Dying with dignity

[NotMyWay]

Currently sat by an elderly loved one's bedside watching them die. Two days of thrashing around and begging me to kill them. Doctors are doing what they can but it's horrific. We don't treat animals like this so why are there not better options for end of life care?

They absolutely should not be so agitated that they're pulling their line out. Don't be afraid to complain.

Ask for midazolam and hyoscine to be reviewed. How awful for both you and your family, I'm so sorry.

Thank you all. I have emailed PALs making some of these helpful points although I am not hopeful of getting any help over the weekend.

The family have said our goodbyes. We just want their last few hours / days to be peaceful and dignified. I will never forget hearing them scream and begging me to kill them today.

Tell them you need whichever doctor is assigned to that ward to increase their meds. If they're agitated and distressed then that is a clinical reason to increase meds. Tell them a clinical complaint will be going in unless they take responsibility and provide adequate palliative care. They are being neglectful in failing to provide adequate symptom relief.

It's bizarre that we as a society are so forward thinking in many ways but around death, we are still in the middle ages.

What is the actual point in keeping people alive at this point? We have the means to ease them Way gently without this horror.
People, this will you and I one day unless we push for it to be remidied.

Trixi I disagree. Before being pumped with more drugs df was uncomfortable, the drugs just meant he couldn't verbalise it.
Mouth dry, nose dry, shifted and moved with damaged bruised ribs to change him etc.

It makes me so cross.

I have nursed both my Gran and Mum through terminal bowel cancer (in 2003 and 2019) and both their deaths were horrific, painful and dreadful. People do not understand the reality of death - and these were under palliative care with hospice help and syringe drivers etc. It has left me absolutely traumatised and terrified of dying. I would rather short myself in the head. We treat animals better. I am so angry about the way we treat people dying of terminal illness. When there comes a point where there is more suffering than life then why let that person go on?

*shoot

I feel for you OP. This brings back very painful memories of my mother's slow death. She asked my father to kill her. It traumatised him. Her last weeks were torture, both for her and for us.

It is utterly wrong that we don't have sensible, careful and humane laws for euthanasia of terminally ill people in the UK.

At one point drs could up the dose of morphine in these circumstances but then Shipman occurred and laws were tightened. It's horrible, we should allow humans the dignity we afford our pets

Keep on at the doctors to up the sedation. It’s in humane. Wish euthanasia was an option.

@Bagelsandbrie

Same!!

It's inhumane and I should, we all should if we want to be able to have legal documents on record to say, if I'm terminal and I get to x stage... I would like to be assisted very quickly to die.

There are so many variables and that awful 'sanctity of life argument' which is absolutely not relevant with someone terminally ill, and weeks to live ''.

It's a stain on our society and humanity.

Day 3 of the most inhumane suffering.
Still conscious and obviously in pain. Not seen a doctor for 24 hours. Nurses pop in when we press the call button because we are having to hold them down to stop the trying to get out of bed, but otherwise nothing.

I'm about to lose my shit!!!

You poor thing. I think you are well within your rights to lose your shit.

I'm so sorry this is happening to you and your loved one OP. This shouldn't be allowed to happen. It's just awful.

I would lose my shit and demand to see a doctor. There is no way that more can’t be done surely.

I’m so sorry

I can never understand the logic of it all. If someone healthy was in that much pain someone would ring for an ambulance and they’d knock them out with pain relief or even put them in an induced coma but with the terminally ill it’s like they just get ignored.

@NotMyWay my heart goes out to you and your loved one.

I've been down this path four times in the last two years. Each time we had to fight for pain and anxiety meds. There is no dignity in the dying process. I hope things change soon.

Please do go ahead and lose your shit, OP. This is awful xx

As a humanist I support assisted dying. I cannot remember the date of the last assisted dying debate in the HoC but I watched it and was very unhappy at the MPs telling the country that because their nearest and dearest had lovely deaths, it must be the same for everyone else. It's not. Death can be horrible and uncomfortable and frightening and painful. Sometimes not even the medical profession can help bring about a pain-free, peaceful death.

It is also shocking that, rather than asking two doctors to put a person to sleep, either at home or in hospital, with all the family and friends surrounding them, terminally ill have to go abroad to end their lives. I find this so heartless and unfeeling.

My husband's mother has a horrible death. She couldn't see, she couldn't breathe, and no drug could relieve her pain. Yet she was expected to die under these conditions.

My nana died in extreme pain but the drugs made her a zombie so she couldn't tell us or her doctors how she was feeling.

It's plain wrong that we let people suffer like that.

💐 lose your shit. It’s the only thing left you can do. Keep demanding and don’t stop until you get what is needed.

I have told them that the nursing care is wonderful but the clinical care is unacceptable and that I will be making a formal complaint unless I see a doctor who can either explain why they can’t do more or that they damn will do something. I don’t want to make a nuisance of myself but this is beyond anything a human being should go through.

Make a nuisance. Those who shout loudest get heard. What you are describing is beyond cruel for you both.

Thanks to Shipman, doctors now are not prepared to prescribe decent dosages of pain relief and sedation.

I've recently left nursing because I could no longer psychologically cope with the way the terminally ill are treated. It is cruel and inhumane. I would have no part in it. It didn't used to be like this, but the public bayed for the Liverpool Care Pathway to be abolished and this is the result. How the nurses can stand by and be comfortable with this level of care is beyond me.

@NotMyWay it took my sister completely losing her shit for the staff to get our dad the medication he needed. We complained, they agreed and lessons had been learnt.

No they bloody hadn't three more times later and still no change.