Njean31

while working with hospice patients now for the last several months, i can understand why some patients/ families would choose this route if given the option. i've seen these patients suffer immensly, i really didn't know suffering before this job. one of my patients a few weekends ago, well........i went to see her on a saturday and she is lying in bed with many family and friends around, she is struggling for every breath and they are bickering back and forth over her bedside about feed her this, don't give her that, and so on and so forth......and i commence to doing my job, that is taking her vital signs and checking her from head to toe for everything from bedsores to bowel obstruction. well, at one point i have to move her on her side to get a look at her bottom at a bedsore and this is very painful for her....meanwhile all of these family members are getting on her nerves too. well anyways, the next day i go back because death is immenent for her and when i enter her room, i could tell right away that she had seriously declined overnight. she see's me and says, "oh God, not you again" but it was mumbled and slurred but i clearly understood what she meant (she said this due to having to be moved around and messed with and it was painful for her) although i didn't move her this time.......i just gently took her vital signs and listened to her heart and abdomen and looked at what i could see over the covers. anyway the main point i'm trying to get at is what she said after "oh, god, not you again" , next she said, "you mean i'm not dead yet, pleeeeease let me die" and tears rolled down her cheek. i got on the phone with her doctor and ordered her some morphine........she carried on 2 more days.....then died. this scenario has played out several times in my few short months there. some people in that much pain, wearing diapers, not eating/drinking, KNOWING there is NO HOPE, bedsore abounding, struggling for every breath, I am seriously reconsidering my own views on this subject. the ONLY problem i personally would have with it would be the "playing God" and the religious stance on taking a life. but if there is absolutely no quality of life, nothing but pain/despair? its a tough thing.