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This is too dangerous. DNRs and making euthanasia legal are easy ways to get rid of patients and make the medical staffs job easy. The patients pay with their lives or can be damaged from the strong sedatives. The staff can medicate patients into a coma and get away with it by telling the family that the elder person is deteriorating from dementia instead of the drugs. I have actually seen the staff yell out DNR as they continue to drug the patient every few minutes even if this patient is already in a drug induced coma. Anyone with a DNR should get it taken off especially if it is and elder person.

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Hi Flowgo,
This is controversial because many people feel it's their right to decide if they want to be kept alive artificially after their body naturally starts to shut down. Many are in horrible pain and are medicated for that by choice.
You are right that this practice can be abused, but in most cases the patient's wishes are followed. However, the very fact that a DNR can be abused is what bothers some people. The controversy will likely always be around, as nearly any practice can be abused. Still, DNR is a choice, and people who don't want it don't need to have it on their record.
As for euthanasia, that's not likely to become legal for a long time, if ever. The topic will come up in politics because a few vocal people believe in the practice, however, most do not, even if they believe in choices for themselves. I don't think you have much to worry about there.
There is always room for discussion on these issues, but in the end families should talk at length with their elders long before an elder becomes ill. Then families know better what the elder would want done (or not done) in the end stages.
Thank you for being such a caring person,
Carol
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I have personally selected a living will with the DNA option, because I want the choice not to keep my body alive when there is no life left. I had a very ill sister, who spent her last years in a nursing home, except she was in the hospital half the time with complications from the tubes and meds that were keeping her body going. She insisted on no DNR, and her wishes were honored to the point where they spent 20 minutes bringing her back from cardiac arrest and succeeded. Then she was a brain dead person living in a very sick body. Her choices cost the government more than a million dollars; her last hospital stay was more than $155,000. All for nothing. She was never going to get better. I can't, personally, do that to my family and so a DNR, should I need it, is right for me.
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I am very sorry for your loss. I lost my Mom a month ago yesterday.

It is so important that people make the choice that is right for them, or that they have a medical directive given to a trusted family member.

It is a patient or family choice re the DNR. One is not required to have it. We had one for Mom, (who died under Hospice care at home) though it was not needed.

When I decided on Hospice for my Mom - I did so because she was 89, had advanced Alzheimer's (and possibly cancer), and was frantic with anxiety and pain. I wanted her last days to be as peaceful and pain free as the law would allow, and this was blessedly accomplished. I will never regret this choice.

I have a Living Will, as does my husband, and all our children know our wishes are the same as those we carried out for Mom.
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If a dnr patient is in the hospital or other medical facility for a minor treatable problem, the staff can give the dnr patient enough of the wrong meds or sedatives or whatever will work to kill the dnr patient and blame it on something else or just tell the family that the their loved one deteriorated and passed from whatever he/she was in the hospital for. If it is someone who is elder they can say it was from dementia or even old age.The staff can drug a patient since it is much easier to work with a unconscious person then someone who needs help. If too many sedatives are given it is no big deal when a patient is a dnr patient. cpr will not have to be done when the patient is needing the cpr from the overdose. dnr patients are more comfort measures for the staff since the staff already often do not want to bother to help all patients leave alone one with a dnr. The dnr patients get very neglected by the staff. The staff can decide when they want that patient to die.They can make it look like it was natural. Maybe the hospital is too crowded and they need that dnr patients bed.There is just a lot of dnr abuse which is why dnrs are so extremely dangerous to ones health and deadly. If the staff want to put an end to a patients life they have been known to get a doctor to put a dnr on a patient who does not have or want a dnr. This can be done without the family knowing unless they look in the chart. Of course this is illegal if the patient does not want one. Instead of the dnrs and no drastic measures there should be some way that the family can decide when their loved one is ready to go and be legally allowed to tell the staff no if the patient is ready to be hooked up to machines and get cpr. The staff should not even know what the family and patient wants until the actual time comes and the family is there to decide what should be done. It should not be the business of the staff until then, since the staff can take full advantage and abuse dnrs. Caregivers of elders or those with dementia should no the stages very well and the side effects of all the meds that the patient is given, especially sedatives and pain meds.Dementia symptoms are very similar to symptoms of sedative use and sedative overdose. However there are diffident differences that the caregiver must be well aware of. Also be aware of n.m.s. This is a sensitivity that people can have from such drugs as haldol and ativan. Be aware of patients that should not take these drugs because of certain health problems (black box warnings). It is a good idea to know everything about sedatives and the black box warnings. Medical staff are not trained much in how to use sedatives and what to watch for with black box warnings, so this is why black box warnings are ignored by the staff. If you have enough knowledge of what is going on in the medical field you will be more able to protect any of your family.Try to go to medical libraries to study more on the subject.
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flowgo, you sound very angry, and like you have specific cases in mind. If you have evidence of murder, surely you have/are going to the police with it.

