacement or something fine. But feeding tubes, or dialysis? Fuck that shit! Basically if im declining, I want to just let it go. If I get alzheimers, im a DNR and there will be no more medical interventions(no shitty fucking namenda or any of that nonsense, because it doesnt fucking work).

 

I worked at a nursing home one year, and one lady did not want to get out of bed that day, so i told my boss, and she told me to get her out of bed anyway for breakfast....so I helped the lady out of bed, even though she did not want breakfast....she sat at the table with the others for a little while,...then got up and went to the bathroom ....where there was a major mess everywhere, and then she went back into her room....lay down and died.

i was so angry at the boss that day for making me get her out of bed in the first place and hurt by the whole thing....feeling so badly for this woman...that I quit shortly after.

 

I don't know.... there can be a balance. And what I want if things get to be bad before my time is up is somewhere in between. Reasonable medicine and health related tactics to extent life but nothing too extreme... if it starts to be too extreme, then, sure, I'd rather just die. Def don't want to be a vegetable.

 

Nobody wants to be a veg, but at what point do you decide enough is enough?

I think as long as you have some quality of life, ok. Once that's gone, perhaps there's not much point in living on.

These seem to be issues which are controversial, and will probably become even more so as the ratio of retired to working age people goes up. just this Sunday a major UK newspaper ran an item written by Patrick Stewart of Star Trek fame, who is arguing for some legalized form of voluntary euthanasia. In time, despite the objections of Christians etc, I think it will come. Probably in Britain before the US.

 

When working at this job your basically supposed to put the pressure on the residents to keep moving. Now, while I won't appreciate this sort of thing if it happens to me, if I happened to contract hepatitis from the needlestick from that Hep C positive individual I cared for, then went thru treatment or ended up with liver failure I would need a push in order to survive. Because the drugs to treat this disease ruin your life depending on who you are and how you react to them. The drugs are worse than the disease itself because often the disease just hangs around and does nothing for years and years and years and you may even die before it does anything to you at all.
If I were to require treatment for this disease, i'd be grateful that someone took my hand and pulled me out of bed each day even after I had completely given up and lost all will to survive. So long as the disease was gone within a year and I made full recovery.
Though, the case of this woman you talk about is different, it didn't sound like there was going to be a complete recovery within a year. I don't want anyone doing anything but providing comfort at this point... And to be honest comfort at the end of life stage will sometimes even involve getting out of the bed when you don't want to or being moved when you dont want to. Because laying in a bed that feels like a pitcher of water has been dumped in it most certainly is not going to be comfortable.

 

We have it here in Oregon, Bill.

 

I used to volunteer at an alzheimer-specific nursing home and when alzheimer's patients reach the end of their life they just lay there and moan and moan the most bone chilling moan.

Fuck that shit. My grandmother was able to take care of herself until she died at 86 of a minor heart attack with no warning right as she sat down to a meal she was still perfectly capable of preparing herself. That's how I want to go.

I don't want to be on a shit ton of medications either. No monthly maintenance meds for me. The pharmaceutical industry is mostly a scam anyways. If I get a life threatening disease at 60 I'll fight and do what I can because at 60 you have several more good years, but if I get a disease at age 80 I'll refuse all treatment and do nothing except eat healthy and whatever daily exercise I'm still capable of to stave off death as long as my body allows. If my mind is incapacitated I hope my loved ones just let me go. No feeding tubes, nothing like that.

I'm a big believer in euthanasia as well. We do it for animals because its humane, yet somehow not humane enough for our fellow human beings?

 

Yea, the pharmecutical industry is a big fucking scam. Especially with the phsych drugs. Its not all completely bad. Some of those sedatives are handy when you have a crazy guy throwing chairs and pitchers of water at you. You can go in their with the whole crew and pin em down so the nurse can inject an anti-phsycotic. There still pretty fucking phsycotic though, the drug only tires them out(ive never seen someone being given a knock-out drug that makes them instantly pass out like in the movies. I don't know if they use this anymore, but ive been a part of a dog pile on a few crazy violent people who are trying to beat the hell out of everyone in site and the nurse gives an injection but they stay awake.) But all the regular doses of pills used to treat phsyc issues never really do anything but keep people tired so that if they do get phsycotic they have less motivation to act out. They still are just as crazy.
And as for anti-depressants... I think theres a point where your just being completely ridiculous prescribing that shit. I think some people who truly have everything going good in life but are still unhappy may have some sort of chemical imbalance, but when your locked up in a tiny room, I think that its only natural you will be depressed. I see all these anti-depressants being given to people who are crippled, trapped in a nursing home away from spouse and family, and I think its complete utter bullshit. Your pills aren't going to do shit, because its only natural that someone who lives with a tube in their dick, and a tube to feed them, and wheelchair bound, to be depressed.

 

I have a relative who’s in a nursing home $390 dollars a day – fucking highway robbery. The place is a dump, the employees are indifferent, and the service sucks - but otherwise it was voted one of the top senior care facilities on Cape Cod

Hotwater

 

It certainly is a tragic way to end a good life or any life. There are worse things than dieing.

 

Elderly people may want to prolong their existence, and the quality of life might be lower than it is when you are young. But is it that shitty? If the quality was so poor to them, it would not be worth living.

I think that most people are constantly (if not consciously) conducting risk-benefit analyses. To them, the discomfort of old age is better than giving up the things that keep them alive.

Everyone probably has a different threshold for what constitutes a tolerable quality of life. Maybe the people that you work with think that their suffering is worth the benefits.

 

man fuck that shit when I get to the point where I cant walk or are in pain then im going skydiving without a shute

 

lol....You made me laugh MCS....although the real picture of it is not so funny and i would never do that....lol

 

Jumping out of a plane? Fuck that. Feed me to a lion.

 

go swimming with man eating sharks....no thank you.....lol

 

I like sharks though but if I'm going to be reincarnated as an animal, I want to be a lion.
I believe there's a bigger chance if I'm eaten by one. HEHE.

 

OUCH, that would hurt, though...I can not even imagine it.....

 

I often shudder at the thought myself >.>
Maybe a big Komodo dragon then? Maybe I'll sprout wings on rebirth xD
Yeeeahhhh that'd be the real deal.

 

Death by Purple, its the only way, so another 40 years here at HF

 

Hmm Im trying to think of a fun way to die that involves little pain, and the lion thing dosent sound too fun and extremely painful lol