At what point in your life do you feel the quality is not of a standard worthy of your living? I’m sharing my thoughts about a personal experience. No doubt most of us have made the statement that we would not want to live should we become blind, lose one or more of our extremities, get paralyzed from the neck down, get burned or disfigured due to some horrible accident, or grow so old that we are no longer able to care for ourselves. Not long ago I was saying exactly the same things more or less. I felt if my quality of life was not as it is now, or close to it, I would be more of a burden to those I love than anything else. And that may very well have been so. I watched my dad lie in a hospital for more than two months. He went in for a simple back injury from falling at his home. Then catching pneumonia. Then a procedure to fix his back. Then he went to skilled therapy so that he could get his strength back. Then all of a sudden his blood oxygen level dropped dangerously low. Then he spent weeks in ICU. Then he spent weeks in an extended care hospital. Then he was sent to an old under-equipped nursing home 30 minutes from my home, and there he died. Now both my parents had discussed the quality of life issue and decided should for whatever reason they die in the hospital they did not want to be resuscitated. So of course as per my dad’s wishes, this was noted and he had a red paper bracelet that had in big bold black letters (DNR) “Do Not Resuscitate”. There were times that it seemed my dad was going to recover and be okay. There were times that it seemed he was not going to get much better and be totally dependent on care for the rest of his days. As I spent time with my dad I would often go back to the night his blood oxygen level dropped and they were putting the oxygen masks on him trying to get it back up. I could see the fear in his eyes, I was holding his hand, and with his free hand, he pulled the oxygen mask away from his face looked me in the eye with his tear-filled eyes, and yelled HELP ME, PLEASE HELP ME!!!! To this day those words haunt me, and I ask myself if I helped him enough, and this is why. I have for a long time been pro-life. I believe as long as we are living there is hope, there is a chance for something to happen or change, and there is always the possibility of a miracle if nothing else. I received a phone call the night before Thanksgiving day November 2012 from my sister telling me that she thought I might better get up to the nursing home because my dad wasn’t doing very well and it looked like he wasn’t going to make it. I dropped everything I was doing and rushed straight there. Upon my arrival, my sister and her husband were outside in the main lobby of this nursing home. As I rushed to my dad’s room to see him lying there incoherent with my mother holding his hand. I asked my mother if they were taking him to the hospital. She told me to talk to my sister she couldn’t talk about it right now. And so I did, asking her the same question. Her reply was, “Dean, you know daddy did not want to live like this.” The nurse told me that he had all the signs of a body that was shutting down and didn’t think he would make it through the night. This is what daddy would have wanted so he is staying here until it is over. I felt as if my heart had fallen to my knees. I felt if I argued about the situation it would only upset my mother who was not in the best of health at that time either. So I consumed my pain and went to my dad’s room to be there for him and my mother, all the while hearing his voice in my head crying out, “Help me… please help me”. My dad made it through the night, and a good part of the next day. It was Thanksgiving Day when he took his last breath and died. Now I wonder had my parents not discussed this quality of life issue and made the choice they did if they might not have rushed him to the hospital that day and maybe, just maybe he might still be here today, he may even have made a complete recovery and gone home. At what point is your quality of life so worthless that those who love you no longer want to be there and fight with you for every possible chance of you surviving? It is my opinion that every possible effort has been made and they all fail and then you die. I wouldn’t want anyone to suffer and be in agonizing pain. I just want to fight until all hope is lost. I believe my dad did too or he would not have cried out to me to please help him. Had he of went to a hospital and died while they were trying to get him better, I could better accept that. I would know that every possible effort was made to save him and they failed. After this experience, I changed my views. I want to live; I want every possible effort to be made to save my life without artificial life support. There are miracles happening all around us every day of our lives. Don’t miss out on your miracle by giving up on life. Choose life and believe in your miracle.
Simply my thoughts
Dean Butler
