Prolonging Living or Prolonging Dying?

oldmom4896
Mon, 08 Aug 2016 13:43:05 +0000

My dad’s living will was very specific in that it stipulated no (and I mean no–no vent, no feeding tube, no antibiotics, etc.) life-prolonging procedures if he would not recover. He had a hemorrhagic stroke in the hospital when he was 91 and the doctors told me that much of his brain function was gone. I could see that he was trying to recover but I knew that the results would go against his wishes so once he couldn’t swallow, it was just a matter of waiting to the end.

I also knew that his reason for living was to care for my stepmother, who was physically well but pretty seriously demented. He knew that her son would put her in a facility and that she would die there, and that’s exactly what happened.

It was a very difficult week waiting for the end with him but as his proxy, I knew that was what he wanted. Since everything was written down, the hospital was good about it, and they found a bed for him so he received hospice care without needing to be moved. It would have been impossible for him to have hospice care in his home and I was glad to spare him the move to a nursing home or hospice facility.

This hospital was not my first (or second or third) choice but where EMS brought him when the aide caring for my stepmother called 911. I wonder what would have happened if he wound up at the big, first-rate teaching hospital where his doctors practiced. For sure they wouldn’t have been able to find him a bed to die in. I have reviewed the events of that last week over and over in my mind (a very chaotic week as it was during April of my only child’s senior year in high school!) and whether I did the right thing from beginning to end, but it was what it was. My stepmother lingered, totally confused, for another 6 months. When she asked for “Papa,” her son didn’t realize she was asking for my dad. But that’s what happened to them both, and I guess there are no guarantees for a “perfect death.”