I Lied When I Said We Did Everything We Could

I was in the room when my dad coded. I watched everything. I saw them manually providing oxygen by "bagging" him. I answered questions about DNR. I watched them place eyedrops in to verify death. I walked with his body down to the morgue.

I am thankful by the fact that I was there. But I am tormented by it too.

CPR circulates blood to the oxygen and brain, keeping it going long enough for the heart to (maybe) be restarted.

For the first few minutes after someone's heart stops beating, it probably hasn't actually stopped, it is just beating in a chaotic way that isn't actually moving any blood (this is known as "ventricular fibrillation, hence the "defibrillator"). The electrical discharge of the defibrillator is like someone standing up in a loud room and blowing an air horn. It shuts everyone up for a second, and hopefully the heart's normal "pacemaker" can take back over.

There are some medications that can be given to "strengthen" that pacemaker, and to make the rest of the heart a bit less "twitchy" (and therefore less likely to go back into a lethal arrhythmia).

There is a related arrhythmia known as ventricular tachycardia where the heart is beating too quickly to move any blood (and the beating is being triggered by random cells in the heart, not be the heart's intrinsic pacemaker).

If someone is unresponsive and doesn't appear to be breathing, high quality CPR and early defibrillation are what will help them. If you have an AED, put it on them and follow the prompts it gives. And AED will not do anything that would make the patient's condition worse (to hurt someone with a defibrillator, you need to be using a manually controlled one).

My father had a massive stroke one morning in 2002 as he was getting ready to go play tennis. In the hospital he had severe brain swelling and was clearly in tremendous pain. His wife — his second wife, not my mother, and roughly a dozen years younger than he was — was not ready to let him go, despite his pleas that he be allowed to die. She fought heroically with the hospital staff, getting them to do various things they didn't think would help much, until he was recovered enough to go home (I don't recall how long that took — a couple of weeks, I guess, or more). He lived another two and a half years or so, but he was pretty miserable the whole time.

I could admire her tenacity in keeping him alive, but it's very clear she did it for herself, because she needed to get used to the idea of him dying, not for him.

This article, and most comments here, seem to be of the opinion that most doctors, friends, and family members don't present "accepting death" as a valid option, but my experience has been the opposite.

5 years ago, my mom was given a cancer diagnosis, and a life expectancy of 6 months. And from that day forward, there was no shortage of people lined up to tell us "there's no shame in giving up", "you don't have to fight", "die with your dignity", and "don't prolong the invevitable".

What was far more rare were the people that reminded us that anything was possible. Other survivors who had also been given months to live with an untreatable cancer, only to "still be ticking" decades later, with an active life. People that offered hope in traditional chemotherapy, clinical trials, alternative approaches like special diets and exercise.

None of these people said to fight at all costs -- to live a hellish and painful life. Instead, they offered the alternative -- that despite what the doctors were saying, the doctors didn't know how long or how well anybody would live any better than we did. They didn't tell us to ignore the doctors' prognosis, only to be open to the possibility that the prognosis would be wildly wrong, even if the diagnosis was right.

These people were the minority, but I'm so thankful we had their input.

My mom lived, without cancer growth, for over 4 years, when she was told not to expect 6 months. And while we had plenty of rough days, we had so many amazing days as well. While I can't speak for my mom, I'm as certain as I can be that she wouldn't have traded those days for anything.

This wasn't for lack of concern that she was fighting just for me. I would ask her at times whether she was just doing this for me. I'd tell her that, though it would be hard, if she decided she was done, I would support her. Her reply -- that she was grateful for the life she was still living, and didn't want that to change.

And yet still, for 4 years, I had to constantly deal with nurses she would meet, at work (as a hair stylist), online, etc. who would talk to her. Inevitably the conversation would turn toward her cancer diagnosis, and when my mom would tell the nurse or health care worker the type and stage of cancer she had, immediately the happy conversation would turn grim.

Sometimes, the nurse would say "I'm sorry" to my mom, as though (in my mom's own words) my mom had already died.

Others would come right out and say "you know that most people don't even live 6 months with that", as though somehow my mom would have made it through regular doctors appointments and treatments without a single person telling us what the prognosis was. Then came the dreaded "no shame in dying" part.

In every case, I'd find my mom depressed, defeated, and heart broken. It wasn't that she was hearing information she hadn't heard before, but rather, she was being reminded by people that presented themselves as smarter and better than us, that the prognosis was bad, that we should just accept it, and in some cases give us the impression that it was wrong to even want to fight it, as though every day that we already had together beyond that 6 month mark wasn't even deserved.

I would have to remind my mom that, at 1 year, 2 years, 3 years on, she had already proven the prognosis wrong. And again I would ask, with guilt that I was the only reason she held on, whether she was done fighting, and made sure she knew I would support her either way.

I don't relay this to try to give false hope, or encourage people to live horrible lives when they're ready to move on. I say this because I truly believe my mom would not have been happy with her life, however long, had we just accepted it from day one, and done nothing to fight it.

I say this, mostly, because the people telling us to give up or even just reminding us of how this was supposed to end, no matter how well intentioned, had NO idea the damage they did to my mom's spirit or quality of life, even as she was seeing amazing results that were not supposed to happen.

And also, the people who helped us fight, I credit to giving us the time we had, and the quality of life she had. Time that I am so grateful for.

If I have one take away to give, it's this -- if you meet someone who's dying, no matter what you believe, the best thing you can do is offer simple encouragement. Tell them, simply, "fight if you want to fight, and amazing things might happen. Don't be ashamed or pressured against accepting it when you feel like it's time. But YOU decide that, and NOT your friends, family, doctors or nurses".

That's great you guys are so lucky. This happened to my ex's dad and he has been in a vegetated state for years now. Very difficult for the family.