Is it Necessary, to Keep One’s Dying Breath Intact by Intubation?

From the families’ decisions of whether or not to intubate the elderly they loved, something that’s, very important which we all need to discuss with our loved ones, from the Front Page Sections, translated…

Once I’d asked the nurse in the I.C.U., “Would intubation feel uncomfortable?”, she’d replied, “Stick a finger down your own throat, and you should know just how that felt.”

Two years ago, when my ninety-nine year-old mother was in her terminal stage of cancer, because all of us agreed on no intubation, the hospital took it to mean to giving up on treatment, and, my mother was sent home.  One evening, my mother was in so much pain she’d started, howling, and we’d, rushed her into the E.R.  The doctor on duty told us that a feeding tube is needed for her, we’d believed, that our mother WAS at the terminal stage of her cancer, and she’d lived to close to a century already, it was, more than enough, there’s, no need, to put her through the physical trials, we’d, insisted on her not being, intubated.  That was when the E.R. attending doctor asked us, “then, why did you bring her here”, thankfully, we still had some knowledge on the medical front, and asked him to help relieve our mother’s pains.

what the procedures looked like, from onlineprying open the patient’s throat, and SHOVING those tubes in, does that look comfortable to you???  Photo from online

There’s five times higher rate of intubation in Taiwan compared to in Japan, one of the primary reasons being, people in Taiwan cared about that “final breath” too much, instead of the quality of life.  “Are you willing to, watch her/him starve to death?”, all the noises from all around, the friends, the relatives, it’d, messed up the minds of the immediate family members.

It’s easy to intubate, but harder to undo the intubations.  I really hope, that the “Patients’ Right to Decide for Themselves Act” will let the patients decide HOW they will be, finishing off their final miles of life.

And so, there’s, this discrepancy, of how the hospital staff viewed as the elderly get sent into the E.R., when they’re terminally ill, the hospital staff members are deadlocked in whether or not to intubate the elderly who are dying, and, this shouldn’t be that hard to decide, because from the patients’ perspective, intubating means more suffering, and, who would want their loved ones, to suffer more than they have to?