A Silver Lining Playbook? My Mom's Death

摘要

Was this a silver-lining playbook-my mother's death? We had planned for this moment, talked together about her wishes, filled out the paperwork: We were that kind of family-the one that talked and debated about life and death. And my mother, in her true tenacious fashion, rehearsed with us her dying wishes. The papers were filed with her primary care physician, scanned into the Electronic Medical Record (EMR), and a copy placed in their freezer-a clever way to find it in a crisis. The playbook was in place. The rest of the story is on replay in my mind. I remember asking to speak to the physician in a demanding tone and wanting to know why my mom was intubated... "Didn't any one look at the paper work?" The Emergency Department (ED) physician explained, "Your mom's blood pressure is dropping. She doesn't have a complicated medical condition so we want to give her pressors so that we can keep her alive." I replied that neither my mom nor the family wanted any intervention. This experience pulled us into the power of the protocols that make it possible to keep hearts beating and lungs breathing. In my mother's case, her uncomplicated medical history in the EMR triggered those standing lifesaving orders. But no one assessed her personhood. No one asked about her level of functioning, her pain, her memory loss, her desires. No one took a minute to ask about this mother of five children who sang her way through life.