Mom is 91 and lives in assisted care. She has dementia, heart and lung disease, among other conditions. Now her liver and kidneys are failing. The doctor is suggesting dialysis three times a week which would require that I take her each time. She’s deaf and doesn’t sign (we use a whiteboard to communicate) so other means of transport are not reasonable. I’m questioning the idea of trying to prolong her life. Maybe it’s time for hospice and to let her go? I’m her POA and only child. This is a horrible situation and I really don’t know what to do.
Count yourself lucky mom has kidney and liver failure and will not have to die from dementia. Please don't prolong her life with dialysis 3 times a week. This doctor is cruel and inhumane and I don't think he has any clue about what dementia does to a person.
"Life is devalued when it becomes horrific due to illness. I wish you could have seen my mother, always a beautiful, well-groomed woman with a fine wit and great intelligence. She lived to age 95. At the end, dementia rendered her an emaciated, grimacing skeleton with faded skin that drooped from her withered bones. Her teeth were dark brown. Her hair was almost gone. She couldn't hold up her head, get out of bed without a two-person assist, or talk. She made varied sounds, the meaning of which we couldn't understand. She was double incontinent. She had pain and couldn't articulate where. We don't know how well she could hear or see. She couldn't eat or drink without help, and that was only soft or liquid foods. Some of the last words she ever uttered were begging to die. This went on for more than 2.5 years. It is the way dementia patients end up if something else doesn't cause their death first."
.....Fawnby
I don't know enough about dialysis to answer this but I do know that at 91, nobody has that long left.
My Mum passed away at 71 from lung disease last year. Her other problem was increasingly limited mobiiity. When she got severely ill at the end, she didn't want to be resuscitated. I often wonder exactly why, but it obviously boils down to her concern about quality of life. She would have needed a lot of oxygen, amongst other medication & daily life would have been a struggle.
Everybody grandstands in their youth about how they'd rather be dead if,x, y, or Z happens but in your mother's case, I do think I'd rather nature take its course.
It's utter cruelty to take any life extending measures for an elder suffering from dementia and wait to watch them die from natural causes if saying no to dialysis will speed up the process. There's no ethical question here, imo.
Best of luck.
Unless you literally want to torture her to death.
I'm very sorry you're in this situation.
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