[ad_1]
Now, a very important decision is taken by the Supreme Court of Canada. The court is to decide whether doctors should have the right to withdraw care in cases where patients are unlikely to recover.
The Right to Die movement is one of is quite active in Canada, particularly in British Columbia. On the one hand, patients like Sue Rodriguez and Gloria Taylor went to court demanding the right to end his life in times of choice. Both women suffering from ALS, an illness in which the sufferer remain lucid while their bodies can succumb to paralysis. It is a frightening prospect: ALS patients end up locked in a body that they can no longer move.
Recently, Ontario Consent and Capacity Board gave doctors at the Ottawa Hospital right to keep the heroic actions of elderly patients. His name was Gustav Spindler and his daughter, Diana Ford, engineer, asked the board to intervene when she felt her rights as a guardian was undermined.
Spindler had signed a mandate specifies that he might die if he went into a vegetative state or irreversible coma. Doctors considered this mandate, signed in 2010, should be invoked since Spindler situation seemed hopeless. However, Ford believed that the treatment her father was following the car crash that hospitalized him was insufficient and thus contributing to the creation of his hopeless situation. It was a little too comfortable, she found that doctors could decide that he was beyond help when they did not do much to help him in the first place.
For example, it was concluded that her father “was given considerably less care than younger person would get the same circumstances.” She also asserted its right to be the arbiter of when life her father had become hopeless was broken when the hospital began to pull think it deemed necessary. She was ready to move him to a long-term care facility, she said, but only after doctors treating pneumonia his illness that finally claimed him after he was transferred to the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. She did not sign a DNR (a “do not resuscitate” Agreement) and withdrawal of care, in Ottawa, was made against her wishes.
In cases RODRIGEZ and Taylor, both women would legally protect individuals who would help them end their lives. They could not commit suicide with him, end their paralysis, and would assisters their being. In the case of Ford, she wanted to respect the wishes of his father and would do so by deciding exactly when the state his father had become irreversible and those working on its behalf. In any case, the timing was a contentious issue.
The Supreme Court decision is being done now, doctors are asking for the right to be the ultimate judge on the issue of timing. When it comes to end-of-life decisions, they believe they are the best judges.
I am not a medical ethicist, but I find this alert. Although doctors are indifferent members – they are not associated with the patients after all – they can still make mistakes. scientific training makes them experts in medicine; it does not make them experts in ethical decision-making.
A problem I had, but looking after a stroke-afflicted my mother, was my emotional state seemed to be used against me on an ongoing basis. It seemed that in the eyes of the staff of the hospital, my distress disqualified me as a good judge needs of my mother. I was on the receiving end of a lot of patronizing; I heard a lot of stupid platitudes; I was constantly controlled. Apparently this was standard procedure at this acute-care hospital, the treatment I received was the relatives of all patients appeared to experience. This meant that talked to like an unruly five years old, something that was both undignified and infuriating. Being outnumbered by people doing what made it even worse.
In 2008, my mother, a stroke while she was in the hospital having a gangrenous toe met. On that day, I made heroic efforts to have my voice heard, made heroic efforts to get someone, anyone, to take my concerns seriously. She had suddenly become lethargic and I was worried, frantic, and then finally hysterical. antics were a waste of my most indifferent staff, however. They did not care and interventions that could have spared my mother paralysis she suffers now of never happened.
Diana Ford, when I first read about it, characterized in the press as unfair woman who was challenging for the elderly and comatose her father being kept alive by all means. Connection was made between its requirements and the fact that her father was a Holocaust survivor. This put her decision was driven by emotion bigger than the situation at hand, she had a history to support óstyðjanlega decision.
I remember reading about the assessment of her character made by one of the doctors involved and sensing pleasure to accept and abilities Board had sided with him. The picture accompanying the article showed online white-coated doctor with a smug and satisfied look on his face. It made me angry because I do not doubt that I too was characterized as “hysterical” by some of the staff meet my mother. Unlike Ford, however, I signed DNR readily. It was reversing what created the problem.
The next day, my mother suffered a stroke was the day the DNR papers were placed in front of me. I remember my surprise because I was not expecting it and it seemed that the one count, at least, staff at the hospital were abnormal efficient. Moreover, the doctor who introduced them assured me that my decision would be to turn at any time. I had no idea if my mother would recover, but I knew I did not want her unconscious and kept alive by artificial means. Let her go, under the circumstances, seemed sad but humane.
The problem of course, is that my mother regained consciousness. And when did we had a conversation that went something like this:
Me: Mom, you’re in a lot of trouble. A lot of things go wrong with your body.
mother’s nodding.
I: Mom, they asked me to sign a paper. They want to let you die because you are so weak. I signed it because I did not know what was going to happen. We were not sure that you would wake up.
mother’s nodding.
I: Mom, what do you want me to do? You’re going to lose your left leg. Do you want to live?
mother’s nodding.
Me: What do you want me to do?
Mom: I’m not ready to go yet.
And these words were what I took to the doctor when I asked to have a DNR back. And it is these words that were ignored when I tried, with considerable effort to stop the momentum that my signature on the papers had begun. I should add here that four years later, my mother is alive and still has legs I was told would have to be taken. And she is still getting up to old tricks her. Staff at the nursing home his regale me with stories of the often droll her sense of humor, pithy observations about her life, her habit to express appreciation to all caregivers.
I’ve never met Diana Ford, but I do feel some sympathy for her struggle. I also found my mother received less than stellar care and ageism was teaching.
[ad_2]
Source by Irene Ogrizek
