This subject is too serious not to be written about. I plead with all my readers to particularly read the link that I gave at the end of this post to an article which talks about the effectiveness of chemotherapy for cancer.
I take my readers to my earlier post Modern Medicine And Caregiving.
My friend’s wife passed away late Saturday night at a hospital. I paid my last respects to the departed soul yesterday at her home before she was taken away to be cremated.
The purpose of this post is to once again rant about the insensitive medical care. My friend had to keep taking his wife over and over again and again for chemo therapy and was forced to spend a fortune on such peccadilloes while he kept telling me and all other friends that there was no hope whatsoever but he had to keep doing what the doctors kept asking him to try. What a strange thing to happen that the doctors tell him that there is no hope but he should keep trying! AND in the final stages, they suggested that he hospitalize her, took his and his two children’s signature giving them the authority to take her off a ventilator and put her in a very expensive ICU.
My friend and his family have not only gone through a harrowing time, suffered with their loved one, lost her without being near her at her end, and to add insult to injury, have also been brought almost to their knees financially with the totally unwarranted expenses.
Is this what medicine supposed to do? Would it not have been better to suggest that there was no hope, give her pain killers and allow her to pass away with her dignity intact and at her home with her family in attendance? What sort of monsters have our societies created?
My non Australian readers are sure to be shocked by this article which gives the correct picture about chemotherapy. I know doctors who do not think that chemotherapy is effective and recommend that it not be resorted to. But, our society is so involved in, for want of a better word, hope and trust in modern medicine, that people resort to this expensive and painful process just to extend their misery by at best a few years. WHILE I AM WILLING TO CONCEDE THAT PATIENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES CAN BE IRRATIONAL UNDER ADVERSITY, I simply find it too hard to believe that the medical profession is beguiled by the sleight of hand of presented statistics. Lucre is more likely the cause.