How Long is Too Long

The debate about medical care has many sides to it. The amount of human intervention into the living and dying process is constant and for the most part beneficial to most of us. But still the mysteries of life and death amaze me. Within the last week there was the very sudden and dramatic death of a man. He had a very serious lung condition but the Doctors had not been concerned. He was feeling good at lunch time and by four o'clock his lungs had filled with fluid and he was dead.

On the heels of that even comes the announcement that a woman who was 105 has died. Her old sister was about that old when she died. But good genes and good medical care and good around the clocking nursing care had preserved both of them for a very long time.

I think it was in the musical Porgy and Bess that a man sings a song about "Methuselah lived 900 years but who calls that living when no woman's going to give in to no man who is 900 years." Well, there is something of the same that could be said for both of those sisters. For the last twenty years of their lives they were confined to the bed. For at least the last 15 years of life for the one who just died, it did not appear to those visiting her, that she knew where she was, that she knew who she was, that she knew anybody who visited her. The nurses would always say that she responded but it was not obvious to me. Who calls that living when you don't know anything? can't do anything? can't remember anything? and all you do is take in food and give it back. Babies do not have to endure that situation more than a year or so.

I am not sure I have a solution to this issue. There are others who are more resolute than I am who might argue "mercy killings." Some would suggest that benign neglect would be wise. These two sisters did not even have children or family members to make those decisions. Distant relatives were all that were remaining. But it is such stories as these that shape our debate about human life and medical care. Our debate about wise use of our limited resources and equipment.