My husband has DNR in his file. He has been hospitalized twice since then and I saw absolutely no evidence of poor practices (other than hospitals are not equipped to handle dementia patients -- with or without DNR.)

My fear is that a hospital with particular religous affiliation might not honor the DNR decision. I have talked to the hospital administrators of the places that would most likely treat my husband to be reassured on this point.

All vulnerable adults (which is just about every adult in a hospital, at least for the duration of their illness) needs an alert and smart advocate, to see that the patient's wishes are honored.

I suggest that a hospital that is intent on murdering patients for their convenience would finds ways to do it with or without DNR paperwork. If such hospitals exist, it would take more than banning DNRs to stop them. (But the hospitals would make more money by prolonging life, so I'm not sure what the motivation would be. Hmmm.)

I am glad you have the right to not have DNR in your medical file. I am glad I have the right to have it. It is a very personal decision and I would hate to see it legislated.
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to Maries mom thank you and I am very sorry for your loss too
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I just read your profile. I understand why you are so angry. You feel that this happened to your mother. My sincere condolences on your tragic loss.
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It is hard enough to loose your beloved mom, but in my case it makes things much more difficult because you just don't believe that this kind of thing can actually ever happen to you.You only expect this to happen on TV or the news. I really want people to be well aware of what does happen.Thank you Jeann for the understanding and caring comment about the loss of my mom. Knowing that people care can really help during this very devastating time.
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DNR's are by choice. Personally I find DNR and any advance directives to be as central for planning for my future as saving for retirement, exercising daily, etc.

Regarding black box warnings, drugs in this group are essential for dealing with diseases. If bird-flu had gone to pandemic stage, Cipro would have been flying off pharmacy shelves as it is a front-line antibiotic. It is a black box drug. Warfarin
(Coumadin) is another bbd that is probably the best anticoagulant on the market.
BBD's are serious meds that do life-saving serious good. Is there a risk, yes, but there is a risk to everything we do.

If you think your mom died due to medical malpractice, then seek a legal remedy.

