You can never have enough...

[Lilith7]

When I signed up for my St Johns medical alarm I asked about dnr arrangements, and was told to first talk to my doc and then put instructions in a capped jar in the fridge - must be a universal safe place, lol. Doctors are trained to save lives not end them, and most cannot overcome that indoctrination. The older they get though, the more mature their thinking in my experience, I guess they've seen more nasty endings. That 'natural death' no intervention thing some hospitals do is just plain cruel. Starvation is not kind neither is death by dehydration. Especially considering a little extra morphine solves the problem, and lets them get the bed free for the next poor bugger...

I hope my dark sense of humour is forgiven.

I like the idea of purple curtains. Mind you, I do have a small thing about hot pink...

I'm also looking forward to the next bit after death; I'll either know considerably more, or know nothing at all.

There are still some Drs I've heard of who do give a patient near their end a little bit extra of morphine or similar, to help speed their end so as to avoid that cruelty, & nothing is ever said about it.

Yes Hunni - purple curtains sound excellent! Probably on account of it being my favouirte colour.

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My sister-in-law who is a retired nurse told us when you sign a DNR a big red page with the DNR instructions (they can vary) should be front and center of the first page of your file.  In your face type of stuff.  But she said often doctors were reluctant to let people die.  Which is nuts!  A bit like family being able to over-ride your body organ donations if they choose to.

Lilith, my sister is younger than me and still working but bought the unit as her health isn't the greatest.  She wants to move to be closer to her son.  For various family reasons, it's easier for her to move than them.

That makes good sense, KM. Do it now while she can. I have friends up north who have just had a new roof done as they know the time is coming when they're going tp have to stop working & they're both dead set against going into a retitement village.

My kids have been told that if they don't abide by my wishes I intend to come back & haunt them.

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Mum was in an expensive home (well known supplier, advertised on TV quite often) and there were a lot of problems; staff stealing money from drawers; arrogant surly staff; long treks to get food from dining room going up and down in lifts; resentment (raised eyebrows) if you asked for food to be delivered to your bedroom instead because you were not up to the trek on a particular day; they used your cutlery which had to be washed in remote kitchen and was often not returned and couldn't be traced, so lost forever; big air conditioning system for the whole building that was not set up correctly (lack of humidity) and was not allowed to be adjusted, the supervisor of the building forbade it; couldn't sit outside or on balconies because of the continuous wind; a general lack of homeliness and no feeling of belonging.

Definitely contributed to Mum's demise although she was already on a downhill slope so hard to say how much.

Mum, of course had a D.N.R. but it was ignored/not seen by the ambulance staff as they raced from the home to Chch Hospital and only read later on, it should have been accessed as soon as they looked at her notes on the computer at the home when she went unconscious in the intensive care living area she was moved to from her private living area as she had more and more frequent T.I.D.'s

We held a 24 hour vigil for the 10 days she took to expire, no food or water just some sort of drip and morphine medicine to keep her unaware.  My sister came over from Australia.  A very sad time for the family.

The room she was in in the hospital was an established "dying room" I'd guess with an observation window the staff walking past down the corridor would peek into every now and again, no effort to moisten her mouth with water.  It was a routine operation for the hospital.  They showed us Xrays of her head and it was obvious even to us casual observers that a lot of damage had occurred from the repeated T.I.A.'s, the end was inevitable, it just took so long, because Mum was quite fit still playing golf and had always looked after herself; and because of course, no euthanasia permitted even though there was no doubt of the final outcome.

Mum was 93 I think, and I had looked after and assisted her at her house where she lived for the 10 years after Dad died at 83, they lived in that house for more than 45 years after we arrived from Zambia/Northern Rhodesia in 1973.  They established a most beautiful garden which was their main hobby after they stopped work.

So she lived to a ripe old age and had a long and eventful life including the earth quakes in Christchurch just to liven up the last part.  They had the 2nd world War in their early 20's, she was in the W.A.A.F. and Dad was in the Reconnaissance Corps, he returned to Dunkirk under orders just days after the major evacuation to check on who knows what????

This experience changed my outlook on life forever.

That really shouldn't happen to anyone, should it. Time hospitals got better at the end of life.

Oddly enough my Mum was also a WAAF in WW2.