Tough decision
Via Brutal Hugs, comes this:
Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive.
In an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday, one New Orleans doctor told how she ‘prayed for God to have mercy on her soul’ after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.
That would be a tough call and I’d hate to be the one to make it. Damned if you do . . .
September 14th, 2005 at 10:38 am
As someone who has stood beside a hospital bed for days waiting for “nature to take it’s course”, I know that if I could have pushed a button to end it I would have. The hours were agonizing. Listening to each shallow breath – almost gasps – short, ‘hic’ -like sounds and soft groans that no one could discern their intent. It was devastatingly traumatizing. The pause after each breath caused my heart to stop for a moment as I wondered “was that her last breath?” Then she’d take another one and the cycle would repeat.
At 7:25pm I leaned over her, kissed her on the forehead and said; “It’s OK; You can let go now.” By 7:30pm her heart rate was 0. If I had known that I could have prevented many hours of her condition by a simple act – be it my words or increasing the morphine – I would have done so without hesitation.
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I am not suprised the MSM found a doctor like that to interview. They probably interviewed quite a few until they got that quote. I think a good doctor would have done so without remorse. More than anyone else, the doctor knows if a patient will survive and knows the suffering of all involved when a terminal patient hangs on.
September 14th, 2005 at 10:46 am
You’ve alluded to that before. That is tough and I do not envy you. My sympathies.