It's obvious that her death has left you bereft. Perhaps it would be good for you and your family to go to grief counseling to cope with the loss and mourning.
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to igloo if my mom would have passed on her own without being forced to pass and been given comfort measures like dnrs are supposed to be used for, then I would have most likely been ok by now. I still would have been upset as when other loved ones in my family have passed, but I would have been ok by now since this happened over a year ago. Our family and friends are still grieving over how she passed. We have never been able to grieve about the loss of my mom since we are so angry and still traumatized over how she was forced to pass.The way my mom was forced to die as she struggled to live is what is causing me so much pain.The medical staff rarely showed her any mercy.One drug they gave her would have been great if she had another problem. It was a great drug for other problems but not hers.This drug instead killed her since it caused her problem to get worse.She still continued to fight so hard for her life, since she loved life and had always taken very good care of herself and was in great physical shape.The nurses had even told me that she should have continued on the drug that had originally helped her.They knew she was not supposed to be on the drug that they finished her off with, since it was deadly for what she had. Unfortunately, those were what they call staff comfort measures. It is just like antibiotic is good for a bacterial infection but you would not give that to someone who has a yeast infection since it will cause the yeast to mutiply.This is especially true if the person was in septic shock from the yeast infection. There were also sedatives she was not supposed have. A doctor had told us she should never be on them since she had a sensitivity to them but yet she was constantly given them.The black box warning did honestly apply to my mom but these warnings were completely ignored by the staff which then contributed to her death.The staff tried to kill her off with the sedatives alone but mom fought so very hard. There were so many things the staff did that made us believe that she was killed on purpose.They can get away with it since she had a dnr. My mom would have never ever signed up for a dnr had she known how easily they can be abused and how dnr patients can be ignored or even forced to die. Medical malpractice is very difficult since the medical staff are very well protected. When a lawyer is aware of the dnr the lawyer will loose interest in the case and basically say that the dnr killed her. There needs to be laws that are put in place to protect patients.
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DNR was my mother's choice, it is presently my father's choice and it is my choice for me. Continuing to resusitate and pound the heart back to life only does more damage to the vital organs and brain function of a human being. And yes, it's very painful to deal with.
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flowgo, I respectfully disagree. There comes a point where keeping the body working just doesn't serve the patient as a person. It wasn't that long ago that medicine couldn't do that, and people would never have made it as long as they now do. A DNR, especially for someone with a terminal illness, spares everyone the emotional and financial cost of prolonging the inevitable. .
Two days ago, we had a vet come to the house to put down our cat, who had an untreatable spinal tumor and who was increasingly miserable and could no longer walk or excrete waste. We can do that for a pet, but we can't do it in cases where prolonging physical life is causing true heartache for everyone involved...MOST ESPECIALLY THE PATIENT.
You are free to hold your own views. Please honor that others see things differently, and have good reason to.
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Flowgo, I absolutely agree with you. My Dad didn't have a DNR, but even so, he was written off because of his age. He was starved over a period of 3 weeks, and then sedated to death. He too wanted very much to live and had no cognitive problems. The Drs just decided from one ct scan that the mass in his esophagus was malignant (no biopsy, even though we were promised there would be) A mass isn't always malignant, only a biopsy can tell. No food, no feeding tube of any kind for 3 weeks. He was originally admitted for pneumonia, which he recovered from, even while starving. The Drs said it would be useless to give him nutrition because the "cancer" would get 90% of it. It's ridiculous that we believed them, we were in shock because my Dad was always very healthy. Outside of the antibiotics for the pneumonia that he recovered from, Dad was only on a salineIV and the ever increasing amounts of dilaudin/morphine (he told me he wasn't in pain) that eventually caused his death. The last night was horrendous, his lungs were full of water, and he slowly drowned to death, gasping and afraid. What an end to such a life that was full of honor and kindness.
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notenoughtime, so sorry to hear about your Dad's passing.

Please note, depending on the age of the patient, elderly patients normally do not survive major surgeries, their heart cannot take the stress like it can for someone much younger. It's not a write off, it's just reality. Sadly he probably would have died during surgery.

Radiologist and Oncologist can tell from a CT scan if they see large cancer cells in the x-ray, and could tell if the cancer had spread to other parts of the body thus why put an older patient through the ordeal of doing a biopsy when surgery couldn't be done. Biopsies are an extremely painful ordeal in itself.

Sounds like your Dad was placed in hospice.... thus the reason for no food or water.... just pain meds to keep the patient comfortable as possible depending on the illness.

