What would you do?

[xotoxi]

That's just silly. We're all in the dying process. Diabetes is a debilitating disease, and kids with it don't generally live long lives and can end up comatose or dead before they're 40.

Treatment of ANY life-threatening disease, injury or illness is only prolonging the dying process.

Try again.

We are not in the dying process. Most of us are stable.

You clearly don't understand what the "dying process" is.

 

[boedicca]

It trivializes what dying really is to say that we are all in the process of dying.

Just sayin'.

 

[Ravi]

Do you consider it murder when a Christian family refuses to treat their child with dialysis?

That was my question, nimrod.

I will try to guess your answers to the questions that I posed, since you are tiptoeing around them:

• Do you consider it murder when a family withdraws care from a 90-year-old grandmother? - ALLIEBABA ANSWERS: YES
• Do you consider it murder when a Christian family refuses to treat their child with dialysis? - ALLIEBABA ANSWERS: YES

Therefore, Alliebaba would agree with those who call Christian fundamentalist parents that withhold treatment from their children MURDERERS.

You'd think so, but I've seen her argue that parents have the right to withhold treatment from their children.

It's possible she changed her mind.

Regardless, she's still fucked in the head.

 

[xotoxi]

That was my question, nimrod.

I will try to guess your answers to the questions that I posed, since you are tiptoeing around them:

• Do you consider it murder when a family withdraws care from a 90-year-old grandmother? - ALLIEBABA ANSWERS: YES
• Do you consider it murder when a Christian family refuses to treat their child with dialysis? - ALLIEBABA ANSWERS: YES

Therefore, Alliebaba would agree with those who call Christian fundamentalist parents that withhold treatment from their children MURDERERS.

You'd think so, but I've seen her argue that parents have the right to withhold treatment from their children.

It's possible she changed her mind.

Regardless, she's still fucked in the head.

Bookmark this thread, so that it can be brought back to haunt her.

And notice that she has left when she has been proven a hypocrite.

 

[Skull Pilot]

What i would do is have my wishes for a situation such as this spelled out very clearly in a living will as well as a medical proxy and power of attorney given to one i trust so that my family wouldn't have to wonder what the best thing to do would be.

 

[AllieBaba]

That's just silly. We're all in the dying process. Diabetes is a debilitating disease, and kids with it don't generally live long lives and can end up comatose or dead before they're 40.

Treatment of ANY life-threatening disease, injury or illness is only prolonging the dying process.

Try again.

Do you know any Type I diabetics?

Yes. A good friend of mine died a couple of years ago from it. He was 30 years old.
A gradeschool friend of mine died at 7.

I've cared for people in nursing homes who are comatose as a result of it.
My father died from throat cancer. He had a trache for more than a year and was happy to have it.

 

[AllieBaba]

Xotoxi, your drunken ramblings are rather funny. I answered your silly questions, not with the answers you have attributed to me.

 

[boedicca]

Yes. A good friend of mine died a couple of years ago from it. He was 30 years old.
A gradeschool friend of mine died at 7.

I've cared for people in nursing homes who are comatose as a result of it.
My father died from throat cancer. He had a trache for more than a year and was happy to have it.

I have Type I diabetics in my family who I would not classify as dying.

I'm also going to bet that your father let you know what his wishes were regarding the trache.

 

[Charles Stucker]

Boedicca has summed up the diverse situations rather well. When someone cannot expect any quality of life, then every measure is vain; all that is done is to prolong the suffering of the person being treated. Children typically have far better recuperative powers than elderly patients so a procedure with no hope for the aged may have great promise for the youth. Not a life free of pain, but a life which can be enjoyed.
Physicians and families face increasing pressure to engage in medical procedures which may not actually give any increased chance of life that a person would wish to live. It is easy for someone on the outside looking in to make a harsh judgment and call either decision a mistake.
If the life is extended, one is open to a charge of extending the patient's suffering. If not, one is called a murderer. How righteous such name-callers must feel, to trod upon the pain of another and make it worse, just so they can spout their holier than thou platitudes.

 

[Mr Natural]

There's a big difference between living and being alive.

 

[sealybobo]

Sorry for your situation.

If it was me, I would do whatever I felt was in her best interests. Hopefully, assuming someone knows her well, it would be easy to know what she would want her family to do.

Actually, you're wrong about those of us who are religious thinking we should do everything we can.... We believe in Heaven, so letting someone go is doing the right thing for them.

