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Biotech / Medical : Mining Cholesterol -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jrhana who wrote (306)	6/3/2007 2:01:52 PM
From: Yorikke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 356

Points well taken. I think things are changing rapidly but I still see and read (in patient files) of situations where docs are not sufficiently 'careful' of their patients and either over procedurize or undermedicate. And docs often 'abandon' patients once they are in Hospice. Hospice Nurses often have to run around a lot with docs just to maintain a good level of palative care for a patient. And I am always amazed by the Docs who insist on a hospice level patient coming into the office when it a terribly painful experience with little benefit involved. Hospices utilize Social Workers to screen patients. As a result I see only those who are deemed hospice appropriate. Generally this means six months or less to live and a knowledge and acceptance of their fates. The dementia cases are another world entirely. My most difficult experiences have been dementia or brain mets cases of younger individuals. It is impossible to describe the hardship of their passing. In my years of Hospice work I have seen only a handful of cases where an 'early out' would have been better for the patient. In most cases it was a younger (sub 70) patient who still maintained good mobility and mentation but who suffered from a particularly nasty form of cancer. I have seen a lot of cases where patients because of the progression of their illness just decided it was time. In an institutional setting they must wait that out. At home they can often act on that understanding. In either case if a patient stops eating and drinking it is only a matter of days or weeks until death. It is not generally painful and with the help of some meds it can pass relatively peacefully. Natural death provides the patient with a period of preparation that often appears helpful. I don't know what is over that line but a lot of people react the same way on this side and they seem to be in transition between two sides. Maybe we are genetically wired that way. Whatever it is you see it enough and you can not question that it is occurring.