Personal Experience With A Senior Who Was Frightened of "Death Panels"- My Mom

[stopbush]

On September 2, we lost my mom to cancer. Her battle was as brief as it was frightening and painful to her.

My mom was a born-again Xian for the past 30+ years, and because of that, a R. I'm an atheist of about the same length of time. A while back, I had a discussion with her about having a living will. She told me that such a thing was "Obama's death panels." I asked her what was so different from a living will and the disbursement of property will she drew up in the early 90s. She didn't have an answer.

In April, I visited her and again brought up the living will. She seemed more receptive to the idea, but she never acted on it.

Mom was diagnosed with cancer in late July. She had an operation that removed a huge tumor from her stomach area. Afterward, she went through many episodes of dementia. The doctors leveled with us and told us there was little hope of her recovering physically to the point where she could have chemo and other therapies.

After the doctors got her diabetes leveled off, mom's dementia abated, and she was able to think clearly. She was really scared and wondered why her god had so deserted her. My sibs decided that they needed to broach the subject of mom having at least a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) on file in case mom went into a coma and was unable to make decisions for herself on what heroic efforts should be taken or not. Fortunately, mom was deemed able to make those decisions, and a DNR was produced. Less than a week later, she was gone.

I mention this story not for sympathy, but as an example of the real-world consequences that can occur when craven politicians like Chuck Grassley and fucking millionaire media whores like Rush Limbaugh play their little games and scare the shit out of seniors, all so their political capital can go up a quarter of a point. They certainly had an effect on my mom, whose fear of "death panels" kept her from drawing up a living will, which created a situation where end-of-life issues were being discussed and acted upon at the absolute worst time one should ever have to deal with them, ie: when a person is just a few days from death. Watching one's parent die is bad enough without having the added burden of dealing with things like writing up a DNR IN THE MOMENT. My family and my mom could have been spared at least a little angst had mom had a living will, but her Xian/R persuasions and her choices of who she needed to believe when it came to "death panels" made that a moot point.

My mom was a decent and compassionate woman whose religious delusions never hurt anyone. It really pisses me off to know that the political gamesmanship of the fucking RWers in this country caused her and her entire family needless pain and fear at the end. We all cared deeply about mom, but her life and her status as a senior were nothing but political cannon fodder for the shitheads who stand as the current power brokers in the Republican party.

Fuck them very much, fucking ghouls.

[Inuca]

1. My sympathies nevertheless

[Warpy]

2. Letting them go was the toughest thing I ever did

and I applaud you for bringing up the subject with your parents, too. I made sure both of them were DNR when they told me they were tired and it was time to go, doing it for my mother and bringing in all the troops so my dad could do it for himself. I can think of nothing worse than watching them linger for weeks in horrible pain, surrounded by machines and brusque, competent caregivers. I know, because I've been one of those caregivers when a family hasn't understood the consequences or hasn't been able to cope with unresolved guilt and ordered everything (futile) done. It was still the hardest thing in my life to sit back and let them go.

You want them to live forever, you just don't want them to live like that, and that is the point of the "death panel."

Death is inevitable. It will come to us all and there is no way to avoid it, no matter how terrified we are of some judgmental god. The only control we have is in deciding at the end just how it will come, quickly in a bed without the roar of machinery or slowly in a bed surrounded by machinery that keeps us nominally alive while causing the maximum amount of pain.

[MajorChode]

3. This is the direct consequence of demagoguery

There are other less direct consequences which are more far reaching, but you've identified one of the direct consequences.

The problem you've identified is really just a symptom of a much larger problem. The real problem is when people allow the tactics of demagoguery and other fallacious nonsense to go unchecked, more and more people start to believe it. This isn't just a problem the right has either as I see it often enough on the left. The difference is the right has a much larger and highly financed network that allows such nonsense to proliferate.

[stopbush]

6. Indeed. the obvious answer to the question I asked my mom about the difference

between a property will and a living will is that the Rs weren't demagoging living wills as being "death panels" back in the 1990s. That's a perfect example of the "larger problem" our country has with what the R party has evolved into today. As bad as RW policies are, it's the irresponsibility of their politicians that pose the greatest danger, because the policies spring from the irresponsibility.

[MajorChode]

9. I don't see it as irresponsibility

They are being very responsible to the rich and are serving their interests very well. In fact, they are serving their interests so well, they have got a very large segment of the population to buy their snake oil.

[ejpoeta]

4. i am sorry to hear about your ordeal. we had a similar situation

with my dad who died a year ago last april. We didn't have a living will, but my dad had had some issues over the past couple of years and had made two of my sister's health proxys. when he went in the hospital that last time, we were floored when we were told he had cancer. they said he had three months and then weeks and then days. it was a whirlwind in which us kids labored over every decision trying to figure out what he would want. he went in and out of it and his lucid moments seemed to diminish. We couldn't even get a power of attorney form signed so we could get his bills paid. That living will or something telling us all what he would want would have made things a lot less anxiety producing for all of us. All we wanted was to do what he would want. In the end he died in a hospice room with us around him. Those decisions are best made when you aren't having to do so through grief and in that moment of watching a loved one dying.

I am sorry for your loss. I wish people weren't so selfish and self serving as to make people scared of making those kinds of decisions. I believe that we all get what's coming to us eventually.... those who create this fear and hurt others the way we have seen these republicans do will get theirs eventually.

