When it comes to medical treatment, how much is too much?
Are we treating loved ones with terminal illnesses inhumanely?
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100628/ap_on_he_m ... final_daysBy the time my great-grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, it had spread too much and the doctors decided she was too old (98) for any kind of intense treatment, so they set up hospice in my grandmother (her daughter)'s home, and she visited with her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, staying lucid and sharp tongued until she died. At first I was upset that they didn't do more for her, but I soon realized that the measures they took were the best they could given her situation, and at least she got to die in peace, in comfortable, familiar surroundings.
But I have seen other people's family members treated again and again for a condition that won't get any better, and denying them the right the die peacefully, at home with their loved ones.
I have also seen the opposite of this, where hospitals send a young patient home prematurely, when there was still more they could do to save a life instead of "giving up." I had a friend when I was a freshman in high school who came down with a severe bout of pneumonia, and instead of waiting to make sure he stabilized and kicked the infection, they sent him home early, and he died a few days later. He was 15 at the time, and I still have a very hard time believing that there was nothing else they could do for him. Young people don't have to die of pneumonia anymore, and if he wasn't well enough to leave the hospital, he shouldn't have. It's one thing to attend a funeral for someone who died after almost a century of life, but it's quite another to attend a funeral of someone who didn't even get to graduate high school, especially when you and the deceased are the same age. That was one of the more painful moments of my childhood.
I guess I'd have to say that I see two sides to this coin. On the one hand, if it is clear that medical treatments will not help a terminal illness and will buy only weeks of time as opposed to letting someone spend their last moments in peace and comfort, I'm all for letting the family take their loved one off of treatment and back home to die in peace. But when someone young and otherwise virile gets sick and needs continued medical attention but is sent home before the illness can be totally eradicated, I think that is a problem and the doctors' ethics should be questioned.
Either way it's a subject that is definitely up for debate, and I thought our lovely BookTalk members might have something to say. So what do you guys think about this article?
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