As I read your March 4 front-page warning, “Health costs heading upward,” I thought of a neurosurgeon who operated on my beloved husband, the conductor Charles Ansbacher. She told me that if I’d panicked and called 911 rather than relying on the magnificent hospice group guiding us through his passage, he would have had no fewer than 11 more “procedures,” including another brain surgery, at the end of his 67 years.
Charles might have lived a few more weeks — a few more horrific weeks.
Comments
First read this: then comment. http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/
As a Hositalist for many years, I spend time in the ICU and w/ very ill patients.
The nurses, the doctors, the physical therpists, the pharmacists all, will ( almost to a person), express sadness when a family insists on aggressive, invasive, uncomfortable procedures/care that often only brieflyprolongs the death of the patient.
Conversely, I will have a 90 yr old healthy, vibrant patient who reads, plays tennis, meets w/ friends. I will aggressively advocate for their receiving a procedure that will return them to their pre-hospital life.
The point: People are individually variable as they age. It is appropriate to do the procedures/agg. care in some cases, and actually cruel and inappropriate in others.
Woman asking Barack Obama "My mother is 100 years old. She's still vibrant and full of life. She just needs a pacemaker' Obama "Just give her a Pain Pill"