Reply #100: That's what happened with my dad, and with my mother-in-law. [View All]

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When they start the morphine drip (usually after removing the respirator in my dad's case, and withholding all meds and insulin in my mother-in-law's case) that's the beginning of the end. A nurse-friend of mine, who cared for my mother-in-law, said it's common practice - done to "ease the way." As she described it, it removes their pain and "helps them let go."

This is sad. But sadly understandable, and supportable. What were these doctors supposed to do? When they're in a hospital in a "ground zero" situation and there's no power and the generators have failed and they're running out of medication and they're overwhelmed by the great numbers of the sick and injured, and yes, the dying, what are they supposed to do? What are they supposed to do???

I agree with you, poppet. My father's transition from an overwhelmingly painful, near-comatose existence, in a condition from which there was NO hope of recovery whatsoever, was made easier and perhaps a little swifter. The last time I saw him, two days before he died, he was truly little more than a piece of meat lying there in that hospital bed with tubes and wires coming out of him all over the place. He was so sick from many complications of late-onset diabetes that there truly was no hope. Every day he lived on, if you could even call that "living," was nothing more than prolonging the agony for him, and those of us who cared about him. Even my mother, the "Queen of Denial," would shake her head in discouragement and repeatedly mumble "this isn't living. This just isn't living." Even she wanted the morphine drip put in.

Same thing with my mother-in-law. Her last two weeks were HORRIBLE. HORRIBLE. Same reasons, nearly-comatose, late-onset diabetes but also cancer that had metastacized all over her body, AND PROFOUND dementia on top of it all. In the days before this, when she could still communicate, her eyes were empty. She didn't know who I was. Didn't recognize my husband - her oldest son. There was nothing there anymore. My dad still had his wits about him til the end, but hers were gone. Just gone. Horrible. She couldn't be saved. She was WAY beyond any medical help. There was nothing they, or anyone else, could do for her. Nothing. They wound up putting her in a room with a patient who had really bad bronchitis, and then placing her on a morphine drip. Instead of the difficult breathing and struggling for days on end, she slipped away peacefully.

In both cases, I loved both these people, but I wouldn't have had it any other way. I wanted them to be able to leave. Sometimes the assholes (and yes. That's what they are. Insensitive, close-minded, heartless, dictatorial ASSHOLES) who insist on prolonging life at all costs - should just STFU - and go AWAY.

What were these people supposed to do? When doctors are forced into that ungodly situation in which they have to decide who lives and who dies, they have no choice but to use whatever wherewithal they have, however limited, to help those who have at least a realistic chance to be saved, rather than keep a hopeless case propped up indefinitely. A rotten situation to have to be in, having to make such decisions. But sometimes, as we've seen too painfully, it does happen.

I can't condemn these people. Not at all. If I were an MD in that situation, I'd probably have done the same thing.