2/25/10

KEITH OLBERMAN ON END OF LIFE DECISIONS ABOUT HIS FATHER AND THE SUBHUMAN DEATH PANELISTS

Having taken care of a lot of people in this situation I really appreciate Keith Olberman for sharing his father's story. People who are critically ill are often tortured with all the treatments they receive. Keeping them medicated does help them tolerate the misery, but they get very depressed. Keith does an excellent job of describing his father's reaction and how he advocated for his father's wishes. It sounds like his father has sepsis(systemic infection). A huge part of our immune systems are in our colons, his father had to have his colon removed. People should be free to make decisions for themselves and need information from healthcare providers to do this. The doctors and nurses have to talk to them about what they want done if they can't speak for themselves, it has to be written in the chart by the doctor, this requires a discussion, questions, and giving the patient information. As their situation changes, they sometimes change their wishes. Sarah Palin and some others who are all clearly of the clueless ilk have used this bit of counseling to offer people information to assist them to make their own choices if their life should be close to it's end as a mercenary tool against their own citizens who have no health insurance. They seek to take personal choices from individuals and replace them with their own warped radical religious beliefs. They used their braying about the Death Panel against the interests of the citizens of this country because they are owned by the corporate interests who seek to deny health care to a large number of people. I worked with a Cajun doctor who would start the questions about what is called code status by saying, "If you should stop while you are in the hospital, do you want us to try and start you up again?", then depending on what they answered he would get more specific with his questions, "Do you want us to push on your chest?", "Do you want us to put you on a breathing machine?", "Are there any medications that you would object to?. People can choose which mix of rescue efforts or treatments they want, even all or none. The point is it is their choice, their life.




"That is the God Damned death panel Sarah Palin".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey...

For those of you interested... the Dallas Morning News has an interesting "Olbermann" story today...

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/yahoolatestnews/stories/DN-teaparty_25met.ART.Central.Edition1.4bed0b9.html

Check out the ridiculous right wing comments associated with it...

Anonymous said...

[ ... ] link is being shared on Twitter right now. @zenx, an influential author, said RT @1ndus: Xtreme [ ... ]