Life support: Should the wishes of the family take precedence over the patient's right to relieve his own suffering?

No

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by Shammah

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It's funny isn't it, the role reversals that takes place in our lives with the passing years. As children growing up and maturing into young adulthood, we are taught to reason and take a stand for ourselves; to weigh the pros and cons and make wise decisions. When we ask another for his or her opinion or advice, we are told that we must make the decision, that the choice is ours and ours alone. Then, in this type of circumstance, with a family member lying unconscious, possibly on life support and for all intents and purposes dead to the world and reality, the role reversal kicks in and the family members can be seen and heard standing around the bed, arguing with the doctor about to remove the life support, saying that the person in the bed isn't well enough and shouldn't be allowed to make this decision. Even in circumstances of a patient having left a "living will", you'll still find the (well meaning or so it seems) surviving family members trying to persuade or dissuade the medical profession to go against the wishes of the patient.

A person who has left instructions not to be sustained on external life support means or revived has done so when he or she is of, "sound mind," and full cognizant of what they are doing. Their state of mind when the time arrives, should they be conscious, has nothing to do with their wishes that were expressed before the moment arrived.

Personally, I don't believe in playing God, and for me that is what it means when we try to keep someone alive and with us by means beyond what the natural order of things; when the body is giving up, giving in of its own accord, to hook it up to a contraption that does the breathing and feeding is totally unnatural and in fact downright cruel; cruel to the patient and cruel to the living who will remain behind. When God calls me home, let me go home! Don't try and play God, thinking that you know better. You might be sustaining the body, but what kind of a body; will I be normal, functioning, thinking; or will I be a living breathing vegetable that needs to be fed, wiped, bathed and have someone help me to urinate? Is that life?

My brother, one year older than me, had a massive heart attack in 1996. He lived on the other side of the country. We are a large family and we all flew out to Victoria from every place in this country. He was unconscious. He was in a coma from the moment of the heart attack on his front lawn. He was unconscious and in a coma for a week and Friday crawled around and the doctors held little hope that he would awake. We were also told that even if he did wake up, he'd be a "vegetable;" the heart attack was that bad that his brain was pretty much destroyed. He had a wife and no children. He did not leave a living will and my sister-in-law was being asked to make the decision to "pull the plug." We silently talked on and off all that day and when leaving the hospital on Friday, after speaking with the doctors, she had made a choice to leave things as they were over the week-end, then on Monday have the doctors retest for brain activity, and if no changes, then she would make the call.

I loved my brother dearly, as did my mother and father and five other brothers and sister. It was a rough time, it was hell! I, a woman of faith, did a lot of praying a lot of talking and sharing with complete strangers as I lived in those hospital corridors. I sat by my brother's beside when no one was there, reading uplifting verses from the Psalms and the blessed promises of new life. Could he hear me? I think his Spirit heard me. When I'd leave the room to go out for a break, I'd gently lift his hand and place it on the bible; sort of a symbolic gesture, that by osmosis, his Spirit would be comforted with the living Word from the open pages of the bible.

I was closest with my sister-in-law and we strolled through the hospital gardens; it was a place of beauty and serenity. I could see snow covered mountain peaks in the distance, across a bay of water. We were in Victoria on Vancouver Island, and it was the end of July and it was beautiful. Despite the circumstances, I felt at peace in those moments in the garden and I could feel the calm serenity surrounding my sister-in-law.

My family could easily have imposed their desires, especially my mother and father, not to "let go" of our brother, their son, upon my sister-in-law; after all, she'd only had him for 10 years and we'd had him all our lives. But, we did not, and we did not envy her task.

We, my sister-in-law was spared having to make that decision. We were at the hospital on Sunday, in his room joking around and just generally talking and trying to make light...when we knew, we knew he was going home. We all turned, almost simultaneously, took a step or so to his bedside, touched him - head, hand, foot, arm; we felt the warmth drain from him, and he was gone.

It might not have been my brother's choice (we'll never know), but I believe it was my sister-in-law's choice to let him go home, and the rest of us, his blood relatives, would not have opposed her decision.

God gives us this life and when we are called home no human contraption should interfere and prevent us from answering that call.

I miss my brother and when I see him again I'll give him royal hell for not talking with me more!

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