Au, I didn't realize you'd been through so much ill health! Sorry to hear it.
My parents have a Health Care Directive that basically states if 2 doctors agree there is no hope of living, then the life support can be taken off. I knew my parents had one but, the rest of the family didn't. I told my brother about it and he went to my parents home and got it to take to the hospital so we could remove the life support my dad was on. I, myself have a Health Care Directive.
http://www.doh.wa.gov/livingwill/healthcaredirective.htm
This is the link that explains the Health Care Directive.
That was also the hardest thing I have ever done in my life was to hold my dad's hand as he died.
Edit: Butrflynet, thank you for your kind words regarding this with my dad. You helped me deal with his death.
littlek
Thanks for your concern. It was touch and go for about two weeks . The Dr's told my wife that in their opinion I was not going to make it. As you can see they were wrong.
Getting old is a bitch.
au1929
I can't imagine how awful that must of been for you and your wife. It is a good thing that sometimes doctors are wrong. Too bad more people aren't willing to talk about death and what their wishes are when put in certain medical circumstances. I guess they figure "it will never happen to me"...not sure.
TTH wrote:au1929
I can't imagine how awful that must of been for you and your wife. It is a good thing that sometimes doctors are wrong. Too bad more people aren't willing to talk about death and what their wishes are when put in certain medical circumstances. I guess they figure "it will never happen to me"...not sure.
No problem for me I was completely out of it. I should add that thankfully the decision had been made by both my wife and son that if worst happened, as per my wishes, to pull the plug.
TTH wrote: Butrflynet, thank you for your kind words regarding this with my dad. You helped me deal with his death.
I think we are helping each other deal with it, TTH, as unintentional as it may be. Our fathers have very similar backgrounds and the circumstances of their deaths was very similar.
I'm still having a very rough time dealing with all the mixed emotions of guilt, anger, remorse, relief, and lonely emptiness. I still can't think about any of it at all without sobbing.
Grieving is the sh*ts... and sneaks up on you when you least expect it.
Today was my dad's birthday, he's a New Year's baby.
Funny thing, my brother married a woman whose father's birthday was also on New Years. Our two fathers are having a great time celebrating their first New Years and birthdays together. I'm sure there is room at the table for your dad too.
Do not resuscitate orders
Quote:
I'm still having a very rough time dealing with all the mixed emotions of guilt, anger, remorse, relief, and lonely emptiness. I still can't think about any of it at all without sobbing.
Me too. I think all of this goes with surviving the death of any loved one.
au1929 wrote:TTH wrote:au1929
I can't imagine how awful that must of been for you and your wife. It is a good thing that sometimes doctors are wrong. Too bad more people aren't willing to talk about death and what their wishes are when put in certain medical circumstances. I guess they figure "it will never happen to me"...not sure.
No problem for me I was completely out of it. I should add that thankfully the decision had been made by both my wife and son that if worst happened, as per my wishes, to pull the plug.
Many hospitals affiliated with specific religions often give patients and their families a hard time about when life should be "terminated" and by what "means".
Re: Do not resuscitate orders
Tomkitten wrote:Quote:
I'm still having a very rough time dealing with all the mixed emotions of guilt, anger, remorse, relief, and lonely emptiness. I still can't think about any of it at all without sobbing.
Me too. I think all of this goes with surviving the death of any loved one.
Many survivors will suffer long-term depression, as well.
au1929 wrote:littlek
Thanks for your concern. It was touch and go for about two weeks . The Dr's told my wife that in their opinion I was not going to make it. As you can see they were wrong.
Getting old is a bitch.
You had the good fortune of not having anyone "pull" your plug!
Do Not Resuscitate Orders
Miller - That's why I insist on a non-religiously affiliated hospital. We have a very good one right nearby, & I always tell the ambulance to go there and avoid the religiously affiliated one equidistant in another direction.
This is an advantage of Hospice, of course, or of any hospital that truly supports palliative care.
I always worry, though, about some religious-minded nurse who may refuse to cooperate with DNR instructions, or other Living Will/Medical Directives. Perhaps I'm paranoid.
I watched my sister die, after her husband, a doctor, chose to end her suffering by pulling the plug. I also let my mother go, the nursing home having been instructed by her not to intervene medically if, as happened, she began to go rapidly downhill, just to keep her comfortable. And in November I watched as my husband died, as a Hospice patient, and also with DNR, etc instructions which were completely honored by Hospice and the nursing home.
