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I've heard of unofficial groups at retirement homes who monitor each other, and make sure that the ambulance is NOT called, at a certain point. For instance, if you've decided you don't want to die in a hospital, and you have a stroke after the age of...I don't know, maybe 80 or so, then you want to make sure the ambulance is not called.
And that the person is just allowed to peacefully pass away, without his or her last hours/days/months being spent hooked to tubes in a hospital or nursing home. So, basically calling for hospice help instead of going to the hospital.
The number of people I've seen/heard about who got aggressive medical treatment after a stroke, and then plummeted downhill in terms of physical and mental health - huge. And then lived for another 2 to 6 years, not recognizing anyone, in diapers, etc. Horrible.
My mother has one of those bright pink sheets of paper with ambulance info taped up to her fridge. There's 3 options -
- do everything (all medical care possible, including intubating, etc)
- the middle road
- do very little - comfort care only.
At the very least, towards the end of things, you could (hopefully) just do the last option. Then again, I've also heard nightmare stories of those documents not making it to the hospital with you, and then you get all the treatments you don't want.
After all, what are the incentives for the hospital? If treatments are covered by the government (which they are), their incentives are to treat aggressively.
it's a tough one, yeah, my granddad was eventually sent to the hospice, but not that much different from the hospital really.
Generally, docs will always treat i think, the goal is usually focused on keeping the patient alive, of course, the question of 'is this the best thing' is another case.
in some places in the EU, euthanasia is legal tho and people do travel there when they are suffering, there's a fair bit of debate around the subject, but as long as a person is mentally competent, they should have the choice generally i think
Yeah I don't really know what "in hospice" actually means nowadays. I think it used to mean "only palliative care", but I know personally of cases where people were in hospice for MONTHS and did actually continue to get all their medications, etc.
My grandad was always fond of saying if things got bad, he'd 'swallow the gun', but then one day he had a stroke, was taken into hospital and never came out again, they kept him alive for months and i was able to fly in and see him before the end, but needless to say, he didn't have a choice and the sure weren't any spare guns floating around an NHS hospital!
Quite honestly, it would have been better if he had not been taken to the hospital anyway, as the whole thing was like his own version of hell and a loss of any shred of dignity he had left. This was a man who refused to wear shorts because he had some hang-up he had about his legs - then you end up in a nappy in hospital being treated like a baby by all these hot nurses.
Really, I don't know how much a person can plan, especially in the case of cognitive decline, where, by default, a person isn't aware of what's happening.
My plan is to do all the things and stay as healthy as possible, and hopefully, my children will be able to step up.
I'm basically my dad's medical helper already; in fact he had to go to the hospital 2 hours away on the weekend, chirosis of the liver, failing kidneys, bad swelling, then add in that he doesn't know any Bulgarian so I translate (badly).
So I track his bloodwork, take him to his appointments, and, since he doesn't get on well with tech, I manage his online banking and gold investments, like a PA basically, which is fine, glad I am in a position to do these things.
Personally, I wouldn't like to be so dependent on someone, but if, god forbid, i had to be, i would hope it would be my kids