Showing posts with label end of life care. Show all posts
Showing posts with label end of life care. Show all posts

Friday, January 25, 2019

Reminder

Print the POLST form and read. http://www.cathmed.org/resources/polst/  Do not sign this form. 
Things are moving quickly.  It was just 2012 that President Obama was still saying that marriage was between a man and a woman.  Were President Trump to say that today it would be more shouts for impeachment.  Polygamy demands were supposed to come after same sex marriage, or incest law revocation, but the transgender lobby  jumped in to use up the coffers for the marriage fight and look how well they’ve done in a very short period of time. We now have unlimited numbers of gender and you can be fired for using the wrong pronoun.  It was just about 3 years ago that the Democrats approved 20 Billion for the wall and now they call it immoral.  So the society and cultural standards are changing quickly.

So after all states start following NY, they’ll be coming after us elderly and disabled or depressed.

Thursday, January 24, 2019

What Obama promised us

There was a time before Obama became president, that he was the ONLY politician in the nation radical enough to vote for something like what New York has just passed. Well, he did promise to fundamentally transform the country, and unfortunately, he did.

But at least when Obama cast his vote against babies, the people of Illinois did not cheer and celebrate (he was a state senator then).

Now that New York has codified the killing of full term babies, they will begin (or continue) the efforts on the other end of life—euthanasia of the elderly or disabled.   Don’t wait.  Print off the POLST form and read it carefully.  You do NOT want to sign this form. But you definitely want to read it. http://www.cathmed.org/resources/polst/

Dr. Gosnell was our biggest mass murderer until the NY legislature and Gov. Cuomo, and now will the doctor at Mt. Carmel hospital in Columbus who has killed 34 patients (more to come) with fentanyl be considered just ahead of his time in euthanasia of the elderly and disabled?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/doctor-accused-ordering-fatal-doses-dozens-patients-should-have-been-n962336

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Monday, January 02, 2012

Case 39-2011 — A Woman in Her 90s with Unilateral Ptosis

Until I read this article in the Dec. 22, 2011 New England Journal of Medicine I didn't know what ptosis was--it means drooping eyelid. What interested me about this story was that the patient who woke up one morning with a drooping eyelid was in her 90s. She was living independently, and walking 50-60 minutes a day, but she also had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, osteoporosis, and a number of ailments known to the elderly plus a pace maker put in 5 years earlier. She was taking a long list of medications plus vitamins. Then she was started down a long road of tests, more medications, hospitalizations and rehabilitations for 8 weeks. Several CT scans, fluid restriction, lab tests, physical tests, ECG, chest radiographs, special diets (she was having difficulty swallowing), supplemental oxygen, a neck collar (for muscle weakness), intravenous administration of 5 drugs and 2 more with a nebulizer. Mercifully, after eight weeks of being a lab animal, she and her family decided for comfort measures only, and she died in 3 days.

After ruling out various things with the CT the doctors had pretty much settled on myasthenia gravis with a thymoma (tumor) which was confirmed in the autopsy. I read a few articles on the internet and thought her symptoms (even with no tests) sounded like MG. There's even a blood test for it, but I didn't see where she had that one--but maybe I missed it in the long list of other tests. There is no indication in the article if all this was done because she insisted, or whether doctors just keep going until they run out of options.

Surely, there must have been a better way for her to spend the last eight weeks of her life. I don't think we want death panels set up by the government deciding our fate, but would it have been unethical for someone to have had a talk with her about how she wanted to live her final days?