Quote:
Originally Posted by mobertol
I have also experienced exactly the same thing here in Italy, witnessing the slow agonising death of my mother-in-law after she suffered a series of mini-strokes and was kept alive, to the distress of her family for over a month by intubation etc.
I truly hope something will change for the better in the not too distant future.
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A 'living will' would or should have prevented that.....she would have not have been intubated and would have been allowed to succumb.
I don't know if you have the equivalent of living wills in Italy.
Sometimes the doctors will speak with relatives of seriously ill patients who are not expected to survive and will mark the notes DNR(do not resuscitate) but my own experience of this, is that the consultants that I worked with were very reluctant to mark this in the case notes...regardless of how hopeless the case was....and in the absence of such a record, it meant that if the patient arrested we
had to attempt resuscitation. This is not good when you have a patient in the terminal stages of cancer.......all you are doing is prolonging their suffering and pain.