Absolutely. She was in pain and we know she would not have wanted to go to a nursing home, unless it meant eventually going home, and that just wasn't going to happen. The reason we tried for 14 days was because she said, "where there is life there is hope". But we never discussed the details, so we could only speculate what she wanted. She did fight so we gave it 14 days but in the end, she wasn't improving enough to breath on her own.

Was there a 5% chance? Sure. But we weighed all the options and decided not to torture her.

I'm glad to hear you really religious people aren't still arguing that we should keep them alive at all cost. I think religion had something to do with why my brother didn't want to pull the plugs. He said, "how can we do that when she's looking at us". She was aware the entire time. But on day 14, she was miserable.

THat's not life. Liife with no quality isn't really life. Her laying in a bed with a trake tube isn't right, unless she would get better, but at 90, she wasn't going to recover from everything that was going on. COPD, emphasema, congestive heart failure, pnemonia, etc.

She was an awesome woman. Lots of people are sad that she's gone. She was our matriarch.

 

[AllieBaba]

Actually, he was unconscious because he PASSED OUT AS HE COULDN'T BREATHE.

We knew he was terminal, he was in his 60s. We could have opted to let him die.

We didn't.

Likewise, you would die without your insulin.

As I said, everyone is dying. Withhold food and water, people die as well.

 

[xotoxi]

Xotoxi, your drunken ramblings are rather funny. I answered your silly questions, not with the answers you have attributed to me.

No you haven't.

And ad hominems do not help to prove your point. I have not engaged in any during this discussion.

So, please in your own words answer my two questions (as you claim that I have attributed the wrong answers to you).

 

[AllieBaba]

I already answered them. Sorry you missed it.

Glad you are no longer shouting in drunk green.

 

[sealybobo]

Difficult to decide for someone else.
For myself I plan on taking myself out when things get too bad.
And I have a living will incase someting makes me a vegetable before then.

Everyone should have a living will to take the pressure off of the family.

Gramma never wanted to talk about it.

It was tough. The doctors were asking my mom and her sister what to do and they couldn't pull the trigger. So finally I spoke up and said, "they don't want the trake"

And then the doctors were going to give them a day or two to think about it and I said, "no, today! NOW!" and everyone started talking. But until I pushed my mom and her sister, they didn't want to make the decision. They kept putting it off and asking questions that were irrelivent.


We did the right thing.

 

[boedicca]

Actually, he was unconscious because he PASSED OUT AS HE COULDN'T BREATHE.

We knew he was terminal, he was in his 60s. We could have opted to let him die.

We didn't.

Likewise, you would die without your insulin.

As I said, everyone is dying. Withhold food and water, people die as well.

You applied your values and did what you thought was best for him based upon what you knew of his wishes. Why can't you respect that families with far more knowledge of their loved ones' conditions do the same?

 

[sealybobo]

It sounds like the most merciful thing to do was to let go. You didn't say if your grandmother left a livign will, instructions, or a do not resuscitate order. As most of the family was unified, I'd be at peace with the decision.

Couldn't discuss it with her. And my mom didn't want to talk about it either. Now they wish they did. But gramma did say, "where there is life there is hope", so we tried.

 

[xotoxi]

I already answered them. Sorry you missed it.

Glad you are no longer shouting in drunk green.

Let me summarize...

Removing the tubes from a 90 year old woman is killing her.

Refusing treatment for a child is killing the child.

RIGHT?

 

[sealybobo]

Sorry for your situation.

If it was me, I would do whatever I felt was in her best interests. Hopefully, assuming someone knows her well, it would be easy to know what she would want her family to do.

Actually, you're wrong about those of us who are religious thinking we should do everything we can.... We believe in Heaven, so letting someone go is doing the right thing for them.

I shouldn't lump all uber religious people together. I meant people like Allie. See, she says we murdered/killed her by not doing the trach procedure. See! George Bush religious types. The moral minority who put Jack Kavorkian in jail.

Our laws need to be changed so people can end their suffering if the choose to. I don't care what the baptists think.

 

[sealybobo]

No, she was killed when the ventilator was removed.

No. She DIED when the ventilator was removed. She was allowed to resume the natural process of death rather than have an interaction to artificially sustain life.

Being killed would have required an interaction to cause her death.

The trach procedure is not meant for 90 year olds who are falling apart. What was wrong with her? Heck, what wasn't wrong with her. Congestive heart failure, emphasima, pnemonia, copd, etc. But allie would have tortured her for another year or 6 months.