Sadly cancer can strike without warning. I, too, was very healthy, and wham was diagnosed with cancer.
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Lets insert the gender equation here . if a 90 yr old woman has a terminal condition and insists on being kept alive with any and all measures its because she isnt done making people around her miserable
if a 90 yr old man has a terminal condition and it looks like he'll die before his wife does , its because he WANTS to die .
my mother was diagnosed with ( among other things ) a mass on one of her kidneys at the age of 81 . she refused any further treatment . i didnt understand her decision but when i started reading up on the subject i found what freq said to be the case . an 81 yr old person will not survive something as rash as kidney surgery and if one kidney were removed the other would stress out and become nonfunctional in a short while .
as far as the dnr decision being left totally to the families -- my family knows about as much about medicine as i know about tact . id like life sustaining decisions left up to me and the docs if possible .
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Thank you jeaneqibbsThe sad thing is when a person reaches a certain age they are considered being past there age expectancy (terminal) It does not seem to matter if they are a healthy person. It was horrible how they used my moms dnr to give her as much sedatives as possible. The investigators now recognize that she was given enough to cause great harm and kill and she was given these sedatives even though she was not terminal or any where near that. this is why I hate dnrs and if it was up to me they would be banned. My mom did not asked to be put into a coma with deadly sedatives and then labeled as being a vegetable because of her age only. Then give her enough deadly sedatives to try and get her to go into cardiac arrest so staff would not have to resuscitate her no that was the opposite of why she had a dnr. If the elder is in a hospital there should always always be someone one like a friend that is a nurse or doctor but family you can trust only.
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Flowgo, you're mother's situation is not the norm. I can see why you are shocked and angry.

In most cases DNRs serve a positive purpose for those of us who no not wish to linger in an artificial "life" attached to machines. There's a movement to change the words to what they truly mean which is allow natural death (AND).

To be healthy and drugged into a coma for no reason is unconscionable no matter what the person's age and that should be a legal matter. But to be at an age where the cure for the disease is worse than allowing nature's course and offering comfort care (as noted by Captain) is completely different. Many times the "cure" is far worse than allowing natural death and then, after the "cure," the person dies anyway.

I'm shocked by your story, but I don't believe that is what DNRs are all about. I'd be horrified if I were left unable to make that choice should my health be in such a state that keeping my body alive will simply trap my soul.

Again, I'm not only saddened but shocked by your story. My deepest condolences.
Carol
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DNR me. POLST me. NO CODE me. When I am old and frail, don't put me through the rib-breaking ordeal of CPR. Don't make me live too long at any cost.

I have an uncle who at this very minute is dying. He has conditions that would be operable in a much younger man, but he is too frail to survive surgery. So he is dying. He will likely enter hospice soon, where medical treatments other than pain control and comfort care stop. Eventually he will stop being fed to avoid prolonging the natural shut-down processes and extending his agony. This is not starving someone to death. Providing nutrition at this point accomplishes nothing really.

Having a healthcare living will/advanced directives is the only way to make sure your wishes are on record, whether it's "do very little" or "do everything there is".

I don't expect my family to be rational about this while in the middle of the trauma and drama. I should hope they miss me. I should hope I've lived in a way that seeing me go will be sad, but my death will be part of my life just as much as my birth was. It's bound to happen, and I'd like to have some say over it where possible.

Doctor's don't even want aggressive end of life care interventions they may very well recommend to their own patients. This is an NPR Radiolab story: www.radiolab.org/story/262588-bitter-end/
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If the patient died five years ago, as in flowgo's situation, and you are still engulfed in anger and despair, please get some medications for a deep and darkening depression. Get some expert counseling for a grief that has trapped you in a deep dark place. You want to live a better life.
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You don't understand a couple or three things. We're all going to die. None of us are getting out alive. It's often very difficult to die. Not that it's not time, but the human body is a remarkable machine...forever trying to compensate to prevent the inevitable. No matter how hopeless the fight.

Morphine makes for an easier journey. Should I lie there conscious gasping for air...filling up with mucosa...wide-eyed and afraid...perhaps in excruciating pain? Or should nurses administer the sweet release of drug induced sleep?

Ever wonder what happens when attempts are made to resuscitate an old and frail body? Many broken bones for one. A blitz physical assault. So that frail old body can die again tomorrow.

