The Promised RS Coursework questions!

[J.R.]

Only just caught up on this thread....

A very old chestnut.

ALL animal lovers choose a dignified death for their pets when living has become unbearable for them. For all those who have witnessed this, they will no it is heartbreaking, but extremely quick and entirely painless.

The same for humans ? I tend to agree it should be a persons right to decide when their time is 'right'

It's all religious mumbo-jumbo and double-standards.

QED.

[Urgh-My-Pancreas]

Not sure whether you are interested in the non-Christian view

just so everyone knows, ever view is welcomed. I personally have little to no faith so i'm quite open to all points of view!

[sejintenej]

he was adamant that he'd had a long and happy life (he was 89) and he just couldn't face any more pain or struggling to get about.

To their credit, the hospital was fantastic and made him as comfortable as possible. We had no idea how long it would be, but when he died, it was very peaceful and, by pure luck, we were all (Mum, both brothers and I) with him. His faith was very important to him, and he was certain he was going to a better place.

Although we were very sad to lose him, I can understand his decision. I don't think he saw it as either suicide or asking the hospital to commit euthanasia. I'm actually quite glad he had some control over the timing and manner of his exit.

My son died of cancer some years back and regretably the NHS hospital was abominable, forgetting to give him painkillers (codine) and just about every other thing you can imagine. As for giving morphine - no. He was in a ward to which we, his parents, were allowed access for 2 hours a day; no other visitors allowed. (The ombudsman slated that hospital and from what I hear it has got worse).
We got him into a hospice and the first thing they did was to put him on a morphine drip; when he arrived they were horrified and reckoned that the journey had been so bad that he would die in 6 hours. He lasted 3 days but in peace and we were al there 24 hours a day.
You can have good hospitals such as Jo experioenced but when you find a bad one there are grounds for euthanasia.

[englishangel]

I hope you mean euthanasia of the hospital David.

[Jo]

It varies even within the same hospital. I'm so sorry you had such a horrendous experience with your son, David. No-one should ever have to go through that. I'm afraid that during some of dad's earlier hospital stays, on different wards, I had to make copious use of the fact that I work for the NHS and know its procedures, what terminology to use, who to complain to, etc. Although I'm not a clinician, the staff took me seriously when they knew I wasn't going to let them away with stuff. It really shouldn't have to be like that. Thankfully I barely needed to do that during his last stay, as it was a lovely ward and the staff were great. A lot of it is down to the individual ward manager although ultimately the buck stops with the hospital itself.

[englishangel]

My mother is currently undergoing a course of treatment which is across many different disciplines and every single member of staff we have met is going out of their way to help, not making her feel 'past it' or anything and she is now over 80. I doubt a member of the Royal family would receive better treatment and care.

None if which is relevant but I thought you would just like to know

[Jo]

You're right, I'm afraid we have gone a bit off topic from Idgie's original request, but I am glad to know your mother is receiving good treatment. That's as it should be but sadly it's still something to be commented on when it happens

Back to the original question though... I have very mixed feelings about euthanasia. In an ideal world I would support it, but I really worry about old or very ill people who feel a burden to their family saying they would like an assisted death when really they wouldn't but they feel it's the appropriate thing to say/do. I don't know how you prevent that. I think - and it's not ideal, but maybe the most practical - that the current situation may be best where it's technically illegal but compassion and leniency is shown in individual cases when it can be proved that the person was in severe pain and/or had no quality of life.

[Angela Woodford]

I've been thinking hard how to reply to this. Brought up in a fanatically Evangelical household, I desperately longed to avoid enforced Christianity. Escaping with relief to the more formal C of E at CH, I learned after leaving, whilst training as a nurse, the importance of sensitivity to individual faith whilst somebody is dying. Or, indeed, to support the wishes of a terminally ill patient who is alone and without faith.

Euthenasia. If a person wishes to end their life - if they are in a realistic state of mind to make that decision - if life holds no more for them or inevitable death awaits them, I believe they have that right. But it's a burden (maybe) for those who have enabled them to make that decision. It's an individual thing.

Here are some memories.

The first death (1973!) in which I was involved as a student nurse was that of a middle-aged man with a concerned and loving family. He had cardiac problems. He was confined to bedrest and I and my fellow student Stella were "in charge" of his care. We'd been student nurses for all of two weeks. Mr P had asked for a commode and we had drawn his curtains ready. All on his own he'd got out of bed, struggled for the commode, and whilst getting out of bed on his own , had collapsed and died. It was dreadful. We felt so guilty, so responsible - why hadn't we watched him all the time? Stella and I wept and wept. Our tutor was summoned to make tea for us and the family! We all cried together! The family said that they would rather he had died trying to do something for himself! He had been an independent guy. Then we all cried again.

