The problem with this perspective in my opinion is that many times, especially for an elderly person, a small emergency can very quickly escalate into a life and death situation, and the outcome is not clear until it’s too late. you may enter the hospital thinking you have a decent outcome, but you end up with a bad outcome.
for example, nobody plans to go on a ventilator. But if you need one (like severe pneumonia), you’re already pretty messed up and you’re going to have a painful death with or without the tubes.
you’re going to have a painful death with or without the tubes
But I feel that was the main point at the start of the thread: if death is certain and going to be painful, why must we drag it out? Why is that additional lifespan (measured in days) so much more important than comfort?
There's a good article[1] on this topic that talks about how older doctors generally choose to forego lifesaving measures. I think about it a lot because it seems like when a professional who's in the best position to know the tradeoffs makes this kind of decision for themselves they probably understand the risk/reward better than you or me.
Plenty of people who make the sausage don't want to eat it.
I never wanted to go into medicine. Thus I do not believe the preferences of a typical older doctor represent my preferences in this respect.
I read an article once of a nurse who kept CPR going on her husband for somewhere around 2 hours until they could get him to a hospital that was able to restart his heart. I believe he ended up okay. CPR obviously isn't invasive tubing, but it's still kind of hard on the body.
I think that's the article that made me change my opinion on CPR. When the hospital asks me to sign the form indicating if I want to be resuscitated, I answer no without hesitation. It's harder when my vet asks before operating on my dog, but in the end I made the same call for my dog that I would make for myself - do not resuscitate.
> Yet families are often asked to make the call within 72 hours of someone sustaining a severe brain injury. Unless patients make a rapid recovery in the first few days, it's thought they are unlikely to survive or recover much at all.
> The data Sanders and colleagues analyzed tentatively suggest otherwise.
> The data revealed that 31 of the 56 brain trauma patients who stayed on life support died within six months; and 45 percent survived. Of the 25 patients who survived, more than 30 percent recovered enough in that same six-month period to have at least some independence in daily activities.
> Just four patients recovered 'fully' to how they functioned before their injury.
"some" is doing a lot of work in this sentence. Recovering enough to have "at least some" independence after several months is not a great outcome. That very likely means lifelong daily care is required.
I know. That objection was brought up in the first article I read on this issue. Still, depending on the care required, it's pretty bad to imply that someone is better off dead.
And 7% of the study subjects recovered completely.
The idea of living long term, near death, while medical expenses slowly eat away the savings I would prefer to leave to my loved ones makes me very unhappy.
for example, nobody plans to go on a ventilator. But if you need one (like severe pneumonia), you’re already pretty messed up and you’re going to have a painful death with or without the tubes.