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Although I've had a change of heart on this issue based on information I have received from a few doctors and nurses I'm associated with and now believe that the nurse actually did the right thing I still have serious concerns about this kind of issue.
My grandmother is 96 years old and has dementia. In early December of last year she was beginning to become belligerent which is very much unlike her. The doctors put her on some kind of mood altering drug. When that didn't seem to be working they upped the dosage. Another doctor figured that she'd had a stroke and that was what was causing the behavior change so they put her on another med for that and soon upped that dosage as well. The week before Christmas she was like a damned zombie. When you looked into her eyes there was nothing there and she was exhibiting signs of being in a lot of pain. One of the caregivers at the assisted living facility she was in suggested that perhaps she had a UTI but getting a doctor to coordinate with the staff and all was getting ridiculous so we took her to the ER where we explained the situation and had them test for a UTI. She did have a serious infection and we were asked what we wanted done.
We opted to have the infection treated and see how things went. We also had them take her off of all the medications except the antibiotics. It was a rather "interesting" couple of days but by day 3 she was coming around and doing fine. Today she is just as much off her rocker as she was before but once again she is happy and wandering around as usual. I mention this because if the decision was left completely to the medical professionals she would have been left to die....needlessly.
In the case of the woman in CA it seems that there was a significant likelihood that CPR would have damaged ribs, punctured lungs, etc. My understanding from the pros is that it was more likely than not that even if her life were saved at the time that she would have been on her way out anyway and in substantial pain along the way. I can understand that. I don't like it but I can understand it. I would just like to say, however, that the definition of "extraordinary means" to save ones life seems to be getting less and less "extraordinary" over time and that the DNR is easily used as an excuse to simply do nothing and if you have a loved one in some kind of managed care I would HIGHLY recommend that you make it a point to be as clear as possible about what you do and do not want done in a given situation.
What makes most sense is to give medical power of attorney to someone you trust to decide to "pull the plug" rather than a blanket DNR agreement.
I agree the medical profession is too quick to just drug people in to zombie-ish as a cure-all. It's like when ERs and Doctors give people "Z-packs" (steroids). Its just feel-good zombie medicine that cures nothing.