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How Doctors Die
81–90 of 184 posts
Re: How Doctors Die
#82I was in Best Buy earlier today and the sales guy who was trying to sell me a TV reminded me a lot of the doctors/residents I was dealing with during a few weeks I spent caring for a family member at Mass General Hospital a couple years ago. I don't think they do it consciously, but doctors try to sell you on their philosophies for healthcare. But it doesn't matter. You're sitting in a small room with dim lights and…
People frequently choose #1 half way through #2.
Re: How Doctors Die
#83I was married to a doctor for 10 years. Before that, I lived with my aunt, also a doctor. The one thing that absolutely shocked me is how they thought about aging and death. I kept reminding them their goal should be to find cures for everything, no matter how hard it seems. I approach every engineering problem as solvable. Maybe I can't solve it right now with the tools I have. Maybe I can't figure out a way to solv…
Every single one of us are going to die at some point. If you were a doctor and your goal is to "find cures for everything" then your eventual success rate over your career would be 0. Do you realize how hard it would be to do that for your entire career if you approached it thinking you could beat cancer?
You don't say in your post if your relatives were practitioners or research doctors, but if you're putting it on a practitioner to think they can beat the (studied) odds every day it is unfair in the least.
We are greatly indebted to the people who choose careers this stressful that benefit everyone else. You don't need to blame them for the current state of medical science. Trust me, they do it to themselves more than enough.
Re: How Doctors Die
#84I was in Best Buy earlier today and the sales guy who was trying to sell me a TV reminded me a lot of the doctors/residents I was dealing with during a few weeks I spent caring for a family member at Mass General Hospital a couple years ago. I don't think they do it consciously, but doctors try to sell you on their philosophies for healthcare. But it doesn't matter. You're sitting in a small room with dim lights and…
Probably most of us belong into "Dum spiro, spero" category, but I have known some non-doctors who have taken option no.1 (painless death) and even accelerated it.
"Dum spiro spero" => "While I breathe, I hope" - for those of us who don't remember their Latin training, myself included.
Re: How Doctors Die
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans are notoriously bad at predicting what will make them happy.
Humans who haven't thought about it aren't, but when you've thought about it you can predict very well.
A decade of research into affective forecasting says otherwise. It shows that you'll only be good at predicting what makes you happy if you read studies about biases in affective forecasting. See "If money doesn't make you happy, then you probably aren't spending it right" http://dunn.psych.ubc.ca/files/2011/04/Journal-of-consumer-p...
Re: How Doctors Die
#86cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%... The site is down for me.
Here's a link to readability: http://www.readability.com/articles/5r2ckztm
Re: How Doctors Die
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally on board with cryonics, it's really depressing that it gets swept under the rug considering it probably has at least 5% chance of working for a patient suspended today. Though your excuses for presently avoiding it seem pretty flimsy unless you're really dirt poor (I'd wager unlikely), especially when life insurance payable to the cryonics company is cheap (you only need $28-$35k for CI) and so are membership…
Where did you get this "at least 5% chance of working" number for cryonics? It's at least 3 orders of magnitude lower than that: no one was recovered from that frozen state alive so far.
Your estimate hasn't any foundation either. The question is if we can recover people in the future. The chance of that is basically an unknown. However I'd put it above religion and similar things, which makes it worthwhile.
Re: How Doctors Die
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where did you get this "at least 5% chance of working" number for cryonics? It's at least 3 orders of magnitude lower than that: no one was recovered from that frozen state alive so far.
Your estimate hasn't any foundation either. The question is if we can recover people in the future . The chance of that is basically an unknown. However I'd put it above religion and similar things, which makes it worthwhile.
The chance that complex technology that has never been tested - works - is very close to zero.
That complex technology is freezing human bodies in attempt to preserve it for the future.
Even if in the future recovering technologies work - non-working first step (freezing) which is done today - will kill overall process.
Re: How Doctors Die
#89Never been a big tattoo fan, but after reading that, I might consider a big "NO CODE" tat on my chest.
Experience show that it's sometimes not enough, and if no explicit paperwork can be found medics will perform CPR anyway...
s/will perform/are obligated to perform/
In most cases, EMS in the field is operating under a fairly tightly defined set of protocols. Those protocols define what is or isn't a valid "Advanced Directive"
Re: How Doctors Die
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't imagine not doing #2 unless I'd also be non-functional during the extended life period. If I could read, use the Internet, write, talk to people, etc., it seems like it would be worth pain (which will end when you die, no matter what). The only case where I could see #1 being a reasonable choice is if #2 puts such hardship on those around you that their lives become much worse.
It is easy to say that pain would be worth dealing with but in reality the majority of the healthy public has no understanding of what true chronic pain entails. Ask anyone who has worked in long term or hospice care this question and you will likely find an overwhelming majority choosing option 1. The reality is that in the US death and dying are still anathema.
exactly, bingo! It's like saying u'll stay married forever when your hormones are raging.