“How Do You Want to Die?”
I had taken my mother to her internal medicine specialist, she had an earache, and as an aside, had mentioned she no longer is taking Lipitor, because it gave her problems with her legs, but should she go back on it?
“How do you want to die?” asked the doctor, and we just looked at her with our mouths hanging open. It seems kind of a bald question, doesn’t it? But the doctor was entirely serious.
“Doctors ask themselves this all the time,” she continued. “Do you want to end up in a nursing home, or living with your children, as your body continues to fail and your money dwindles away and you can do less and less every day?”
“I want to die in my sleep, at home” my 87 year old Mom responded.
“Then you want to have a heart attack,” the doctor said. “That’s what really happens when a person dies in their sleep, their heart fails.”
“That’s your choice,” she said. “Doctors discuss it all the time. Most of us want to go while life is still good, and we want to go quickly. We see too many people prolonging their lives and regretting it.”
I’ve never heard a doctor speak so bluntly before. We’re still kind of in shock. It has definitely given us something to think about.
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Too blunt! I remember when my cousin was in the hospital for pancreatic cancer, he went into a coma and woke up a day later. He was so quiet, kinda different, observing and not talking much. Doctor came in, walked around his bed, barely examined him and said (in front of his mother, wife, and brother) “I give him two days” and left!!!
Sometimes its good to be honest, but its how you say it and how you deliver it!!
I say three cheers for the doctor putting it that way. I think too many doctors push for extending life at all costs, whether there is quality or not. I think more people should think about that question and make their own decisions rather than blindly going with what the doctors say.
Ansam, Holy Cow! That was more than blunt, that was wholly insensitive, to the patient, to his family. Like you, I prefer a little more mercy, a little discretion.
Momcat, I appreciate her honesty and what she said; I have also seen that most retirement/ rehabilitation /long term care facilities are run on a profit basis, and that once you start losing capabilities, you also start losing control over your own medications, schedule, etc. The facilities have their own medical personnel, who sometimes switch medications to cut costs, and they don’t even tell the patient! My Dad had reactions to some medications, and was on the medications he was on for a reason. Fortunately, he was smart enough to know what he was taking and to insist on his own brands. There was one diuretic that – literally – made him crazy, delusional. It was pretty awful. I don’t want to end up like that.
That is a tough question to hear. But I think that question is one that we need to be asking ourselves when we are in out 20’s on up. How we want to die should determine how we want to live.
For this kind of attitude doctors get beaten up here in Kuwait .
Doctors can contemplate any which way they like to die themselves but not to scare the heck out of the patient who came seeking medication and compassion in the first place
how about this for a reply ” I wanna die after i see you doctor and all the other stupid doctors in the world sdie of strangulation by your stethoscope you stupid F@*#”
That’s a good doctor. It’s always shocking to talk of our mortality but how we live and why we live are important questions.
I was at a lecture a few years ago about Islam and medicine. The whole concept of believing that a death “date” has been dealt at a life’s creation changes the whole focus of medicine at large but specially “end of life” care.
There was also a very interesting nytimes article about this published this year. Found it: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20pacemaker-t.html?ref=magazine
Suwannee Refugee – We totally agree. I really don’t like exercise, I am by nature sedentary – love reading, quilting, mostly things that don’t require a lot of movement. And realizing that movement makes a big difference, we have elected to exercise regularly – and we try to eat well. AdventureMan actually does better than I do, most of the time, he eats veggies and legumes, and then only occasionally a big juicy hamburger. I eat fish and chicken more than beef, but we really work on the living well part because we have seen what happens if you get old with serious problems – circulation, kidney, heart, diabetes . . . . if we can forestall some of those, we will try to do so. And then . . . there’s genetics . . .
LOL, Daggero, I know you are right; I used to wonder what the whole story was every time I heard of doctors getting beat up in Kuwait, usually at the Jahra hospital, but not exclusively. Dangerous job, being a doctor in Kuwait.
Thank you, G. As usual, a thoughtful and provoking reply. 🙂 There was an article also in the New Yorker on How We Age, and it said (among many things) we can live long and prosper until we take a serious fall; once we break a hip or something major, life goes downhill. Very depressing article.
There are many decent ways to ask that question but asking it straight forward like that is not one of them not to mention breaking it down for an old person like if it’s going to make a difference.
Eventually we’re going to die and how it’s going to happen, mercifully, remains a mystery. We all fantasize of peaceful death but what if someone knows he/she is going to die a cruel death? I guess we’d see a lot of suicide attempts.
It gave me something to think about, Mac. I don’t take any medications – not yet. But people around my age are taking a lot of medications – statins, heart medications, blood pressure medications, diabetes medications – and many of the treatments/medications have unpleasant side effects, like making your muscles feel weak, or making you ache all over or even go a little loopy. It’s important to know all the possibilities, and not just take a bunch of medications – especially if you are taking things that can interact.
The doctor made a good point, it was just . . . pretty blunt!
[…] AdventureMan says choosing to eat fried pies is part of How Do You Want to Die? and that he is willing to sacrifice the few minutes those bites of fried pie might have cost him. […]