Courtesy of TheNewYorkTimes.com | By Daniela J. Lamas, M.D. | Photo by Ryan McVay | Originally Published 10.17.2018 | Posted 11.17.2018
Let me start with an apology.
When I saw that your 90-year-old father was in our emergency department, after being resuscitated while on home hospice, I assumed that I understood what had happened. As a critical care doctor, I have cared for patients whose families have changed their minds at the last minute, grasping on to impossible hopes rather than face the reality of death.
On the phone with the E.D. physician, I sighed. “Family?” I asked.
“Must have reversed the D.N.R.” — the do-not-resuscitate order that is standard for a patient on hospice care. “They’re on the way,” she said.
I told her I’d head down. I was fairly sure that nothing was going to change. But before we took this patient to the intensive care unit, tethered to machines he had never wanted, I wanted to begin to talk with you.
There your father was. He was so pale. A ventilator breathed for him. His body, wasted by cancer, flopped like a rag doll. I touched his fingers and they were cool, vessels clamped down by the medicines keeping his blood pressure from plummeting. I imagined caring for him in the I.C.U., trying not to hurt him even more. Continue reading “When the Hospice Care System Fails”
