Posted on 01/21/2019 4:30:54 PM PST by Kaslin
. Our protocol did not allow us not to do everything we could to revive someone who did not have a DNR
Hubby retired from our fire department with 34 years. He ran thousands and thousands of medical aids in that time. Our department has the same rules...do everything you can. It keeps the firefighters from having to make that decision but you’re right, sometimes it’s just wrong. There were a few cases that haunted him.
For the nursing staff his derelict treatment had everything to do with his DNR. To a person they deliberately ignored his medical condition and well being, reasoning he was dying and any effort to prolong his death was counter to his wishes. This is a well documented case that the local VA is pursuing.
Still no correlation to the DNR.
In my neck of the Upstate woods it’s called a MOLST. And it’s different from a DNR. Our family members have had both. FWIW. :-)
Hadn't heard of MOLST (Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment). Here's info on that: https://molst.org/
As in all things of this nature, one is advised to get it properly certified. Seek legal counsel if you are financially able. In my instance, I have legal benefits through my employer.
And folks should be willing to review periodically and change any/all forms/documents if needed. And make sure that any medical providers have correct, current paperwork on file. And if you don’t like the choices offered, feel feel to improvise. IOW, specify certain points, change options if what’s written isn’t what’s wanted/needed/appropriate. People are different and one size does NOT fit all.
Clear communication is key.
More information about POLST, statewide.
Thank you for your service. I did as you have. All 4 Specialist and Primary as well as the hospital we normally use have copies.
What I fear are Falls, this anti Opioid craze has gone to far, at 70, with severe Spinal degeneration, Stenosis, and OP, breaking bones is easy to do. Getting a Pain shot is a criminal act. I’ve been lucky so far, but if you don’t treat the Uncontrolled sudden sustained Pain you can send me into a Heart attack, blow either the Mitral valve leak or the Enlarged heart. As a Gastro patient BP meds are not going to happen, they’d cause a bleeding ulcer. Only Pain spikes the BP. 1 mg Dilaudid won’t bring it down. Last trip I was offered 2 Blacklisted pain meds, and told Dilaudid was illegal. That is how stupid ER nurses and PA’s are. NO doctor. Rules are not Law. 1 shot is not going to make you a Junkie. Nor do I want that Steroid injection so I can get a Physio order. Don’t want the 3 day Migraine, or more bone destruction, and the carp doesn’t work, never has never will. Medicare/Tricare Insist. So do most ins.
Thanks! I really hate those one size fits all forms. That’s close to what NYS has, in subject matter if not form. For one family member we wrote a number of changes.
So, do you have an explanation for why my mother was revived two times and was attempted to be revived yet another time? Here’s mine: She was in a nursing home and nobody there really cared. They just do what they do because that’s what they get paid to do. Are you saying that they actually cared for my mother and wanted to disregard his DNR multiple times? Oh, by the way, does your explanation cover the lose of her wedding ring when I went to gather her belongings?
“Life is sacred.”
It’s ironic that many Christians who say they believe in an after-life, cling on to this one as long as possible as though it were their only life. And, that many atheists who say they believe this is their only life, are o.k. with suicide, no less allowing death to occur naturally.
I will not judge anybody for what they do with their money to perpetuate their life. That choice is sacred, and if people cannot make that choice, life is reduced a bit toward servitude. But, I won’t either judge somebody choosing to preserve their wealth for their heirs or for the benefit of mankind through a church or a charity. These are among the most important choices that many of us will make.
We’ve come a long way since Luther argued with the Catholics over whether suicide is an unforgivable mortal sin. Luther apparently understood that suicide is often the result of demons in the mind, or what we’d say is depression. Castigating suicide as an unforgivable mortal sin might be justified on utilitarian grounds since it will save some people from committing suicide during a period of depression. But, this isn’t the same thing as saying it (suicide) actually is an unforgivable mortal sin. It’s a slight of hand, justified on utilitarian grounds. A white lie.
But, once you start getting into utilitarian justifications, all kinds of lies - and slavery - becomes possible. On utilitarian grounds, we can’t allow old people, in terminal conditions, to die of a heart attack, but we must revive them, because this communicates to the ignorant masses of people that life - the mere breathing aspect of life - is sacred.
But, what about living as a moral creature, making choices, including the choice to not spend your money to nothing when you are in a terminal condition, or the choice - if you’re on Medicaid - to not spend the entire country into bankruptcy?
Congratulations to your husband. I reached my limit at 25. I didn't retire on a disability, but I was starting to have health problems related to stress and lack of sleep, high blood pressure etc... I knew that I had gone as far as I should and retired as soon as I could do so without a penalty. I occasionally miss being with the other guys (and gals) but have been feeling much better. It was a different job when I started... these days people call for every little thing. I was on a “big city” department, so we were constantly running 24 hours a day.
When recently I visited the station that I spent my last 5 years at... there was only one guy on duty that I knew. And he was trying to figure out how to get out before he reached his optimal retirement age. He and I both fly small planes, he was really into skydiving. My brother is an airline pilot and he wanted to know if I could put in a good word for him.
