OK, before I even start typing, a MAJOR disclaimer. I LOVE my friends and family. I want them to be healthy. I want everything to be done possible to make them healthy. The following rantings are broadly philosophical and overall ethics and not about specific individuals.
Okay, this has been quite a few weeks. First you have to hear me rant about the back story. But I'll tell you that the overall theme is people being made physically miserable by medical efforts to make them healthy. Not the illnesses themselves, but by the medical interventions RELATED to the illnesses. That is the topic of my ranting.
1. My uncle Dave. Had a liver transplant several years ago. Kidneys are not doing well and on dialysis. But major issue is four blocked arteries. Had a quadruple bypass and was in the hospital for many days, feeling miserable. (Mostly his legs hurt from where they took the arteries). The surgery was necessary to prevent a serious heart attack.
2. My friend Dave. Has colitis. Had a combination of medicines that made him so anemic that he was hospitalized for several blood transfusions. In the hospital for days. Missed a lot of work. It wasn't the colitis that ultimately caused the hospitalization--it was the combination of medications.
3. My friend Terri. She is HIV positive and her counts went down dramatically a couple of weeks ago. She was incredibly lucky to find a very famous doctor who is working on advanced treatment for HIV/AIDS in Africa who put her on an experimental treatment. But for the first week, her body was doing everything it could to reject these awful chemicals. She basically lived in the bathroom, slept with her head on the toilet with her body rejecting this in every way it could. It wasn't the HIV that had her sick, it was the life-saving treatment.
4. Our babysitter (and "adopted" daughter) Kailey. At 22, she's been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. (Yes, let's all acknowledge that this sucks beyond all belief). She's had one round of chemotherapy and has given us all the grisly details. Puking, no energy, no strength, everything tastes like metal, can't eat anything "unreal". Plus she gets something called "chemo brain" which makes her forget the sequence of things (like she got dressed and THEN got in the shower and turned it on!). The cancer isn't affecting her yet. This is all from the treatment.
5. My mother. She had a tightening in her chest and pains down her arm. Because she has every single risk factor for heart trouble, they admitted her for three days, ran lots of tests, poked and prodded and bruised her, and at the end of the day let her go saying there was nothing they could do and her arteries aren't clogged. No heart attack, but plenty of trauma to find that out.
First of all, YES--these are all within the last two weeks. Second of all--notice that these all have one thing in common. All of these people are suffering. But they are NOT suffering from the illness that is the root cause. They are all suffering from the TREATMENT of said disease. The treatments are so harsh that people are puking, collapsing, bleeding and showering with their clothes on.
For me, I have to wonder if our goal of saving everyone, curing everything and defying mortality at any cost has gone too far. We are putting cell-killing chemicals into our bodies, creating toxic healing "cocktails", putting cameras into hearts, medicines that make us sicker and our organs onto machines just to heal us. Our earth is getting more and more populated and we're working harder and harder to keep it that way.
I don't have the answer--just a great big question. Should we be doing this? And, again, please refer to the first paragraph. This is very much a NIMBY (not in my back yard) question. YES--I want all this to be done for MY loved ones. But I have to ask--as this is all being thrown in my face--is this really the humane way to treat humanity?
Okay, this has been quite a few weeks. First you have to hear me rant about the back story. But I'll tell you that the overall theme is people being made physically miserable by medical efforts to make them healthy. Not the illnesses themselves, but by the medical interventions RELATED to the illnesses. That is the topic of my ranting.
1. My uncle Dave. Had a liver transplant several years ago. Kidneys are not doing well and on dialysis. But major issue is four blocked arteries. Had a quadruple bypass and was in the hospital for many days, feeling miserable. (Mostly his legs hurt from where they took the arteries). The surgery was necessary to prevent a serious heart attack.
2. My friend Dave. Has colitis. Had a combination of medicines that made him so anemic that he was hospitalized for several blood transfusions. In the hospital for days. Missed a lot of work. It wasn't the colitis that ultimately caused the hospitalization--it was the combination of medications.
3. My friend Terri. She is HIV positive and her counts went down dramatically a couple of weeks ago. She was incredibly lucky to find a very famous doctor who is working on advanced treatment for HIV/AIDS in Africa who put her on an experimental treatment. But for the first week, her body was doing everything it could to reject these awful chemicals. She basically lived in the bathroom, slept with her head on the toilet with her body rejecting this in every way it could. It wasn't the HIV that had her sick, it was the life-saving treatment.
4. Our babysitter (and "adopted" daughter) Kailey. At 22, she's been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. (Yes, let's all acknowledge that this sucks beyond all belief). She's had one round of chemotherapy and has given us all the grisly details. Puking, no energy, no strength, everything tastes like metal, can't eat anything "unreal". Plus she gets something called "chemo brain" which makes her forget the sequence of things (like she got dressed and THEN got in the shower and turned it on!). The cancer isn't affecting her yet. This is all from the treatment.
5. My mother. She had a tightening in her chest and pains down her arm. Because she has every single risk factor for heart trouble, they admitted her for three days, ran lots of tests, poked and prodded and bruised her, and at the end of the day let her go saying there was nothing they could do and her arteries aren't clogged. No heart attack, but plenty of trauma to find that out.
First of all, YES--these are all within the last two weeks. Second of all--notice that these all have one thing in common. All of these people are suffering. But they are NOT suffering from the illness that is the root cause. They are all suffering from the TREATMENT of said disease. The treatments are so harsh that people are puking, collapsing, bleeding and showering with their clothes on.
For me, I have to wonder if our goal of saving everyone, curing everything and defying mortality at any cost has gone too far. We are putting cell-killing chemicals into our bodies, creating toxic healing "cocktails", putting cameras into hearts, medicines that make us sicker and our organs onto machines just to heal us. Our earth is getting more and more populated and we're working harder and harder to keep it that way.
I don't have the answer--just a great big question. Should we be doing this? And, again, please refer to the first paragraph. This is very much a NIMBY (not in my back yard) question. YES--I want all this to be done for MY loved ones. But I have to ask--as this is all being thrown in my face--is this really the humane way to treat humanity?
1 comment:
This is a really thoughtful one. Gave me a lot to think about. That quality over quantity battle lives on..
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