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How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

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Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#161

Post by rimeice »

bonsai_spool wrote: post #149
rimeice wrote: post #125

I don’t think you have to be a doctor to come to this conclusion. After therapy I realised that the most traumatic thing that took the longest to get over wasn’t watching my Dad die, it was watching him suffer through futile attempts to prolong his life by a few days in intensive care. I wish the doctors had been clearer with us about his chances of survival, I wish we had been brave/knowledgable enough to accept tha…

> I wish the doctors had been clearer with us about his chances of survival What would they have done differently from what they actually did?

I think honestly they shied away from really clearly saying this was the end until a couple of hours before he died when really I believe it was clear at least a few days out. For some reason through their communication, bouncing between different doctors and clearly some overwhelming emotions on our part, we thought he had a chance of coming back from the brink so made some decisions in his behalf I wish we hadn’t.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#162

Post by fhdkweig »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #152
fhdkweig wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it is disingenuous to invoke "rightwing government", when a Franciscan friar was sneaking into the hospital trying to feed a starving woman [Terri], who was so hated by her husband that he would take extreme measures to get rid of her. I don't think he hated her, he just didn't want to be under the crushing medical debt to keep someone alive who wasn't really alive. And absolutely there was Rightwing government…

> someone alive who wasn't really alive. Wow what a completely horrible and deliberate misunderstanding of the facts. I hope that if you're ever in a state where all it takes to keep you alive is food and water, that people continue giving food and water to you, rather than seeking to starve you to death. Because someone who eats and drinks is alive, usually by definition, and what her husband sought was to kill her…

> Nobody, at the time or since, said that Schiavo "wasn't really alive" but rather, some people wanted her dead

I'm saying it. She was in "an irreversible permanent vegetative state". That is as close to dead as you can get. Even a coma is better. You can wake up from a coma, but this is an amount of brain damage where the part of the brain responsible for consciousness is dead and never coming back.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#163

Post by buran77 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #157
buran77 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's good to hear but that wasn't really the topic of the conversation. We were discussing people with life threatening illness where the treatment severely lowers quality of life for a very uncertain outcome. Do you think the "things to look forward to" would incentivize your parents to focus on clinging to life at the expense of drastically increased suffering and plummeting quality of life, or on maximizing the…

I was responding to "there's little to look forward to, they already lived through all the important milestones they could realistically see .." which seems to imply that by 80 life is over and not worth living.

> which seems to imply that by 80 life is over and not worth living.

That's a big leap you made. But I'll tell you what, this is a question you'll be able to answer when you are in your 80s, not your parents. I have a strong feeling you'll understand what I mean without needing to jump to conclusions.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#164

Post by illiac786 »

fhdkweig wrote: post #133
Alien1Being wrote: post #69

Last week one of my patients with preterminal NYHA Stage IV cardiac failure looked into euthanasia. He found predictably that it is now legal in my country but takes months and formidable legal resources to obtain it. Legalisation of euthanasia has, as everyone in the field warned multiple times, made it much harder to obtain and now requires a lot of time, effort and money. The well meaning, naive proponents of lega…

> The well meaning, naive proponents of legalisation of euthanasia have actually made things a lot harder for those who want it. That sounds like the actions of a politician who wants to claim they are for something while secretly trying to destroy it. It doesn't seem "well meaning" to me. That's what the US Republicans did to the ObamaCare act.

I think plain stupidity is more likely, no need for conspiracy.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#165

Post by illiac786 »

Alien1Being wrote: post #69

Last week one of my patients with preterminal NYHA Stage IV cardiac failure looked into euthanasia. He found predictably that it is now legal in my country but takes months and formidable legal resources to obtain it. Legalisation of euthanasia has, as everyone in the field warned multiple times, made it much harder to obtain and now requires a lot of time, effort and money. The well meaning, naive proponents of lega…

I am not following how it was better if it was illegal before. Illegally euthanising someone was not considered a homicide, how is that possible?

