When is it OK for Christians to withdraw life-support?

Christian Post ^ | 01/31/2020 | Dr. Richard Land

[trebb]

Ummm - drastic measures to preserve life take the natural order of things out of it...shouldn’t be anything wrong for someone to request nothing more than nutrition and fluid - even if only what they can ingest by mouth, and maybe something to keep them from suffering.

[Gman]

Thanks for the information.

[ro_dreaming]

I had to make this decision for my estranged wife this past September. We were separated, and she had filed for divorce (and was fired by her attorney for lack of communication, one of the major problems in our 18 year marriage). She had a massive hemorrhagic stroke, and had no higher brain function for 5 days. I obviously didn’t make this decision in a vacuum, as I had her brother drive in and we made the decision together - after he saw her, met with the doctor, etc.

She would have been 54 in 11 days.

Toughest decision I’ve ever had to make, bar none.

[Robert357]

Putting oneself in the hands of God and surrendering to his plan, should never be a problem. Killing yourself is never OK.

At least that is my opinion.

[fireman15]

It has been said that a good paramedic knows when to go balls to the wall on a code and when to slow walk and go through the motions on resuscitation efforts. I could not handle that choice.

My wife was a nurse and department head. The last multi-level skilled facility she worked at, she had one of my coworkers (who was an amazing paramedic who later became one of the assistant cheifs) come in and talk to the residents about DNR (do not resuscitate) paperwork. He explained to them the injuries that properly administered CPR does to the body of elderly patients and the likelihood that they will make a full recovery.

On the department that I worked for I was aware of no decision making process as you described where anyone received less effective CPR or defibrillation. The difference in CPR is that when someone is very fragile, we tried to be more gentle. On that type of person you can feel their ribs crunching and breaking loose from their sternum.

Normally people receiving chest compressions are unconscious, but we frequently assist the breathing with a bag valve mask on conscious patients. Our protocol was for everyone to receive the same amount of effort and I never was aware of any conscious decision making process by any of the paramedics or firefighters that I worked with based on their opinion of the likely long term outcome.

That said... their are huge differences in the abilities of paramedics and firefighters. The hands down worst person that I ever worked with was the head of our union. Because of his position he repeatedly got away with incompetence and malfeasance that put our department in severe legal jeopardy.

Government employee unions ensure that services provided will always be second rate... This is true in firefighting, policing, education, utilities, building departments, and health-care. Despite sincere efforts by dedicated individuals, the unions protect the incompetent, untrustworthy and even evil ones from being held responsible for their actions and this drags down the quality and consistency of services being provided.