On an average day in Massachusetts, 144 people die. One is an infant. A few are children. Some are middle-aged, most are over 75.
These observations lead a 32-page report, released nearly two years ago by a state-convened expert panel charged with recommending improvements to Massachusetts’s lagging system for end-of-life care.
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My mother, when she was in her late 60's, sent to her doctors and children a formal letter making it VERY clear that she would refuse extraordinary treatment at the end of her natural life. That does not mean she rejects medical care: she had open heart surgery in her early 70's. Hospice is designed to manage end of life. Family and medical practicioners don't want to give up too early on a patient, but I know from my father's experience that medical professionals can shy away from the difficult conversations with families regarding prognosis. And, the result can be a great deal of high cost medical care with little to no measurable improvement in patient mortality. We expend a lot of health care dollars at the end of people's lives. Let's make sure it is spent wisely and not wasted. My grandmother had in-home hospice care at the end of her life, and passed in her own bedroom. She rejected treatment for a brain tumor that may have extended the length of her life, but that would have been debilitating, and gotten her 6 months at age 89. Instead, she spent it with family, with her spirit intact.
saw "Amour" yesterday.....it dealt with end of life and ultimate love in a brilliant way....masterpiece
The unsung prophet Palin foretold the coming of the "death panel" where discussions of this sort may take place instead of true patriots accessing their gun collection for the ultimate solution.
What gets me is the doctor with all that medical training, the one you look to for professional (and expensive) advice, looks at you and says "What do YOU suggest?"
See www.helenbousquet.com
Steward Health Care System is in the money making business, and could care less about your health.
The SAME COMPANY that owns them, owns the gun manufacturing company used to make the gun that killed all those little kids in Newtown.
And they have the gall to own hospitals. It's sick. Let's all thank our Governor for appointing one of their executives as our new Mass health secretary. Glad to know a former Steward exec is in charge of policing...Steward Health.