From the article: Palliative Sedation
If you've ever had to watch your loved one suffer in pain and doctors were unable to relieve it, you may have been presented with the choice of giving your loved one palliative sedation. If you've ever had to consider palliative sedation as an option, how did you wrestle with that choice?
Right to Die
- nifnaj, In the state of Oregon, there is a law that allows a person the right to die. Personally, I think that when a person is sick they are weakened emotionally to. To make a decision that is so final may be being made out of desparation which should never be allowed
- —Anneymay
Am considering it
- I have congestive heart failure, COPD, and a disease that is turning my spine into mush that I can't remember the name of right now. I have been considering DNR order ever since I was in the hospital last spring and almost didn't make it home. I am just now learning about the exsistance of palliative sedation. Nobody at the hospital said anything about it. They just wanted me to sign the DNR so they could move on. At any rate, I am now considering really taking the DNR direction. The CHF and COPD have both become painful in that I most always suffering from the "air hunger" problem and my carbon dioxide level is starting to stay higher than my oxygen level. Knowing about the pallliative sedation is available, definitely makes the DNR easier to face. I do not want to be in pain!! Has anyone else wondered what the difference is between DNR and suicide? It is the one thing that is getting in my way.
- —Anneymay
It was the worse day of my life
- My daughter had intractible seizures, disabled, immunocomprimised, comprimised lungs, I can go on. She got horrible pnuemonia while waiting for surgery for VNS, probably because of all the seizures shw was having, but it could have been community accuired too. She was in horrible condition, had no quality of life, yet once in a while she would give me a smile. Yet daily what I saw was her drowning in her saliva, chocking to death, seizing uncontrollibly for up to 24 hours straight with no med's working to stop them. I faught for her every step of the way, and I felt she was suffering horribly and that the vns was a long shot, she was going to have to go on a respirator to sustain and she may not even make that. I chose to let her go, the staff said that they give some morophine to help her with the drowing feeling. I let them do their job, it wasn't until 12 hours later that I realized they gave her increased morophine over this period. Now I feel that was terminal sedation.
- —MyBigMouth
Pallitive sedation
- Used in combination I agree that the loved one be treated depending on the level of pain. Every situation is different, thus the med's will be different.
- —Guest Dr John Steinmetz
Palliative sedation
- Why isn't this a question that is at the forefront when our elderly are entering the ICU (torture chamber)? If people were given this option we wouldn't be having this healthcare debate and our nursing homes would be out of business!
- —rachac
nifnaj
- I absolutely do not understand why we are not allowed to end our life, or have a physician do so, when we just get sick and tired of it all.
- —Guest Jan
