Are living wills, murder/suicide?

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

AkronPonderer:

So, is this settled then?

If you make up a living will, explicitly stating that you want a feeding tube removed if you are in a PVS, without need of any other extraordinary devices or treatments, you are commiting a mortal sin and signing your admission ticket to hell?

In my opinion? Yes as PVS seems to be a very subjective thing and different doctors seem to come to different conclusions regarding it.

For myself, I am not dead until I am dead.

Feeding is not an extraordinary life saving measure. We feed many who can not feed themselves every day.

As for the argument that adstrinity makes, it is ludicrous.

I can not believe that a medical professional giveing a lecture would state that an “Advance Directive” that said “Clear Liquid” could mean “Bleach” & “Water” because that is a “Clear Liquid”. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad and misleading.

 

[BLB_Oregon]

ByzCath:

I do not know of any case where one could not digest or metabolize food, and if there was such a case a feeding tube would then be a moot point. The insertion of one would not make any difference.

Actually, when one is “actively dying”, it is not at all uncommon for the body to stop metabolizing food. At such a time, a patient is not bound to continue eating, since the food provides discomfort but no nourishment. (An analogy would be forcing someone with food poisoning to keep eating, even though they just throw up everything that goes down.) If a patient on a feeding tube were in this state, tube feeding would no longer be morally or medically indicated. The decision to insert a feeding tube would hardly be a moot point, since under those circumstances the action might both hasten death and increase suffering.

 

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

BLB_Oregon:

Actually, when one is “actively dying”, it is not at all uncommon for the body to stop metabolizing food. At such a time, a patient is not bound to continue eating, since the food provides discomfort but no nourishment. (An analogy would be forcing someone with food poisoning to keep eating, even though they just throw up everything that goes down.) If a patient on a feeding tube were in this state, tube feeding would no longer be morally or medically indicated. The decision to insert a feeding tube would hardly be a moot point, since under those circumstances the action might both hasten death and increase suffering.

Again, this is a hypothetical situtation that does nothing for the discussion except cause confusion and is useless to discuss.

If someone is “actively dying” which technically we are all doing every day, then I doubt that part of the treatment would be a feeding tube.

I have never heard the term “actively dying” used in a healthcare field either and I worked in the field for a number of years.

As for you comment about food poisoning, something which I had recently in the past. You are correct you wouldn’t keep feeding a person with such a condition but a feeding tube does more than just “feed” them. It also hydrates them.

Do you stop giving water to a person suffering with food poisoning?

Again, a moot point and not really any part of this discussion except to cause confusion and doubt.

 

[BLB_Oregon]

ByzCath:

Again, this is a hypothetical situtation that does nothing for the discussion except cause confusion and is useless to discuss.

If someone is “actively dying” which technically we are all doing every day, then I doubt that part of the treatment would be a feeding tube.

I have never heard the term “actively dying” used in a healthcare field either and I worked in the field for a number of years.

As for you comment about food poisoning, something which I had recently in the past. You are correct you wouldn’t keep feeding a person with such a condition but a feeding tube does more than just “feed” them. It also hydrates them.

Do you stop giving water to a person suffering with food poisoning?

Again, a moot point and not really any part of this discussion except to cause confusion and doubt.

You can hydrate using an IV. You don’t need a feeding tube. And yes, I’ve been in a situation myself where I didn’t swallow water, but just squirted very small amounts to wet my mouth for about a day and a half, because I was tired of turning inside out every time anything remotely substantial hit my stomach. I wasn’t on a hunger strike, I will assure you.

“Actively dying” means someone whose organs are fully, imminently, and irreversibly in the process of shutting down, not someone who has merely been born or who is even seriously ill. The health care field is pretty big; perhaps you were not involved with the dying end of it… which was, let’s face it, denied by American medicine as a legitimate part of the life process until fairly recently. Or perhaps the hospices you have worked in used other terminology. Who knows.

Anyone who wants to keep their feeding tube in no matter what is free to sign an advance directive to that effect, but it is prudent for them to consider first what “no matter what” might really mean… and that requires the use of hypothetical possibilities. If you really want to avoid hypotheticals, consider that your need for a living will is entirely hypothetical. The chances are that you will die suddenly or will die while you are still in charge of your faculties and able to direct your own care. The last day may come and you might never experience physical death! So why discuss living wills at all?

PS Are you really telling me you know no one who is as faithful to orthodox Catholic practice as you are? There is not a single person you could trust to faithfully keep your care within the ethical teachings of the Church? Wow… you need a new parish. (Or to lighten up on your need for control? Just a thought.)

