This is the decision that the offspring must make, for their parents, because their elders are, no longer capable of deciding for themselves, a debate on Do-Not-Resuscitate, from the Front Page Sections, translated…
As a dearly beloved member of the family took a turn for the worst, do you, resuscitate? Do you request intubation? Toward the choices being presented, it’s, a hard-to-pass two-way street for all the caretakers. The struggles that happened to the Chinese romance novelist, the arguments, the debates, are happening right now constantly in the hospitals, and the regular families too.
An elderly in Taoyuan, Wu, had a stroke, and had been demented many years, awhile back she was, hospitalized again, because of fever caused by pneumonia, to the Changgong Hospital in Linkou, after emergency resuscitation, the E.R. doctor pulled her daughter to the side, told her, that the elderly’s condition wasn’t optimistic at all, that if she kept deteriorating, that the families may have to consider invasive measures such as the defibrillator, and/or intubation to save her life.
sustaining life, but what of the quality of life??? Not my picture…
The four children who were there looked at each other, told the doctor, that if the emergent resuscitation was pointless, that they’d agreed to having multiple tubes into their mother, and that they’d put their mother through being shocked back to life, “Then, we’re the ones who’d wronged her”, they’d decided, that when the time comes, they are going to let their mother leave peacefully and painlessly.
But, as the four older siblings called their youngest sister who was away and couldn’t make it to her mother’s bedside, she’d cried and demanded, “Why won’t you let mom live, so long as she still has a breath in her?”
The youngest sister works as a professor, insisted on ‘So long as there’s still a breath in mom, then, as children, we shouldn’t strip her of the right to keep on living.” This had made the four older siblings who’d already agreed on do-not-resuscitate started questioning whether or not they’re making the right choices or not.
The unconscious patients can’t state if they want to live or to die, and, the life or death is given to one’s own young to decide. And those who’d told their loved ones that they didn’t want to be resuscitated, but before s/he dies, s/he’d become incapable for speaking, could no longer fight for one’s own rights to die, they can only watch, as their loved ones argue on, and waited, for the final “verdict”.
Mrs. Wu’s daughter felt helpless, having accompanied her mother in and out of the hospitals multiple times, watching the struggles on both sides of the scales.
So, this would be, very hard, for the children, because they’re left with the choices of whether or not to intubate their elders or not, and, it’s a struggle, because, normally, based off of the views of society, if you don’t save someone who can be brought back to life, then, you’d be called an “improper” son or daughter, and, nobody wants to be labeled that bad name, but, if you’d brought the individual back to life, and, all that the individual can do, is just allowing that machine to breath for her/him, what KIND of a life would that be???
Life, the Obstacle Course 