Is the thing that has attacked my respiratory system a virus or a sinus infection that’s producing asthmatic bronchitis-like symptoms?
Whatever it is, I wish I could cast it out of my body because I’m feeling like death would be preferable right now.
I was watching Venom E.R. (a show documenting the goings on of the Venom E.R. at Loma Linda University Medical Center) and it was definitely an interesting episode. A guy was bitten by a rattlesnake on his lunch break and fought for his life for three days before ending up in a coma and having to be taken off life support by his family. It was an interesting episode for me on a pastoral, ethical, and practical level.
Pastoral
When this guy’s health started taking a nose dive and they showed the ICU/Dr. Sean Bush calling about lab results that showed kidney failure/life support machines, I was transported back to June of last year when I saw the life-ending process from start to finish. (Read from June 15th to the 30th.) It was interesting to see Dr. Bush talking about the situation after the patient died because you could see just how much shock he was in. He’s treated hundreds of bites and all of them had walked out of the E.R. The guy’s wife (who is a nurse) talked at the end about how it was good that her husband and she had talked about the life support issue as well as talking to their kids about death. It made the decision an easier one and it respected her husband’s wishes.
In the circumstances I dealt with last June, the patient had suffered a heart attack before going into open heart surgery and ended up suffering multiple strokes as well as another heart attack after surgery. His brain was damaged to the point that he wouldn’t have been able to see, walk, or talk in addition to his heart being damaged. It begged the question of what kind of life he would have had and they did eventually have to take him off of life support. Pastorally, we had to help them to understand that this was OK, that it wasn’t murder, and that it was God’s will. We had prayed for him to live, and then we had to pray for him to die. Reconciling that was an interesting process.
Ethical
One of the things Dr. Bush touched on was the fact that they had given this guy state-of-the-art treatment. He had received 48 vials of anti-venom (the normal person only needs about 12) and they had done everything they could for him. It reminded me of some of the issues I struggle with in terms of technology and life support. We may have the technology, but should we use it? We *can* do some things to prolong life, but should we?