[movonne]

5. I just can't understand Christians...they want to be with Jesus but

not really...

[stopbush]

7. Yes. The non-believers in the family were the ones who were most concerned

about managing mom's pain and were accepting of her going quickly (as the doctors had told us was probable), while it was the Xians among my sibs who wanted everything done to keep her going.

Strangely, it was the non-believers who got the most emotional at the funeral, while the religious among us seemed a bit aloof. That may have been because they found comfort in the empty words of the Xian funeral service, what with its talk of eternal life and going to a better place and being in god's presence - the "triumph over the grave" baloney that is so central to the Xian faith. I guess that's why people like ritual - it takes the personal edge off of things, whereas my feeling was that I wanted to mourn and I wanted to feel the loss and sadness in that moment.

[CountAllVotes]

8. My condolences on your loss

My father did not have a living will either. He had a health directive however. He made a huge mistake. He put my brother down as the alternate on it. My mother was so distraught after he had his final severe stroke that she couldn't even look at him much less think about what she had to do. So, my brother stepped in. Unfortunately, my father failed to tell him that he was the alternate on his health care directive. My brother did not believe in "pulling the plug" so to speak.

It was a real mess believe me. I knew my father did not want to be kept alive in a vegetative state. It was I that finally stepped in and did something. He passed away about 2 weeks after I managed to get him unhooked from all of the crap in the "rehabilitation center" he was in (what a freaking joke that was!).

It was after this event that I found myself with my late mother running around town on a Sunday looking for a notary to notarize our DNRs. My mother also died of cancer. It was fast and furious and extremely sad.

I know what you are going through. The grief does lessen with time but it never goes away has been my experience.

Know that your parents are in a better place now - free from pain and illness. I am certain of this btw and no, I am not a fundamentalist anything. I've seen them since they both passed when I almost died myself. Life on the other side is not so bad btw!

[enough]

10. Very powerful post. Thank you. (nt)

[Froward69]

11. Condolences... My father had to deal with

roughly the same. only his DNR and Living will were Ignored by a republican judge, republican county DA (Ken Buck(R), running for Senate today), Hospice administration, the chief Hospice nurse and the "girlfriend" who was supposed to love Him.

only until they all had determined they had the upper hand in pilfering his estate did I produce his Will. Written and witnessed during a period in his life the judge (previously) ruled he was competent.

I challenged the judge, Ken Buck and everyone involved to meet me in State superior court to discuss the matter.

they caved and awarded me conservator ship without custody. (as I would facilitate his death ) I then got to (and continue to) deal with the cost of his long term care.
He passed in 2006, all this happened early in 2005

the real issue was the Insurance company tricking him into changing his long term care insurance into accidental death insurance.
Like an 80 year old man would die in an accident and not prostate cancer like he did.
this was completely ignored by the republicans running the judicial show.

I still carry a seething hate for republicans and the scam they perpetuate of preying upon grieving families.

[red red red]

12. Sorry for your loss...

and for what you had to go through.

[blm]

13. Exactly the way I see it, stopb....in the REAL world their wordgames are too costly for families.

Thank you for posting the truth.

[Cleita]

14. Maybe you need to confront her pastor with this

and inform him/her that you hold him/her responsible for scaring your mother to the point she could not sign a living will. Maybe it will save another family from having to deal with a propagandized and scared senior relative.

My condolences to you and your family at a difficult time that didn't need to be made any more difficult.

[stopbush]

16. Would that there was only one person to "blame" for my mom's aversion to "death panels."

But it's not so easy.

She was an evangelical Xian who participated in a weekly Bible study for 25 years. She had two children who were and are still raging born-agains. She attended an evangelical church for years until late in life she started attending the Lutheran church down the street because it was easier to get to.

No, I can't blame her Lutheran pastor as she had nothing to do with mom's religious and political beliefs. In fact, she had major disagreements with the more-liberal theology of the Lutherans. Mom insulated herself from the larger world, convinced by the religious crapola that her future wasn't of this world. People who questioned her beliefs and politics tended to fall off mom's social registry. She was left with a self-reinforcing circle of friends who believed exactly as she did, and who were and are convinced that they are in on a special "truth" that evades the rest of us.

Ergo, she was very susceptible to RW scare tactics, if for no other reason than she believed the Rs to be God's Own Party - because they told her that's what they were.

At the end of the day, we're all adults and we're responsible for our own decisions, but it speaks to the ghoulishness of the Rs that they KNOW how frightened seniors are about what they are up against in their end years, and they play on those fears to scare them into voting against their best interests...and in my mom's case, to not take action on writing up a living will, simply because she believed the Rs were leveling with her when they were, in fact, just tossing out another easily disposed of campaign slogan.

[Dappleganger]

15. My mother was a repubican

but also a nurse and worked with senior citizens daily. She knew exactly what happened to the body when a stroke occurred and how debilitated a person could become. We are very thankful that not only did she sign a DNR, but she also spoke with everyone in our family individually to make sure we understood why should put it in place. When the time finally came for us to make that decision it was MUCH easier on the family because we had no doubt whatsoever of her wishes.

It really kills me how the republican party uses fear to prey upon the weak-willed and elderly of this country!