Death of Wizards

Life's Lessons - Joseph Mattappally (LL)


        Recently, a friend of mine sent me a report revealing how physicians choose to die. The report said that doctors, who know the limits of life when faced with a terminal illness, often opt out of life-prolonging treatments. They practise the art of dying peacefully. The report refers to a very popular orthopaedist, Dr Charlie, who was one of the best in US, who one day found a lump in his stomach; the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. He went home that day, never to step into any hospital thereafter. He spent his remaining time with his family. Several months later, he died at home. He received no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Generally, doctors spend all their life fending off the deaths of others, but they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves even if they have access to any sort of medical care they could want. They know the limits of modern medicine but they don’t like any one to break their ribs in an attempt to resuscitate them with C P R; they know it is simply ‘futile care’. 
It is humorously said that religions exist thanks to human fear of death and ego. It is also true to say that hospitals exist on our illogical urge to spend on a dying person, making death more painful. The cutting edge technology cuts the patient open, perforates him with a number of tubes, hooks up to distinct machines, and assaults with bags full of drugs - all of these occur in intensive care units at the cost of tens of thousands of currencies a day. What it buys is misery we would not inflict even on a terrorist.  
In private, any physician aside a patient might say, "How can I do this on my family members?" This trend has become a curse on patients, doctors, and the system. When a patient is admitted in a hospital in a critical condition, no one would have prepared a plan for this situation, and shocked and scared family members find themselves caught up in a maze of choices. Nightmare begins the moment when the relatives agrees to try ‘everything’ (reasonable or not). Doctors give unrealistic expectations. The trouble is that even doctors who hate to administer futile care don’t know how to address the wishes of patients and families; the pressures all the doctors face are similar. The truth in many cases is that in all similar cases of technology trial, patients end up faster than they otherwise would have. 
The problem is with the system which encourages excessive treatment. Aura readers who read the emotions embedded in emotional layers of the body states those patients undergoing strict ICU adventures of the hospital experts die in terrible pain, with life support machines on all four sides. No doubt, many doctors err on the side of over-treatment. Even if the patient by record asks for unplugging any life-support machine, the physicians won’t do it for fear of police investigations and of the hospital administration. Amazingly, studies have found that people in home care often live longer than people with the same disease, seeking active cures. The report ends up concluding, ‘If there is a state-of-the-art of end-of-life care, it is this: death with dignity’. 


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