This sounds like a clear cut case of abuse. I am glad that it is being investigated by the VA. This sounds like total nonsense perpetrated by incompetent and uncaring a-holes. I hope that they get much more than a slap on the wrist.
I get it. KCFD is a different department now too. Hubby was a wildfire expert and ran our counties hot shot crew when he was younger. Then when he made Captain and promoted out from that station he was still on the first strike team out to anywhere and everywhere. He’s paying for it now. His spine and knees have fallen apart and he’s totally disabled. Most people have no idea what firefighters actually do. His last station, he was there 11 years, was the second busiest in the department. Mostly medical aids.
My 17 year old grandson is crazy about firefighting and is already very active in a rural volunteer department. He was very excited the other day because he said he had a “job offer” for next summer. He will be wildland firefighting. Around here that means a lot of hard and risky work for minimum wage. But he loves it anyway. He won an award at a competition at our State Fire Academy and got to shake the hand of our absolutely awful leftist nutball governor.
My daughter's a CEN working at a Level 1 Trauma Center. Before that, she was a Paramedic at a Fire Station. She would probably agree with everything you said.
She enjoys Emergency Medicine more than any other field of nursing, but has told me some stories...the thing that drives her nuts are the "regulars" who treat the ER like an office visit, or who clearly don't need to be there, like the Gen-X'er who complained that her pain was a "10". Her problem? A hang nail.
One time when she was still working the Fire Station, she and three other first responders were carrying a morbidly obese woman down the stairs in a special seated carrier. My daughter was at one of the two bottom rungs of the carrier when the woman let-er-rip with her bladder.
On the other end of the spectrum, her greatest satisfaction is helping children - as long as the parents let her do her job and don't behave like they know more than the nurse! :-)
You really enter dangerous territory when you start making these decisions based soley on money. Anything outside of a 100 percent decision by only the patient themselves will always usher in bad motives. Secondly when we keep treating and trying to heal the sick ultimately treatments become more advanced and more effective. Not at first of course but we must keep the drive to prolong life and thus improve life for as long as we can. We are just starting to blaze the trail of medical knowledge. We can cure cancer and other diseases but not when we throw in the towel. We did not get to this point by giving up.
I know that type of “stair chair” very well. We had a morbidly obese Polynesian man who was dead at the top of some stairs. I had requested over the radio that the Medical Examiner bring their gurney that was designed for heavy loads. But somehow the message didn't get through. So the lady showed up with a super flimsy backboard with legs with wheels at the ends. We managed to get the dead guy into a jumbo sized body bag and dragged him down the stairs and onto this flimsy contraption.
My driver and I were across from each other at the front of the thing and my 3rd man and the lady from the medical examiners office were opposite each other near the feet. My driver and I were holding the thing up with our arms stiffened as we rolled it toward the back of the medical examiner's truck. We expected it to collapse and of course it did and my 3rd man and the lady basically let it go and stepped back, but my driver and I had a good grip on the thing and it caused our heads to bang together hard before we dropped it also.
It made a loud noise like two coconuts when our foreheads slammed together and the lady screamed out, “OH MY GOD!!! Are they going to be alright!”
My third man calmly said to her, “Don't worry mam, they are both Republicans.” The two of us were both a little dazed, but this made us laugh so hard that we forgot our discomfort and managed to get the mangled contraption into the back of her vehicle.
A few months later my driver had to have an aneurysm removed from the front of his brain that was the size of an egg and I always wondered if it might have been related to this incident. He came back to work, but he had to retire soon afterwards because of ongoing issues related to his surgery.
The problem is that patients and their families are easily led in whatever direction that the doctors or staff want them to go.
I did a stupid thing. I was ignoring fairly bad abdominal pain for a couple weeks. It seemed to get a little better for a couple days then it became worse. When my complexion started turning an unusual shade my wife said that if I didn't go get it checked out that she was going to shoot me herself and put me out my misery.
I was told that my appendix had ruptured the week before and that if I didn't have emergency surgery that I was going to die. This didn't particularly impress me at the time. I had heard similar statements made to people by paramedics especially, who were trying to convince someone to take a ride to the hospital with them instead of having their family drive them in. In most of these cases there would have been no problem with the person taking their own transportation to the hospital other than it violated our protocol.
So when I protested the death “threats” and asked if they couldn't just give me some antibiotics and promised I would come back when I was feeling better... the doctors and nurses were incredulous. They just couldn't believe that someone would not automatically be convinced by their warning. And it turns out that they were right. I had crap all over my insides. They had to take all my intestines out and wash out my entire abdominal cavity. It took them hours. And it turns out that I was lucky to be alive.
But as a patient how was I to know? I just said, “OK, you guys win. Do whatever you have to do.” But I didn't actually take it seriously until a few months later when one of my probationaries told me about his dad who had almost an identical experience. His dad was in excellent health, but he died from the infection from a ruptured appendix that he had ignored a little too long.
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