 

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

BLB_Oregon:

PS Are you really telling me you know no one who is as faithful to orthodox Catholic practice as you are? There is not a single person you could trust to faithfully keep your care within the ethical teachings of the Church? Wow… you need a new parish. (Or to lighten up on your need for control? Just a thought.)

I was going to reply to you until I got to your PS line.

Then I realized that you don’t deserve anything from me.

Let me just say, how charitable of you.

No where did I say what you are implying that I said. This is how you deal with the disscusion? Call me a control freak and imply that I have a Holier than thou attitude?

No where did I say any such thing. I was replying that a “Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care” is not the perfect answer.

 

[BLB_Oregon]

ByzCath:

I was going to reply to you until I got to your PS line.

Then I realized that you don’t deserve anything from me.

Let me just say, how charitable of you.

No where did I say what you are implying that I said. This is how you deal with the disscusion? Call me a control freak and imply that I have a Holier than thou attitude?

No where did I say any such thing. I was replying that a “Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care” is not the perfect answer.

Well, it would appear that I got a reply, anyway… which you are right, might have been more than I deserved. Still, this is where I got the impression that you don’t know anyone that you would trust to follow the teachings of the Church with regards to a durable power of attorney for your health care:

"I wish to live my life according to a set of moral priniciples which include following the Teachings of the Church.

Now God forbid that I end up like Terri, I would still not want my feeding tube removed, but if I gave someone the health care power of attorney they could remove the feeding tube.

If you give someone this power it will be their choice no matter how you lived your life or what you said while you could. It would all depend on what they wanted done."

Do you see how I might have gotten the impression that giving up control of your health care decisions, even to a fully orthodox Catholic of your own choosing, might be a problem for you?

I didn’t do any name-calling, and I’m sorry if “just a thought” didn’t soften things up enough. I meant to imply by “just a thought” that I might be out in left field… which is very clearly your contention. I guess it wasn’t much of a thought. My apologies.

 

[AkronPonderer]

Can you write a living will stating:

“In case of my incapacitation, I defer all judgements concerning my physical health to Bishop so-and-so, or his appointed representative” ?

Seems a good way to avoid the tough choices and stay in the good graces of The almighty.

: /

 

[JimG]

AkronPonderer:

Can you write a living will stating:

“In case of my incapacitation, I defer all judgements concerning my physical health to Bishop so-and-so, or his appointed representative” ?

Seems a good way to avoid the tough choices and stay in the good graces of The almighty.: /

I doubt that the local bishop would be eager to take over the end of life health care decisions for everyone in his diocese!

 

[demolitionman65]

There are too many intangibles that play into each of these situations.

I will say this, and it is a point that I don’t often hear brought up: Terri’s feeding and hydration tubes were removed. To starve is one thing. To die of thirst is something else; much, much worse.

In 1906, W.J. McGee, Director of the St. Louis Public museum, published one of the most detailed and graphic descriptions of the ravages of extreme dehydration ever recorded. McGee’s account was based on the experiences of Pablo Valencia, a forty-year-old sailor-turned-prospector, who survived almost seven days in the Arizona desert without water…

Saliva becomes thick and foul-tasting; the tongue clings irritatingly to the teeth and the roof of the mouth … A lump seems to form in the throat … severe pain is felt in the head and neck. The face feels full due to the shrinking of the skin. Hearing is affected, and many people begin to hallucinate… [then come] the agonies of a mouth that has ceased to generate saliva. The tongue hardens into what McGee describes as “a senseless weight, swinging on the still-soft root and striking foreignly against the teeth.” Speech becomes impossible, although sufferers have been known to moan and bellow.

Next is the “blood sweats” phase, involving “a progressive mummification of the initially living body.” The tongue swells to such proportions that it squeezes past the jaws. The eyelids crack and the eyeballs begin to weep tears of blood. The throat is so swollen that breathing becomes difficult, creating an incongruous yet terrifying
sense of drowning.

Finally … there is living death, the state into which Pablo Valencia had entered when McGee discovered him on a desert trail, crawling on his hands and knees: “His lips had disappeared as if amputated, leaving low edges of blackened tissue; his teeth and gums projected like those of a skinned animal, but the flesh was black and dry as a hank of jerky; his nose was withered and shrunken to half its length, and the nostril-lining showing black; his eyes were set in a winkless stare, with surrounding skin so contracted as to expose the conjunctiva, itself as black as the gums…; his skin [had] generally turned a ghastly purplish yet ashen gray, with great livid blotches and streaks; his lower legs and feet … were torn and scratched by contact with thorns and sharp rocks, yet even the freshest cuts were so many scratches in dry leather, without trace of blood” (Philbrick, 126-128).