You know NOT of what you speak.
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Maybe I can save a life with my anger, yes I am very angry and shocked till this day. Time does not heal my situation. My mom had detailed advance directive, but she did not mention to not severely drug her into a vegetative state and when she is in cardiac arrest from the overdose then she does not want cpr. unfortunately she forgot to mention that she did not want to be forced to die instead of just dying on her own, had she mentioned that then maybe the medical staff would have had some mercy, not really sure though. What would you suggest maybe haldol so I can be with my mom. I can deal without deadly sedatives thank you do you really think it is fun to try and get me upset.
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MaggieMarshall Yes I do know what I speak, I saw the medical staff use my moms dnr so they can give her as much deadly sedatives as possible when cardiac arrest happens they don't have to do a thing. dnr does not mean you are supposed to try and make the patient go into cardiac arrest and then not give any cpr but unfortunately that is what it means now.
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Carol Bradley Bursack During my research I have found many to many people who have been through the same thing I have been through with my mom. There are even cases where a dnr is put on the patients chart by medical staff without the consent of a patient or family. It is to easy for medical staff to abuse a dnr such as the case with my mom. There was even a time when my mom was in intensive care trying to recover from a drug overdose and before the nurse knew I was around she was yelling out dnr and the drug she was not supposed to have at the same time when I came over to her she said oh you can say no to that drug it was on her charts that she could not have it and she was trying to recover from a drug overdose. This happens more than you know. There are other cases where doctors say there is no hope but the family refuses to let the person go and the person down the road recovers. I just think dnrs are very wrong.
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Flowgo is absolutely correct, in her situation and in my father's situation.
MaggieMarshall, my Dad was on morphine, but still was aware, semi-awake, as he "drowned in his own mucosa"-as you worded it.
If these medical travesties happened to Flowgos mother and my father, I'm sure they have happened to other people, and are happening at this very minute to some innocent, trusting elderly person.
This has to stop, and just because the Drs judge an elders life to be of less quality than normal, it's no reason to kill them off under the guise of mercy.
If the patient would be content to live with a feeding tube, then their wishes should be carried out.
I'm sure my Dad would have chosen a less " quality " life, instead of the excruciatingly slow, drowning in his own fluids, death that the Drs "mercifully" subjected him to.
Hospitals, in my experience, treat the elderly like 2nd class citizens.
Of course I don't mean patients to receive "bone breaking" CPR, but this wasn't even in my father's situation.
He still suffered greatly, he was looking at me in fear, especially the last night.
One month prior to the hospital admission, he was out driving my Mom around and working in his garden.
I went back for his hospital records a few weeks after his death and spoke to one of the Drs and voiced my concerns. She said, "he would have only gotten sick again". What happened to the cancer, she diagnosed? And from all my research since, a mass in the esophagus could be a variety of nonmalignant things, and a biopsy is the only definite way to know. As she looked over the records with me, the best she could come up with was the " he would have only gotten sick again" remark.
Just because she decided his quality of life didn't meet her standards, he wasn't allowed to live it.
What about the sanctity of life, for someone who would've preferred it, over a forced death sentence?
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DNR stands for DO NOT RESUSCITATE and that means if you should stop breathing or your heart would quit beating no one will attempt to revive you. It does not mean that you will not be cared for nor does it mean that a potentially treatable disease won't be treated.
I have been an RN for years and the kindest thing I've seen happen in the medical world are DNR orders. When I first became a nurse we did not have DNR orders. We had to try and save everybody! I remember old folks coming from the nursing homes, bedridden from multiple strokes and we'd be sticking IVs in them and tubes in every orifice they had and when they coded we'd code them and for what reason? So the could go back to the nursing home and do it all again next week. It was horrible, it was cruel. I remember thinking "we're kinder to our dogs than we are to these people".
Death no matter how it comes is ugly. There is no dignity in it. It's hard to die and hard to watch a loved one pass on as their body shuts down.
