EuthaNEWSia (www.euthanewsia.ca)

Theresa Brown, an oncology nurse in Pennsylvania, writes about hard medical cases at the end of life, and how patients are not given realistic, practical choices:

In his recent New Yorker article "Letting Go," Dr. Atul Gawande explains how the first impulse of doctors, patients and family members to "fight" cancer or other serious illnesses makes it very difficult to have honest discussions of what treatment can and cannot do.

I understand why physicians find these conversations difficult, why it's preferable to focus on the good we can possibly accomplish rather than the likely futility of the struggle.

But there's another story to be told in these cases, and it's usually the nurse who's the observer of that narrative: the suffering caused by these well-intentioned treatments.

Brown concludes her story of a dying patient who got much sicker from aggressive treatment and suffered greatly:

In "Letting Go," Gawande says we don't want Gen. George Custer as a model in medicine but more Robert E. Lee. But I would argue that conjuring a general to guide patients faced with serious illness is an embrace of the wrong ideal. Patients are not battlegrounds, and practicing medicine is not a war. This patient needed thoughtful supportive care, not our ineffectual treatments that tore him up from the inside out as surely as any machine gun.

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[There are other related stories in the Links section below.]

To read the full article click on one of these links, both of which go to the same destination. A short link is provided for the convenience of readers. Also, readers may search and browse past and future advisories on the web (see bottom.)

Brown, Theresa. "A dying patient is not a battlefield". CNN. August 31, 2010 10:30 a.m. EDT. <www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/08/31/brown.hospice.care/index.html>. CNN (c) 2010 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved. CNN, One CNN Center, Atlanta, GA 30303, U.S.A.

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The EuthaNEWSia ID for this advisory is: enid201009010820.
Mailed: Wednesday, September 1, 2010 14:15:37 -0600
at Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

EuthaNEWSia is a free Canadian news advisory service covering end-of-life issues such as right to die, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. EuthaNEWSia is produced by the Right to Die Society of Canada which works toward a good death for all, including open, regulated and equitable access to euthanasia and assisted suicide. The editor is Michael Dawson <editor@euthanewsia.ca>.

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