Marcus Aurelius said:
Fenrir said:
Who do you want making those decisions?
Reasonable families. Doctors not empowered to make those decisions in the US. I guess for good reasons. But these are desperate times. This is not the case in other countries. America litigious.
Well, when doctors were going to get paid for their time to educate patients on end of life decisions, it was called a death panel. And the topic continues to remain a taboo in this country. For some reason if you aren't doing everything possible to keep that heart beating, you're a bad doctor.
I think if a patient, 100 years old or not, decides he wants to be full code, that's his right. But more often than not, the elderly are ready to go, it is the families that come in and say "you have to do everything, that's what he wanted."
I think everyone needs to watch Extremis on Netflix. Recommend watching it now, before you have a family member or loved on on life support to give perspective that might be too hard to watch at a later time.