When I no longer am able to recognize you... Please direct my healthcare to focus on relief of suffering, and do not transfer me to the hospital when I get sick. If the nursing home doc can't fix me... It's my time to die.
Yours truly,
David.
Non-medical people view Alzheimer's differently than most healthcare
personel... Yet, I think most healthcare personel in the USA still treat the severly demented in the wrong way.
A 2005 study showed that 71% of people with advanced dementia DO NOT survive past 6 months from the time they require a memory unit at a nursing home... Why then are they repeatedly admitted to the hospital where their dementia predisposes them to increased agitation often requiring sitters or restraints so they don't rip their bladder
catheter out with the balloon inflated causing urethral trauma... Or high doses of anti-psychotic medications so they don't run down the hall and out the building to fall and break a hip... When they get like this (and most do) they often stop eating, making them even more
likely to get non-healing pressure ulcers or more physical disability.I see them all on cholesterol medications which probably do not help someone with less than a year of life left in them, but risks adverse medication effects. Some that do good to recognize their children still get a $20k heart cath or treatment for cancer. Or a feeding tube is surgically placed terough their abdominal wall to feed them in attempts to extend their life well beyond the tine where they no longer remember to eat or cannot move in order to do so.
What is accomplished??? On average, there is NO extension regarding length of life, but we DO inflict more pain, confusion, agitation, and disruption of peace and comfort. In the cases where we actually do lengthen their life, it does NOT provide extension of quality of
life. So now grandma is bed bound, nonverbal, and unable to recognize family members... But she IS able to feel pain. What a way to "love" your parents and grandparents. The person suffering from Alzheimer's might have the dementia... But it is the families who are "demented".
dngilb
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