I remember when you wrote about your dad on your blog. It was heartrending then, and it's heartrending now.
My mom had a cerebral hemorrhage at age 53, and ended up like your dad: on a vent, with no brain activity. Like you, I am the eldest child. Unlike you, I was only 32. What did I know? How was I supposed to make that decision? Thankfully, one of my sisters is a nurse and worked for an organ bank at the time, so she helped with decision making, once she arrived from Texas.
End of life counseling? Absolutely. Patients deserve to know what is coming, and need the information to decide what they want to happen. In addition, it's a lot better for the patient to decide, and make those plans known, than leave it to family members to guess.
But like you, I still pray that we made the right decision. Even though there was no brain activity, I still second guess. Did we deny God the opportunity for a miracle? How long should we wait for that?
A death panel of one, at the Image Journal blog.
Also posted on the Image blog post:
ReplyDeleteAndy,
I remember when you wrote about your dad on your blog. It was heartrending then, and it's heartrending now.
My mom had a cerebral hemorrhage at age 53, and ended up like your dad: on a vent, with no brain activity. Like you, I am the eldest child. Unlike you, I was only 32. What did I know? How was I supposed to make that decision? Thankfully, one of my sisters is a nurse and worked for an organ bank at the time, so she helped with decision making, once she arrived from Texas.
End of life counseling? Absolutely. Patients deserve to know what is coming, and need the information to decide what they want to happen. In addition, it's a lot better for the patient to decide, and make those plans known, than leave it to family members to guess.
But like you, I still pray that we made the right decision. Even though there was no brain activity, I still second guess. Did we deny God the opportunity for a miracle? How long should we wait for that?
All I can say, it sucks...