I'm sorry you and your family had a negative experience. You don't have to be a DNR pt, that is your right. But don't you dare try to take my DNR choice away from me or my family!!!!
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Nojoy3 dnrs are very dangerous and yes I do dare to speak my mind about this subject after what happened to my mom because I want people to know just how dangerous they are. I have found out that my family was not the only family this has happened to. The way you describe dnrs is the way they are supposed to be used but that is not the case in to many situations. They are abused. If you read all of my posts you will find out for yourself.
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No one will change your mind. Just as I respect your opinion, I hope you can respect mine and we can agree to disagree. Again I'm sorry for your negative experience.
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Nojoy3 Negative, That is putting it lightly, also calling death ugly is also putting it very very........mildly in my situation. Death is not pretty and it is ugly when it is a normal death. I have had to deal with other deaths of some people that were extremely important to me, but this death is beyond anything I have ever ever had to deal with. I had to deal with the most horrible cold blooded monsters on this earth. They thought it would be good to force my mom to die even though it could not even be considered a mercy killing, although that is murder also. My mom was forced to die against her wishes, mine and my family. She did not deserve to have her life stolen from her and us. Had I known then what I know now I could have saved her life. So I will continue to spread the word of what hospital or nursing home life can be really like especially with a dnr.
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Flowgo is right, there is a huge problem here. Flowgo is talking about the abuse of DNR, and everybody else is arguing about the value of it. We all know about terminal illness and not dragging a painful death out with rib breaking and extended suffering. But Flowgo is talking about patients who have, as she said, "a minor treatable problem," being given the treatment a terminally ill patient would be given....This is what the hospital did to my father, who was 92. He went to the hospital because he thought he was having a heart attack, because of chest pain. They ran him through a battery of tests, all negative, until the chest pains went away. He was kept overnight for observation, and was supposed to be discharged in the morning but his doctor was on vacation and didn't come in until the evening. He had a living will not to be given life support if he was terminally ill, but no DNR was given at this time because the doctor said he had no heart attack, the nurses thought it was probably indigestion. The third morning, when he was supposed to go home, I went to visit him, and found that the hospital had him under DNR order..... he'd been put on sedatives, and morphine 6 times a day, he was unconscious so he couldn't eat, and the sugar was taken out of his IV so he would starve to death. This is an example of the abuse of DNR. The morphine and sedatives and beta blockers had put him into cardiogenic shock. The same doctor said "I guess the hospital needed the bed." I made a fuss and had them take down the DNR order, and he slowly recovered from the shock and after 2 weeks he was 100% better and was discharged, but the next day he got pneumonia and died. The pneumonia was from being in cardiogenic shock for a few days. My father died by the abuse of DNR, as Flowgo is talking about.
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I totally agree with Dighby and Flowgo, my father was starved and drugged and suffered a horrible slow death after 3 wks of only being on a saline IV. He didn't have a DNR but it was the same mistreatment. I wish I'd known then what I know now. I've written about this before so I'm not going into all the details. Bottom line: he had pneumonia and trouble swallowing. They never did a biopsy or endoscopy of his esophagus but told us it was an agressive cancer of the esophagus, following a CT scan. He recovered from the pneumonia in a week, (pretty good for someone who supposedly has agressive cancer), but after failing a "swallowing test" was put on the saline IV and Dilaudid. They kept increasing the frequency of the Dilaudid until he was unable to speak (before that he said he wasn't in pain) They wouldn't give him a feeding tube because they (team of so-called Drs) didn't want to prolong his suffering. He was only awake in the final horrific time it took him to drown in his own fluids. I will never forget his suffering. I'll never forgive myself for trusting these Drs who put no value on life if the patient is elderly. A few weeks after he passed away I got his records and the first report said he should have had an endoscopy to find the cause of the swallowing problem. I spoke to the first Dr and she said, "oh, you should have been given this at the time" What kind of world is it where it's legal to starve and drug the elderly to death and not be held accountable?
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