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The New York Times has a long form profile of a doctor who operates a hospice for dying patients. A fascinating look into a subject most people are afraid to even think about.
Now, at the morning meeting, [Dr. B. J.] Miller began describing the case of a young man named Randy Sloan, a patient at U.C.S.F. who died of an aggressive cancer a few weeks earlier at Zen Hospice. In a way, Sloan's case was typical. It passed through all the same medical decision points and existential themes the doctors knew from working with their own terminal patients. But here, the timeline was so compressed that those themes felt distilled and heightened.
And then there was the bracing idiosyncrasy of everything Miller's staff had been able to do for Sloan at Zen Hospice. Rabow told me that all palliative-care departments and home-hospice agencies believe patients' wishes should be honored, but Zen Hospice's small size allows it to "actualize" these ideals more fully. When Miller relayed one detail about Sloan's stay at the hospice — it was either the part about the sailing trip or the wedding — one doctor across the conference table expelled what seemed to be an involuntary, admiring, "What?"
Everything Miller was saying had a way of sharpening an essential set of questions: What is a good death? How do you judge? In the end, what matters? You got the sense that looking closely at Sloan's case might even get you close to some answers or, at least, less hopelessly far away.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 05 2017, @06:50AM
A contradiction often pointed out is that violent movies get rated R, a less restrictive rating than the X to XXX used for pornos, but that violence is darker, much darker than sex, so shouldn't it be the other way around?
Another curiously contradictory thing about the depiction of violence is that often it is so easily healed, its consequences so temporary. If you lose a tooth in a fight, you're not getting that tooth back, ever. Best you can do is fake it with implants, bridges, false teeth, dentures, etc. If you're in a spectacular car wreck, decelerated from 100 kph to 0 in 1 second, odds are you are not going to walk away untouched. You may at the very least be bruised, and this is not the sort of wimpy bruise from being hit by a softball, this is deep bruising that will take a minimum of 3 months to heal. After 1 month it won't be visible, but it will still be affecting you, making you unable to exert yourself as much and causing you to get tired sooner. In sports, we often hear about season ending injuries. Rarer yet still all too common are career enders. The basketball player who during practice collapses and dies of a heart condition, the quarterback who suffers such a severe bone break that it can't be healed completely, the hit that breaks a neck. But in the typical blockbuster action movie, people heal amazingly fast and completely. They may be shown all bandaged up like a mummy, and not even a week later, shown as back on their feet, moving as vigorously as before. Not even scars.
When a death does occur, it is distanced or trivialized. Bad guys often bring their deaths upon themselves, stupidly pushing their situations to extremes. The audience cares less about death when it's an evil idiot or mentally crazed low life making the fatal mistake. Even easier when we know nothing about the character the writers just killed off, as with the typical Star Trek redshirt. That minion who was standing guard over some door or gate, working for some evil overlord, did he have friends, family, hopes, dreams? When threatened, why did he stand his ground with some feeble weapon, instead of run for his life? Or, why did he not notice someone bringing to bear something powerful enough to break in and incidentally kill him, until it was too late? Would a real security guard do that?
One place I find horrifying is the nursing home. It's the ultimate place for putting off death as long as possible, no matter what. No matter how little quality of life an inmate has, they most certainly can't be helped to die, that would be evil. Dr. Kevorkian challenged us on that point. Even allowing them to die is a grey area.
Then there's the funeral industry. I find them creepily predatory. Some wait in the wings, ready to guilt trip the next of kin into ponying up for an elaborate, expensive funeral and burial, if they see an opening to do so. You want to show proper respect, don't you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @08:17AM
Young people fucking cause more people, and people are fucking expensive. Young people killing themselves and killing each other, not a problem, funerals are cheap.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Magic Oddball on Thursday January 05 2017, @10:27AM
The true horror in all but the absolute bet nursing homes is the high rates of abuse & neglect, the shitty quality of the staff, and how little dignity the residents are allowed to have. Most of the medical tech that people freak out about — ventilators, percutaneous/PEG "feeding" tubes, ostomies, etc. — isn't particularly uncomfortable unless things go wrong, and are the best option for avoiding suffering.
Regarding Kevorkian: analysis of the people he killed showed that the vast majority weren't terminally ill, and many had nothing physically wrong with them, just untreated depression from social isolation, an abusive marriage, financial difficulties, or similar issues. His openly-stated goal was never to alleviate suffering: had he stated openly at trial and in his book, he saw assisted suicide as a "distasteful" first step toward getting society to accept his dream of live 'creative' experimentation on human beings. (It's been a while since I read his book, but IIRC he expressed admiration for the Nazi physicians like Mengele for their efforts and lamented that they were "misunderstood" by society or something like that.)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @01:16PM
analysis of the people he killed showed that the vast majority weren't terminally ill
Do you have any references for this?
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday January 05 2017, @04:14PM
Oh yeah, then why is vampire porn so popular?
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