Palliative Care in America

I'm not looking forward to old age.  I don't know of anyone that really is, but watching the slow descent of my mother into her, so called, golden years has become a painful warning of what will happen to everyone.  No one, no matter how good your genes are, how rich or how religious you are, if you aren't corralled by other demises will wither and die with the best of them.  I was talking with my mom this evening about her cardiologist reticence in giving her a pacemaker because she is continually maintaining a coma level pulse rate. (In the mid to high 40's).  He keeps poo-pooing her inquiries into a pacemaker and saying to keep taking her drugs and she'll be fine.  The thing is with such low heart rate she is unable to do anything on her own.  I'm not talking rebuilding car engines, I'm talking about making it to the front room from her bedroom without being completely exhausted and needing her oxygen.  I get that she's old, she's 82, but the woman still has spunk.  She has no problem in letting you know what's on her mind, even if she's a few years behind the current idioms of the day.  I'm almost afraid of what would happen if she got the gas to fuel her ambitions....scary.

I get that there isn't much that can be done for her, she's old.  The trend with her doctors seems to be give her some kind of pill to make it better.  I can't totally fault that method of care, I am the poster-child for better living through pharmacology and all, but these drugs seem to work in keeping her sedated.  She sleeps most of the day away and gets precious little out of watching TV and waiting for her kids and grand kids to drop in on her for a chat.  That truly is the extent of her life.

What is the crux of this blog is simple, I don't want to be a victim of palliative care.  I don't want to be put away in a home, away from the up-and-coming generations who fear the old and slowly dying.  I don't want to be drugged into a stupor because my heart inconveniently keeps pumping and brain keeps spinning.  Even if my body betrays me, that doesn't give the medical professionals permission to practice palliative medicine to make their own lives easier.

People keep yelling about Obama Care not being the solution, that it's tantamount to socialism, etc., etc.  But the current system, putting people in old-folks-homes and giving their care to the lowest bidder where they are medicated into a pseudo-death is no better than a concentration camp with hospital corners.  (sorry for the run-on sentence).   Okay, harsh, they don't have gas chambers (unless you consider industrial strength urine remover toxic?) and most of the doctors did get their degrees in the US, but the idea of putting a protected class away, where they are forgotten by their neighbors,weekend do-gooding for their kids with kids, and stock-piled like cord wood in sterile-ish facilities with shared commodes.  Indignities abound all in a days work by slightly more than minimum wage earners.  Whew, I'm glad I got that off my noggin.

I never thought I would be advocating for old-people.  I guess that's yet another indication that I'm growing up.  Damn!  I guess I'm not advocating for the elderly now, but advocating for  change before the family carts me off to the farm.