And this does not even begin to describe the physical pain that is associated with radical thirst. Kidney shutdown (and attendant severe fever), muscle spasms, nausea. . .

At the risk of sounding like a totalitarian, the State has a moral compulsion to insure that hydration tubes stay in place, even in apparent cases of PVS.

 

[Steven_Merten]

demolitionman65:

There are too many intangibles that play into each of these situations.

I will say this, and it is a point that I don’t often hear brought up: Terri’s feeding and hydration tubes were removed. To starve is one thing. To die of thirst is something else; much, much worse.

[/indent]And this does not even begin to describe the physical pain that is associated with radical thirst. Kidney shutdown (and attendant severe fever), muscle spasms, nausea. . .

At the risk of sounding like a totalitarian, the State has a moral compulsion to insure that hydration tubes stay in place, even in apparent cases of PVS.

Hello demolitionman,

Would you say the Church (one billion Catholics) has a moral compulsion to insure that a Catholic healthcare system is set up around the world to incert feed tubes in poor nations to prevent this type of death from happening anywhere? Do you think it would be murder or assisted suicide for the Church not to do so?

Peace in Christ,
Steven Merten
www.ILOVEYOUGOD.com

 

[Gratias_Grace]

I couldn’t find an apropriate “voting box”, so I didn’t vote.

As catholics **we can’t ** chose our own ways to die. We have to live until we die a natural death, even if that costs us great pain.

Let me try to explain: Life is sacred and only God decides when to give it and when to end it. A living will for a catholic must be made in accordance with the teaching of the Church.

A person can’t say: “If I get cancer I do not want to be treated. I want to live with the cancer until I die a natural death”.

But the person can say (or state in his/her living will) that he/she will be treated as long as there is chances for recovery. If there is a chance of living 1 1/2 extra year with treatment, the person “have to” go through it, if not it must be considered as to break the fifth commandment: “Thou shall not kill”.

If the condition worsen and the person have no chance of recovery, he/she can have a statement in his/her living will that tells that he/she will not go through treatment that only serve to prolong life in the same condition (no recovery, there has not been less cancer).

If it’s lungcancer one don’t have to be connected to a respirator or one don’t have to take a new doze of chemotherapy.

One will die of natural causes!

Every human being has the rigth to food and wather, says the catholic Church (but the secular world do not always agree with that). So the living will must state that a feeding tube can’t be removed before the lungs (from my example with the lungcancer) stops working. That is dying of a natural cause (the lungs don’t work any more) and that can’t be called for starving to death.

See EWTN’s very clear confirmment of this:
ewtn.com/expert/answers/end_of_life_decisions.htm

In pain we will probarly need morfine. Pehaps we shall spesify that we want that.

As catholics our living-testaments also must claim our right to the last sacraments, a claim for a priest to be called. For converts (some are the only catholic in their family) there should be an explanation of what happens when the last sacraments are given (because the protestantfamily may not be sure about when and how to call the priest and that they shall leave the room for the last confession and that they will be welcomed back when we, as patients, are fed with "the wandering bread"after the confession).

People that are troubled with depressions or other mental illness that may make them unstable in their abillity to make decitions should perhaps, when they are in a stable mood periode, get into their living will-tetament that if they get depressed and cries out that they want to die, they are not to be listened too.

About the condition they call “vedgetable state”, I saw one small film of Terry were she had reactions to beieng touched with a small nail on her mouth. She turned her head away from the nail more than one time. May be we have to spesify in our living wills that we are not to be treated as “vedgetables” as long as there are some normal reactions in us to external stimuli.

One more thing, that has nothing to do with a living-will testament: Perhaps this is the time to start a worldwide prayergroup for all the dead/dying converts who is the only catholic in their family. If not their family prays for them, perhaps no one else will do it. Chairity!!! ("We pray for the souls of all those that in this year, or in the years that have passed before, died at this date, that have no one to pray for their souls … ").

Peace, dignity and right to practise our catholic faith also in the hours and minutes when we dies! :getholy:

G.Grace

 

[mlchance]

A patient can refuse any treatment, even food and hydration, if that patient believes that his continuing treatment constitutes a grave burden to himself, his family, and/or his community. Food or hydration can be removed from a patient without that patient’s consent only in cases where death is imminent or when continuing food or hydration itself leads to further complications (as it did for the mother of a friend of mine a couple of years ago).

See this link the section of *The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care *dealing with the care of the dying.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[alterserver_07]

As a guardian of the ill person, you must feed them and give them water. Feeding tubes are not extaordinary means of life support, they are the basic needs of a person and if it is in a living will, you can not respect it as an Catholic. Now extraordinary means like blood transfusions is different, you don’t need to keep having those because it is extraodanary means.