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#166

Post by tpoacher »

lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #159
tpoacher wrote: post #77

This article is making a LOT of "convenient" assumptions. For all we know, the more likely scenario is that Charlie, like a sizeable percentage of his doctor peers, was burnt out, tired, and depressed, did not really have an overwhelming (some might say "healthy") desire to survive (in fact, perhaps quite the opposite), and saw the cancer as a non-undignified quick "way out". Doctors (and medical professionals more g…

> For all we know, the more likely scenario is that Charlie, like a sizeable percentage of his doctor peers, was burnt out, tired, and depressed, did not really have an overwhelming (some might say "healthy") desire to survive (in fact, perhaps quite the opposite), and saw the cancer as a non-undignified quick "way out". Why do you consider it "more likely"? > Doctors (and medical professionals more generally) rank a…

It was widely known that doctors are at a considerably increased risk when I was studying medicine, enough to warn us and have professional wellbeing modules in the curriculum. Plus, it's a special population in having significantly different access to relatively covert means, making it more likely to go through with said ideation.

I have seen academic references in the past confirm it. I'm not about to waste time on a scholar deep-dive just to defend my comment but I'm sure you'll find such references easily if you look. Having said that, if "you" have time and you do decide to look and find conflicting evidence that you care to share, I'd be interested to hear more.

> You are suggesting that majority of doctors are depressed with suicidal ideation?

No. I'm suggesting they rank among the highest in occupational risk. In Bayesian terms, the difference between the two is the distinction between a prior and a posterior statement.

> Why do you consider it more likely?

Because, subjectively, the likelihood (low drive for survival given mental disease) should be overwhelmingly higher than the prior (low drive for survival given average person) in this case. Hence more likely.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#167

Post by tpoacher »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #138
tpoacher wrote: post #77

This article is making a LOT of "convenient" assumptions. For all we know, the more likely scenario is that Charlie, like a sizeable percentage of his doctor peers, was burnt out, tired, and depressed, did not really have an overwhelming (some might say "healthy") desire to survive (in fact, perhaps quite the opposite), and saw the cancer as a non-undignified quick "way out". Doctors (and medical professionals more g…

Why do you think this was basically a form of suicide? Pancreatic cancer still has a dismal "survival" rate, and I hesitate to even call it "survival" as it's more a matter of not having died yet. He's seen what chemotherapy does to patients, he knows it's trading the horrors of chemo for a bit longer life. That article is 10 years old--pancreatic cancer is still very deadly. No reprieve was coming down the road. Fal…

I'm not necessarily arguing it was a form of suicide (or blaming the victim, as it were).

I'm arguing that the impetus to prolong life is generally a very strong and biologically ingrained urge rather than the result of cold rational thought, and therefore in general such rational thought is often predicated on having lost the biological imperative to some extent (e.g. through a mental health process).

And secondly, the "danger" I'm cautioning against is that this narrative that glorifies rejecting treatment is usually painted as "horrible chemo" vs the implicit scenario of dying peacefully in your bed. But this is not the case, cancer can have horrible symptoms, typically excruciating pain. Chemo is often performed exactly in order to control those symptoms by shrinking the cancer, even if prognosis of survival is poor. There's a reason hospices exist, and it's not because people are ignorant or cowardly and afraid to die in a dignified manner and choose horrible chemo instead of quietly dying in their homes.

In fact, one thing one might want to consider here is that, as a doctor, he may have had easier access to morphine, and this may well have influenced the decision.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#169

Post by switchbak »

lsaferite wrote: post #55
switchbak wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Load bearing beliefs" is a thing in the podcast/YouTube world at a minimum. Perhaps you're not as online as some other folks (probably a good thing!).

I watch a lot of tech adjacent YT videos mostly. I really haven't heard this being used. So weird the different bubbles we all live in and just don't realize. Is the usage recent or historic? What contexts is it used in? Is it common in American English, British English, or one of the several other groupings?

Sounds like it grew out of the rationalist community (eww), and got picked up by various podcasters as it became a phase du jour.

See https://www.yuzeh.com/etc/2021-01-24-beliefs-as-structures - folks have been using it for a while now.

Now everyone is saying "hits different", and that one drives me crazy. Old man problems.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#170

Post by Kinrany »

brynnbee wrote: post #141
Kinrany wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Johnson_(author) From this description, the main controversy is the allegation of hastening the death of the patient. Not sure where's the scam though.

I don't know specifically how these operations advertise, but what some people might call a scam is that cryonics does factually damage your brain extensively, and it's unclear how well anyone could possibly recover from this damage. One of the common thoughts is that maybe super advanced future sci-fi level brain scans could digitize your brain, but taking anyone's money with that as a potential outcome is probably…

From my understanding (and I never seriously considered cryonics) all patients know very well that the likelihood of recovery is very low. Just not zero.
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