Discussion Interesting Discussion Among Reddit Nurses About End-of-Life Care

[Celerity]

I'm not going to link the Reddit thread because it's a semi-exclusive subreddit for nurses and nursing students, but here are some gems that may be food for thought:

• "After seeing what becomes of the elderly in our country, I'm strongly considering not saving for retirement, living entirely in the moment, and just committing suicide at the age of maybe 80 or 85...
  
  Do I have a warped view of geriatric living from my experiences as a nurse? Getting old seriously just seems like complete hell despite what kind of financial plan you have in store."
  
  
• "I remember a 90+ year old man being taken in from his nursing home for suicidal behavior. In the ER, I heard the nurses talking to him cus he had a hallway bed. He said very calmly "listen. I'm not sad. I'm just old. My body hurts, it doesn't work, I sit in that home all day with nothing to do and hardly anyone helping me. I don't need psych help, just let me die. We aren't supposed to live this long. Please, if you have any humanity let me die."
  
  I will NEVER forget that. And frankly- I agree with you. I've never admitted to anyone in the real world. But I have zero intention on allowing myself to get to that point."
• "You mean you don't want to be kept alive as a human vegetable/MDRO factory, trapped in an endless loop of pain and discomfort for 10 years, only so your children, who are too big of pussies to let you die, can come visit you once a month… once every couples months… maybe next year?"
• "I had a patient that was a WW2 vet in his 90's, recently lost his wife and having severe PTSD flashbacks, seeing nazis everywhere. He attempted suicide but didn't succeed. He just got the last bit of freedom he had stripped away instead for his safety."

This Reddit discussion gives me hope that society may come to wider acceptance of doctor-assisted euthanasia. These nurses are people too with problems of their own, but they are generally well-adjusted members of society and, due in part to their experience as caregivers, they have pretty progressive views on the issue. I have read discussions with a similar tenor in the doctor subreddits as well. At least among clinicians, there appears to be a growing respect for patient quality of life over quantity.

That said, they restrict this pro-choice stance to the very old and sickly, but it's better than nothing.

 

[Crazy4u]

I am not surprised to read their opinions. Nurses understand the suffering. The problem is privilaged people who don't have health issues.

 

[chocolatebar]

Most people who are strictly against suicide haven't been around people in their last days of life. This is a terrible experience that changes the way anyone sees life. In a way, it's worse than seeing people dying.

 

[Foresight]

Related, but I used to sub to medical reddits when I was working at a hospital in pharmacy. It was peak covid so a lot of people were being put on ventilators. Overall, they don't want you to be a vegetable any more than you do. They want you alive and able to thrive or passed on with dignity.

Physicians and nurses in certain areas have a really dignified and straight view of death like we do.

 

[Afrod22]

I just read through some of those reddit comments. A 90 year man old saying "I feel like my body is trapped in a prison cell, let me die." Can relate...

 

[FuneralCry]

Old age does sound so horrifying. I want to be gone way before then. No one should have to die a slow painful death from illness, our right to die should always be respected. I do hope that eventually euthanasia is legalised everywhere.

 

[Sunset Limited]

This is why anyone over the age of 40 should be able to choose doctor-assisted death. I'm 45 years old and I feel terrible.

 

[KuriGohan&Kamehameha]

Most people who are strictly against suicide haven't been around people in their last days of life. This is a terrible experience that changes the way anyone sees life. In a way, it's worse than seeing people dying.

This is really true, especially when someone experiences neuronal atrophy due to dementia, strokes, or breathing conditions which deprive their brains of oxygen and send them into delirium. It really does taint your view on life and existence forever, because of how tragic it is.

It made me cry as a teenager to watch my grandfather cut all of the buttons out of his TV remote because even with the highest concentration of oxygen he was allowed to have in his tanks, he still couldn't breathe at a normal level. He thought he was outside in his shed, carving wood, he had no idea he was in his bedroom cutting up a remote control.

Having to hear him struggling to breathe and gasping every night in the weeks prior to his death made me sit in the floor and sob because I knew he was dying, and in a terrible, agonising way.

People like my grandfather did not believe in suicide, due to devout religious beliefs, but the last words I heard him say- while he was wasting away and forced to wear diapers, drink only liquids, and be mistreated by a bunch of miffed medical staff who wanted to kick him out of the hospital due to 'insurance' not giving them enough money - were, "Please give me pain medicine, I'm gonna die anyway."

These experiences stick with you and burn holes in your mind the way a lit cigarette eats the fabric away from soda upholstery and permanently chars it, when someone takes their eye off it for one second. Being willfully ignorant and inattentive of the terrible things that happen to our bodies was so much better than having this knowledge eternally burned into me.

It's even worse the way that suffering and death are turned into a garden variety industry. Nothing filled me with more rage than some perky 30 year old women shuffling into the hospital room when my grandfather had been switched to palliative care, and trying to sell us "bargain hospice and funeral plans"

 

[chocolatebar]

This is really true, especially when someone experiences neuronal atrophy due to dementia, strokes, or breathing conditions which deprive their brains of oxygen and send them into delirium. It really does taint your view on life and existence forever, because of how tragic it is.

It made me cry as a teenager to watch my grandfather cut all of the buttons out of his TV remote because even with the highest concentration of oxygen he was allowed to have in his tanks, he still couldn't breathe at a normal level. He thought he was outside in his shed, carving wood, he had no idea he was in his bedroom cutting up a remote control.

Having to hear him struggling to breathe and gasping every night in the weeks prior to his death made me sit in the floor and sob because I knew he was dying, and in a terrible, agonising way.

People like my grandfather did not believe in suicide, due to devout religious beliefs, but the last words I heard him say- while he was wasting away and forced to wear diapers, drink only liquids, and be mistreated by a bunch of miffed medical staff who wanted to kick him out of the hospital due to 'insurance' not giving them enough money - were, "Please give me pain medicine, I'm gonna die anyway."

These experiences stick with you and burn holes in your mind the way a lit cigarette eats the fabric away from soda upholstery and permanently chars it, when someone takes their eye off it for one second. Being willfully ignorant and inattentive of the terrible things that happen to our bodies was so much better than having this knowledge eternally burned into me.

It's even worse the way that suffering and death are turned into a garden variety industry. Nothing filled me with more rage than some perky 30 year old women shuffling into the hospital room when my grandfather had been switched to palliative care, and trying to sell us "bargain hospice and funeral plans"

The decay... the disdain from the other people... it all carves a message in us, a painful message.
Rarely someone can live a "normal" life knowing after seeing the truth about life.

I'm really sorry for what you lived through.

And the industry... here in brazil, there are some companies who call elderly people by phone in order to sell them some kind of "death insurance" and they will say terrible things to them, as if they were disposable and in the imminence of death