What about what I want?

Last wishes. Is there anything more important that this? Really. You can't take anything in life with you when you go so all you really have in life are your last wishes. I can't tell you how much emphasis I put on those. I feel that it's one of the most honorable things you can do for a person, carrying out their last wish, albiet it reasonable of course.

So I'm at work the other night. A patient comes in via ambulance after falling. The patient is older and the fall caused injury and a bleed in the patients brain. The patient was alert and orientated to person, place and thing and holding a conversation with the staff and family who was also present. The patient also had very bad lung disease, but that wasn't the reason for the ER visit. It came up that the patient told the nurse, "I do not want one of those tubes put down my throat and be on a machine if something should happen." The nurse, "Ok". The patient, "I'm telling you, I DO NOT WANT A BREATHING TUBE." The nurse, "I understand." Not 1/2 hr. later the patient becomes unresponsive. The family is present and tells the Dr. to put the breathing tube in because the patient couldn't protect their own airway. The Dr. says, "Are you sure?" Nurse says, "I just had this conversation with your loved one and they specifically said "NO breathing tube". The family says, "We don't want our loved one to die, put the tube in."

Sigh. We put the tube in.

I understand that NO ONE is ready for a loved one to leave us. I'm not even really convinced that this patient was gonna die if we didn't intubate them but their condition did change. Honestly, no one knows better than me about loss. I promised my Mom that I'd not let anyone intubate her and put her on a ventilator and I was there when my Aunt made the decision to remove my Nan from life support and she passed away with all of us holding her hand. I understand pain, I understand that no one is ever ready to let someone they love go but what about what they want? See it's not about us at that moment. It's about them. If they're of sound mind and know what they want, how do you not honor it? It angers me, it really does. You can tell someone something until you're blue in the face, sign all the papers you want spelling out what you want and don't want and all that has to happen is one stinkin' person to yell "wait!" and all your last wishes fly out the window....just like that. It's not right.

So tell your people. Tell them often and find someone who'll stand strong and carry out what you want. It's all about you. Make sure they understand that.