Fox News Doc: It's Time For COVID-19 Patients To 'Come Off' Ventilators And Either Survive Or Die

[davekriss]

36. Sad story

My dad used to occasionally tell my brother and I that he did not want to live with a bunch of tubes shoved down his throat, dependent on machines to live.

Then he got cancer and eventually found himself in just that situation. Most of the time he was in an induced coma, but when we’d visit they woke him up. He was restrained because, otherwise, he’d tear out the tubes.

My brother and I flew in from out of state. He welcomed our visits, clearly. But when we’d leave, he made expressions to me that I interpreted as, ‘get these f*ing pipes out of me’. I’d shout at him (he was nearly totally deaf), ‘one more day, dad, just one more day. They want to test your ability to breath on your own’. This went on for weeks.

The doctors, always the optimists, said they can try this or that (which they did, including highly invasive surgery). One day a nurse pulled my aside and told me to end it, that we (all of us) were only making him suffer. I objected, saying Dr X wanted to try procedure Y. She said the doctors are always optimistic, they always want to save lives. But, she said, she’d seen this play out so many times and she was certain my dad would not improve. A few days later he passed due to heart failure.

It hit me weeks later that my father, a lifelong atheist and a reality-based, tough-as-nails NYC kid, was asking me to end it. We talked about this situation over the years and he wanted to end it even if it meant death.

That was 7 years ago and I still live with that guilt. It was our selfishness, our desire not to lose our dad that blinded us to his wishes and thus prolonged his suffering.

(Karma: I now have the same incurable cancer.)