As a new staff nurse, I was in night-duty charge of a female medical ward. One patient who seemed particularly frail - again a cardiac patient - was linked up to various monitors, catheter in place, and was due for night sedation. I was pushing round the drug trolley, and noted that her night medication had been changed by the Houseman. She was unusually bright-eyed. I offered her the different tablets with her hot-milk-drink. Her eyes began to flicker with nystagmus. There was a strange smell of burnt sugar around the bed. She threw her tablets at me, and from her came a man's voice which said "Do not deceive this child!" She leaped from her bed, pulled out all her attachments and assumed various grotesque postures. I shouted for somebody to get the on-call doctor, and restrained her, as various other voices shouted obscenties from within her. Eventually, I spent the night with her - she'd had a ridiculous amount of Largactil for a little old lady - strapped down to a mattress in a side room. She ripped her oxygen mask to fragments with her hands, and hit me again and again. I went home in the morning (black and blue) wondering how she would be the next night - but in the morning, friends from her Spiritualist Church had taken her home, where she had quickly died. Death - but who knew how?

Many years on, I appreciated that death can be supported by believing that it is part of the life process and that the most profound part the living can play in the part of the terminally ill is in relief of pain, and in spiritual support; religiously and/or humanistically Nowadays, there is the syringe driver, which enables a measured dose of anagesia to be delivered at the click of a button, often at the decision of the patient themself. When morphine is given, it depresses the respiritory centres which can result in an accelerated and hopefully reduced pain free death. Hospices are particularly expert in the adminstation of analgesic cocktails; far more than are general hospitals.

I was working in a small private hospital and had been asked to "special" Mrs B, who in her late 50s was a tragically early terminal patient. Her circulatary system was no longer functional - she was horribly oedematous, which meant that even i/v intravenous analgesia had little effect. She was fighting death with all her remaining strength. The family were begging the physician to end her agony. But there was little more he could do. It was down to me to make her as "comfortable" as possible. How I wished that she could die more quickly with her family around her.

In a small community hospital, I was nursing Constance, who was a devout Christian. She was dying of terminal cancer which had resulted in malodorous tumours all over her scalp. Horrible, horrible for a fastidious lady. She had dressings all over her scalp, which looked terrible, but when I found several pretty scarves in her locker I was able to craft them into a rather flattering turban effect for when she could sit up. Constance was due for some treatment one morning, but as she appeared to be dozing, I crept up quietly. She woke up suddenly. "Oh!" she said. "I'm back! Bother it!" I must have looked a bit baffled.
"It's just that I had gone to Heaven!" she said. "It was so lovely.I can't describe it! I had no more pain. And then I woke up and I was back here!" Constance died peacefully the next day. I can't help hoping she was granted a little taste of Heaven, prior to her arrival. She had so looked forward to death, and it came to her as a welcomed fulfillment.

This was such a good death, accepted and longed for. I have seen patients in a state of dementia when their personality seemed to split and fragment; no longer themselves but changed in the most terrible ways.

When I was the other side of the situation - my own parents' deaths -

My father died in hospital, of kidney failure and septicaemia. It was tricky! By the bedside were my mother and my godmother; his girlfriend since I could remember. Both wanted to be in charge of his deathbed! One night, he pulled out his nasogastric tube, his i/v infusion and his catheter - he'd never wanted to be "kept alive". The nursing staff replaced them all, even shaving off his little moustache which he'd cultivated with a Poirot-like care. The look of death was on his face, and my sister and I protested at the prolongation of his life. He knew it, and we knew it. He wanted to die, and did so, privately, when the women in his life had been urged to go home and get some sleep. If he could have chosen to die long before all that suffering, he would have.

I was so grateful to the nurses who cared for my mother, who had had first a small stroke, and then one more massive. She was deeply comatose. She was immaculately changed, turned and tidied, but I knew from her face, she was longing to die. I had some manicure things in my bag. I filed and shaped her nails and creamed the cold hands which had always been so battered and careworn. I'm so glad I did that for her.

Euthenasia! I can't help thinking that an individual should be able to choose death when life becomes unendurable for them, or if they are unable to make that choice for themselves, that we should bear in mind the preferences they may have expressed according to their own beliefs.

Angela

[Urgh-My-Pancreas]

thankyou so much everyone!
i defianately have more than enough opinions and views to do one fiiiiiine peice of C/W

it's been wonderful to hear all these stroies and i'm sorry if anyone felt obliged to conjure up painful memories, to eveyone who shared thier expeirences, a really big big thankyou!

and even though i have lots and lots of info, feel free to continue the thread if you want!

xxx

[Jo]

Gosh Munch, you really do have a talent for writing. The only other person I know who can write so descriptively and movingly, and with so much attention to odd but important details, was also a nurse. I wonder if it's something that comes from the experiences that nursing exposes you to.

[Ajarn Philip]

I have to echo the last post and add that Angela's personal observations struck a deep chord with me. I won't add to the depression factor, but I will say that I'm not remotely interested in the official view of any religious body representing any denomination of any religion, all of whom apparently have a direct line to God, but appear to be told different things.

This is inevitably a very personal decision, based on very personal experiences, but if I ever decide that my own life should end, I'll make that decision for good reasons and would rather not be told by anyone that they 'know better'.