End of Life Question

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pseudosig

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I have a great grandma in-law that is having some serious health issues. I need help thinking through this so I can know how to act accordingly.

She has been bleeding a lot in her stool, and has been needing blood transfusions continually. The doctors did a throat and colon scope and found a lot of lessions in her colon, lower intestines and ulcers in her stomach. She is about 83 years old, and has coronary dissease, which per the opinion of the doctor, it’s a VERY likely thing that she would die durring the major surgery that it would take to basically remove her colon and lower intestines and install a colostomy bag.

Understandably, she opted not to have the surgery (which I in good conscience can reason through). But the part I have a hard time thinking through is they’re also going to stop the blood transfusions. It’s not the case they’re trying to speed up her passing away, I think everyone involved is just accepting that she can’t have the surgery.

Is it morally permissible to forego the blood transfusions (and quite honestly, I don’t know if continually receiving blood transfusions is even an option… it seems that the hospital was of the implied response that one cannot receive INDEFINITELY blood transfusions.

Any help is greatly appreciated…

Pax
 
pseudosig said:
I have a great grandma in-law that is having some serious health issues. I need help thinking through this so I can know how to act accordingly.

She has been bleeding a lot in her stool, and has been needing blood transfusions continually. The doctors did a throat and colon scope and found a lot of lessions in her colon, lower intestines and ulcers in her stomach. She is about 83 years old, and has coronary dissease, which per the opinion of the doctor, it’s a VERY likely thing that she would die durring the major surgery that it would take to basically remove her colon and lower intestines and install a colostomy bag.

Understandably, she opted not to have the surgery (which I in good conscience can reason through). But the part I have a hard time thinking through is they’re also going to stop the blood transfusions. It’s not the case they’re trying to speed up her passing away, I think everyone involved is just accepting that she can’t have the surgery.

Is it morally permissible to forego the blood transfusions (and quite honestly, I don’t know if continually receiving blood transfusions is even an option… it seems that the hospital was of the implied response that one cannot receive INDEFINITELY blood transfusions.

Any help is greatly appreciated…

Pax
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When we came to this point, in my father’s various cancers, he, himself, opted for no additional tests, surgeries, and or blood transfusions…the last transfusion allowed for a period of 3 to 4 days, until body failure, as food/water digestion/filtration becomes impossible…the hospital hospice team were wonderful, loving people and basically said, his body was shutting down and no longer building blood as quickly as it is bleeding/leaking, out of somewhere within his body…it is a natural death process.

Please prepare for her passsing and if she is still lucid, fulfill her last wishes…call whomever she wants to see or she wants to be with her, finalize all her wishes, contact for Last Rites, etc. Celebrate her life too!

My love and prayers are with you…
 
From The Catechism of the Catholic Church

2278 Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of “over-zealous” treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted. The decisions should be made by the patient if he is competent and able or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient, whose reasonable will and legitimate interests must always be respected.

2279 Even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted. The use of painkillers to alleviate the sufferings of the dying, even at the risk of shortening their days, can be morally in conformity with human dignity if death is not willed as either an end or a means, but only foreseen and tolerated as inevitable Palliative care is a special form of disinterested charity. As such it should be encouraged.

scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c2a5.htm
 
Yeah, ending blood transfusions is likely licit: It’s an extraordinary means that isn’t as vital, say, as food and water. One needs blood to live, but at some point, one has to let God take a person home.
 
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