This week’s table talk was about ambiguous do-not-resuscitate orders and how this affects a doctor’s split-second decision. You may have seen a news headline a few months back about the man with a tattoo reading “Do Not Resuscitate” on his chest. He was taken to the hospital unconscious, leaving doctors in a dilemma of what they should do and what they shouldn’t do. There is the question about the legality of having a tattoo speak for you, the equivocal intentions behind getting such a tattoo, and so on. I really liked GRF Sara’s idea about having potential DNR wishes be designated on your ID or driver’s license, much like organ donor wishes are. People usually have their IDs on them so emergency workers can quickly find it and people can also more easily reflect a potential change in mind on an ID rather than on their skin with a tattoo.
The discussion eventually led to the subject of euthanasia in general. Morbid though it is, this is a topic that has come up in conversation among my friends a couple times. How long would you want to wait on life support before they pull the plug? I thought it was interesting that some of them had already communicated with their parents about their wishes, having no qualms at all about discussing death. In my personal views, it’s almost impossible to have a blanket statement about desires in a life-or-death situation because it depends on so many factors such as type of injury, pain registered, chance of survival, etc. It is a subjective decision to each case, but as patients are not able to communicate their wishes, doctors are left in a very difficult position. It’s a situation that no one wants to be in and may be why people prefer not thinking about it at all.
The thought of having a DNR designation on an ID sounds very strange, but mostly because I never really considered that people wouldn’t want to have the chance to be resuscitated. If you have a heart attack, or a stroke, and are left unconscious, you can still be given another chance at a somewhat normal life, and I can’t see why someone wouldn’t want that chance. However, if resuscitation would most likely mean a life as a vegetable, then I would assume that the family would allow their loved one to die without further trauma. I would also hope that if I was in a similar situation, that no doctor would ever make the decision to, or not to resuscitate me, and instead it would be my family who would make the decision, and if they chose to resuscitate, they could take me off life support afterwards if necessary.
Yeah, it seems tough for someone to give a blanket statement about that. There are so many situations, like we talked about, that it’s hard to think about.