Sometimes the televisions of my clients are on and blaring.
Sometimes I hear things I have no desire to.
Television is one of those pervasive things that I believe the Historians of the future, (should there be one), will weigh in on heavily and to the negative. So much input and so little content.
BAH Television!
Over the last few weeks the media has been full of a case in the United States where a brain-damaged woman in a coma is being fought over. One the one side her husband (a man who has clearly moved on in his life) wishes life-support to cease and the normal course of a life to wind down. Of course this is no normal life following no normal course. This is a man who has a girlfriend and 2 children by the new woman. He has the appearance of poor motives. He wants his wife's life to cease being sustained artificially.
On the other side her parents are fighting to wringe every drop of life out of their daughter.
They have hard feelings towards this man and wish him to sign custody of the woman back to them so that they can care for her. Caring for her means a feeding tube as well as other artifical means of keeping her alive. The parents feel very strongly that their daughter's being allowed to die is murder.
Horrible things are being said and motives assigned to and by otherwise quite reasonable people over a woman who stopped being able to live unassisted 15 years ago.
The parents and their supporters engage people who rant into the television cameras about those who would KILL their daughter. I understand the need to be involved with your child. But this?
God is being invoked, and God help those who are on the "wrong" side.
Which is the wrong side? Why whatever side the current speaker is not on, of course.
By the millions, lives on our planet that CAN be saved are ignored and overlooked in other parts of the world then the affluent west. Even here, poor and disenfranchised folk die in the streets with noone shedding a tear for them.
In the name of God, why not direct your energies and monies to this cause.
All lives are of equal worth. Think before committing thousands of dollars to hyping a cause.
Spend your money where it can do the best good. Perhaps both sides cannot see any greater good than their own.
God has a miracle waiting for this woman.
I suspect it is on the other side of the temporal wall.
Let her go.
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The concept of uncontrollable pain is self-fulfilling. Pain only becomes unmanageable when the clinicians involved give up. Although I realize that the world in which we live is real, and therefore imperfect, as a physician I consciously adopt the attitude that there is no such thing as uncontrollable pain, only pain that has yet to be controlled. --- Dr. Byock
