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It’s Not Just About ‘Quality of Life’

My patient had been having chest pains for several days before his heart stopped. Paramedics managed to revive him, but not before his lungs, kidneys and brain were severely damaged by the lack of blood flow. The prognosis was grim. A neurologist in the intensive care unit said the best possible outcome would be life in a persistent vegetative state.

Most doctors would recommend purely palliative treatment at this point, and that is what we did. There was no chance of organ recovery, little chance the patient could ever be weaned from the ventilator. However, his family members said they were willing for him to be in this state as long as he was alive.…  Seguir leyendo »

J. R. was an auto mechanic of French Canadian descent with a perfectly square gap between his two front teeth and the slightly off-kilter face of a retired boxer. Soon after I met him on the surgical ward, after he had been found to have cancer, he developed a habit of planting himself in front of me whenever I got within 100 feet of his room, to spin stories about his life, wax poetic about his girlfriend, and offer free auto-repair advice.

I thought we had caught the tumor in J. R.’s colon early, but in the operating room we found that the cancer had grown into his pelvic sidewalls.…  Seguir leyendo »