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Originally Posted by shrandell
His wishes were against the hospital policy, and his doctor's parting shot hissed at me as we left was, "he's going to die, you know"... Had he not listened to one word we spoke?
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This was such a pervasive attitude on the part of the medical profession years back. While it's much, much less common now, it's still out there. Ego? Playing God? The view that dying is a failure? Who knows?
And ... this is how it can be, should we choose to make it this way (even if it's contrary to the wishes of others):
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cantwaittoarrive
... the dying process for them was a beautiful, life affirming process. It helped all that experienced the process to realize that physical death is just a natural progression in our life on earth and can be embraced and celebrated just as much as a physical birth into this life
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Here are a few of my stories that affirmed—and reaffirmed—my commitment in my small way to making things different:
Many years ago I traveled to New York City to take a graduate course once a week and made sure to leave a couple of hours early so I could visit a youngster with Ewing’s sarcoma at a hospital there—to spend time with him and to give his mother a break. Week after week, after his mother would leave to get a bite to eat, he would plead with me, “Why can’t they leave me alone?” referring to his parents, who understandably could not accept that he was dying and let go, and the whole medical profession who were treating him or, as he saw it, beating him! After they continued to poke, prod, stick, test, operate, experiment, fill his body with poisons when in truth it was hopeless already, they sent him home to die. By that point he was so drawn into himself that he could not communicate at all. He was a high school senior.
More recently but still years ago, a man committed himself to caring for his wife with metastatic melanoma at home until she died, so she could be there with her husband and children. At one point he asked me if I (Hospice volunteer) would call her doctor and ask him to renew her pain medication prescription. I didn’t know why he didn’t do it himself, but I agreed and called and reached the doctor, whose reaction was, “What, she’s still alive?!” Then I understood why he had asked me to make the call—knowing that something like this would be the response of the MD. She turned 30 the same day songwriter-composer Irving Berlin turned 100—and she died peacefully in her sleep three weeks later. The husband woke in the morning to find their daughter snuggled in between her parents and their son snuggled into his mother on the other side of the bed. When she was in hospital giving birth to him is when the initial melanoma was noticed and diagnosed. The children turned 4 and 3 respectively within weeks of Mom’s death.
My own father’s doctor had pontificated, “A week, two week; a month, two months; six months would be a miracle.” My father, emotionally destroyed with this news, then proceeded to live for another FOUR YEARS with that axe hanging over his head. Unforgivable what the doctor did to him, no matter what his intention was. Why such specific numbers?
Much to think about, extremely difficult as it is to think about....