Dutch doctors can sedate ‘agitated’ patients before euthanasia

[jeannetherese]

Yep,
In the case of my friend, hospice had a 2 weeks policy for in building care. When they thought he was getting close to that, they moved him in from what had been self-care with nurse visits.
Once he moved to their facility the clock started ticking. He outlived their expectations and they were pretty blunt about that fact.
The fault? The loved ones visiting and giving him reasons to hang on.
Hospice is a business. It’s under business pressures. There is an expectation concerning flow and a steady stream of patients. My friend’s lingering was messing up the model.

 

[Jen95]

Thanks for sharing your stories.

I had a similar experience with my mom when she had terminal lung cancer. She contracted pneumonia at one point, and was in the hospital. There was a substitute oncologist on call who didn’t know my mom (my sister came to calling him “Dr. Death”).
As her lungs became filled with fluid, the substitute oncologist gave her a medicine called lasix. This necessitated giving morphine. Each dose needed to get larger and larger and it was a spiral effect of those two meds. The doc told my sister that the morphine would probably end my mom’s breathing at some point.
So my bossy big sister says “so can you try lowering her dosage?!”
Surprise - - the doc lowered her dosage, she came out of the morphine sleep. All kinds of nursing staff and chaplains, etc stopped by my mom’s room in the following week and said “Wow - - I can’t believe you’re alive at this point”. Looking back I want to say “yeah, considering that the doc was basically euthanizing her”.
So, my mom lived for three more months after that, and there were good and bad days. Some of the bad was really awful, like when she got shingles. I can understand why “soft” euthanasia is happening, and I think that doctor was trying to prevent her from suffering. But we shouldn’t be euthanizing our parents and patients while everyone pretends it’s not happening.