Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Like many older people I know, my notarized DNR, provided by and on file with my insurance company, local hospital, primary doctor, and medical power of attorney, includes standard language permitting organ harvesting.
How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)
41–50 of 170 posts
Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)
#42> Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. I’ve had hundreds of people brought to me in the emergency room after getting CPR. Exactly one, a healthy man who’d had no heart troubles (for those who want specifics, he had a ‘tension pneumothorax’), walked out of the hospital. This point has been made by many medically trained people over decades. It's a very energetic…
Edit: this is not meant to be snarky. This is a real question.
Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)
#43> Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. I’ve had hundreds of people brought to me in the emergency room after getting CPR. Exactly one, a healthy man who’d had no heart troubles (for those who want specifics, he had a ‘tension pneumothorax’), walked out of the hospital. This point has been made by many medically trained people over decades. It's a very energetic…
I myself punctured and collapsed both lungs. My thinking is: if there's a reasonable chance I'll survive, go for it. If there's not, stop trying to prolong the inevitable. That said, when I had the accident they told my wife to get there as fast as she could because I was likely not going to make it, and that was thirty years ago. So: if they're confident I'm going to die, don't try to prolong it :-)
Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)
#44On the spectrum or go gentle vs fight, I'd have to say, now is the time is history where "fight" makes the most sense. This is not abstract for me. I have not one, but two forms of cancer. Both were considered incurable when I was diagnosed. Both have treatments now that, IN SOME PEOPLE, lead to remission. I still don't know which group I am, but I'd be dead from either one by now, if I hadn't elected to treat. New t…
Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)
#45On the spectrum or go gentle vs fight, I'd have to say, now is the time is history where "fight" makes the most sense. This is not abstract for me. I have not one, but two forms of cancer. Both were considered incurable when I was diagnosed. Both have treatments now that, IN SOME PEOPLE, lead to remission. I still don't know which group I am, but I'd be dead from either one by now, if I hadn't elected to treat. New t…
Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)
#46On the spectrum or go gentle vs fight, I'd have to say, now is the time is history where "fight" makes the most sense. This is not abstract for me. I have not one, but two forms of cancer. Both were considered incurable when I was diagnosed. Both have treatments now that, IN SOME PEOPLE, lead to remission. I still don't know which group I am, but I'd be dead from either one by now, if I hadn't elected to treat. New t…
Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)
#47On the spectrum or go gentle vs fight, I'd have to say, now is the time is history where "fight" makes the most sense. This is not abstract for me. I have not one, but two forms of cancer. Both were considered incurable when I was diagnosed. Both have treatments now that, IN SOME PEOPLE, lead to remission. I still don't know which group I am, but I'd be dead from either one by now, if I hadn't elected to treat. New t…
Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)
#48> Even when the right preparations have been made, the system can still swallow people up. One of my patients was a man named Jack... He explained to me that he never, under any circumstances, wanted to be placed on life support machines again. > Even with all his wishes documented, Jack hadn’t died as he’d hoped. The system had intervened. One of the nurses, I later found out, even reported my unplugging of Jack to…
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Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Your statement is confusing. Please explain. DNR means let me die and do not intervene in that process. Which is what hospitals would want if they were secretly killing people to harvest organs, right?
OK, maybe a panel of neurologists looking at an ECG are going to be biased if you are stable but not reviving. But it's a panel of neurologists looking at an ECG. Mistakes are rare.
Before getting to the ICU, you've got the paramedics, triage nurse, and ED team, all of whom are also hypothetically going to be biased just as much to get you stabilised if you're a potential donar. Is the paramedic going to run a red light? Will the ED doctor work an hour past their shift when they can just read out the time and go home?
The info isn't on your license to tell the panel of neurologists. It's there so that the paramedics know to switch on the lights even if they think it might be a hopeless case.
Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)
#50On the spectrum or go gentle vs fight, I'd have to say, now is the time is history where "fight" makes the most sense. This is not abstract for me. I have not one, but two forms of cancer. Both were considered incurable when I was diagnosed. Both have treatments now that, IN SOME PEOPLE, lead to remission. I still don't know which group I am, but I'd be dead from either one by now, if I hadn't elected to treat. New t…