Interestingly, some fifty years ago, my mother asked me if I would object to ending medical intervention for her mother, saying that even my grandmother's priest had said it was a perfectly legitimate decision; that the Catholic Church didn't require heroic measures. This doesn't seem to be the case nowadays.
In the cases of my mother and my grandmother, both of whom suffered continuing small strokes, prolonging life would merely have meant prolonging physical existence, nothing more. My sister would have died of her illness, eventually, and in great pain. My husband. with advanced Alzheimer's, would have lingered, in great pain from an injury, but as
a shell, with merely physical existence.
Butrflynet wrote:Today was my dad's birthday, he's a New Year's baby.
I think I will be sad when my dad's birthday comes around. My mom is still in that anger state. She said "He could have at least waited to our Anniversary" (it would have been their 50th). I told her I thought if dad had died around that time, it would probably make it worse for her.
Butrflynet wrote:Funny thing, my brother married a woman whose father's birthday was also on New Years. Our two fathers are having a great time celebrating their first New Years and birthdays together. I'm sure there is room at the table for your dad too.
Thank you
I seemed to have skipped some of the stages of grief. I went from disbelief to sorrow and then acceptance. It doesn't mean I don't miss my dad, I do.
My dad wasn't religious and I didn't know until the funeral who would be speaking or what they would say. It turned out that a military chaplain read the eulogy that my brother wrote with input from my siblings. It was really nice.
The hospital staff were great. Not only did they put a recliner in the room for me, they also gave me pillows and heated blankets as well as offered me coffee or tea. They did offer a chaplain but, didn't push the issue.
I am glad I told my parents about the Health Directive. No one I know of wants to live in a vegetative state. There is no quality to that kind of life imo.
Do Not Resuscitate Orders
Quote:I seemed to have skipped some of the stages of grief. I went from disbelief to sorrow and then acceptance. It doesn't mean I don't miss my dad, I do.
TTH - Don't believe everything the experts say. Everyone grieves in their own way, at their own pace. There is no mandatory sequence of approaches and reactions. If we are rational, there shouldn't be any anger in our grieving; death comes to us all. Anger directed at the outside force such as war or murder is one thing. Anger at death itself is wasteful of emotion. I, for example, am angry at a doctor who never returned calls, emails, and faxes from the nursing home about my husband's broken ankle. If he had, the nurses felt that at least they would have had more background than his obvious original report - a broken ankle - and could perhaps have made him more comfortable in his last days.
If while our loved one was living, we did all we could, there should be no guilt (this one is hard, but most of us did everything we possibly could, and feeling guilty over past quarrels, commissions or omissions leads only to self-pity).
Sorrow is inevitable, but it should be sorrow that we are left behind, incomplete.
This all adds up to the "stage" you have reached: acceptance.
Thanks Tomkitten,
On reflection, I can't think of one thing I would have changed about the way my dad died. During that week, I stayed the nights and one of my brothers or both and one of my sisters or both and my mom were there all during the day. Some times I stayed part of the day even after they got there to relieve me or I went early evening and stayed all night.
I knew someone was always there with my dad and most of us were there the day he died. So, he was always surrounded by loved ones and the staff made sure he was comfortable (no pain). We all had the chance to speak with him right before the doctor took the equipment off. The pain meds were turned down so, my dad was awake and aware that we were there. He would wake up most nights and I would talk to him and he could write on paper.
We were lucky in a way. It only took 1 & 1/2 days for my dad to die after taking the equipment off. I feel for the families where their loved ones stay comatose for months or even years after the equipment is turned off and the law doesn't allow for any other alternative except in a few states.
Some individuals do recover from their comas and by golly they're real happy no one was in a hurry to bury them...
Miller
My dad was not comatose and no one was in a hurry to bury him. I am glad he had the right to have a say so in his medical treatment by signing that Health Directive. It was his decision to make whether he wanted to be kept alive by a machine and no one else's. The hard part for the survivors is once that machine is taken off, no one knows for sure how long the person will survive. His doctors estimated 1/2 hour and it took 1 & 1/2 days.
btw the 3 people who I have personally known to be in a coma and survived, were brain damaged and never fully recovered and have since died.
