Posted by Dinah on December 12, 2004, at 18:24:08
In reply to Re: Any ethicists out there? » Dinah, posted by TofuEmmy on December 12, 2004, at 18:10:23
That would be the good reason for what they're doing, Emmy. And I'd like to think that was why they're doing it.
But I sometimes wonder if it's more that they just are in a hospice state of mind, so to speak. That they, for perfectly understandable reasons, fall into a routine. I kind of got that idea from almost everyone there. Instant intimacy on their parts, lots of honeys and dears, and not a whole lot of "realness". I just wonder if that pervades their medical thinking as well.
I'm not actually thinking that they are malevolent or anything. Just that they aren't flexible. For example, the last time they told me this was the natural progression of the disease and that he had just gotten worse was when he really just had a buildup of unneccessary morphine in his system (fortunately my dad isn't in any real pain yet). It took a heck of a lot of squawking on my part to get the doctor to step back, take a look, and say "Yes, it's the morphine. his liver can't handle it." I guess that incident more than any other made me uneasy with them. I think they would have just kept giving him morphine for the leg cramps he's been using tylenol for.
And this is not a nonprofit hospice. It's for-profit. I'm enough of an optimist about human nature to hope that doesn't make a big difference. Or even that it would be in their economic best interests to keep the customer alive...
poster:Dinah
thread:428310
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20041209/msgs/428487.html