How long do you want the feeding tube?

March 25, 2005 4:11 PM

Has the Terri Schiavo situation led you to tell a loved one how long you'd wish to to be kept alive if you're completely incapacitated? If so, how long?

We decided 5 years if we're in a vegetative state, 10 years for being in a coma.

posted by bruceyeah to health & fitness (36 comments total)

Whoa. Five or ten years? If the doctors said I had no/almost no brain activity and there was a very low chance I'd ever come back, I'd want to be on life-support about a week before having my loved ones pull the plug. If there was a change I'd come back and not be a brain-dead vegetable, then I'd give it longer, but probably only about three months, max.

If it's time to go, it's time to go.
posted by Specklet at 4:18 PM on March 25, 2005

change I'd come back = chance I'd come back
posted by Specklet at 4:19 PM on March 25, 2005

I think about a month. Keeping people alive can be expensive and I wouldn't want my family to go broke just for me.
posted by philcliff at 4:20 PM on March 25, 2005

Much as I support Michael and Terry Schiavo's quest for dignity, me, I'd want to be kept alive forever.

But then, I don't believe in an afterlife, so for me, "next to no chance at all" is still better than "no chance at all". But understand, I'd also prefer a slow (and possibly agonizing) death to a quick one, believe that life imprisonment is in many ways a crueller punishment than execution, and am selfish enough to hope for one of those Ray Kurzweil workarounds to cheat death.
posted by orthogonality at 4:24 PM on March 25, 2005

My parents both signed living wills this past week.

That's how you tell your loved ones what to do.
posted by contessa at 4:27 PM on March 25, 2005

Forever. May as well cling to life for as long as possible.
posted by shepd at 4:29 PM on March 25, 2005

Has the Terri Schiavo situation led you to tell a loved one how long you'd wish to to be kept alive if you're completely incapacitated? If so, how long?

Yes, it certainly has - I've emailed my friends in the meantime before finishing filling out the actual paperwork.

How long? Hard to say, but probably no more than a year in an irreversible coma or PVS.
posted by tristeza at 4:40 PM on March 25, 2005

I have an uncle who signed a living will recently. He hit his head on concrete when he fell off a ladder yesterday. Because the family knows explicitly what he wanted, they're taking him off life support this weekend, as soon as all of his children and grandkids can make it to the hospital.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 4:42 PM on March 25, 2005

contessa: IANAL but I heard on npr that in certain states, a living will wouldn't help avoid the Schiavo case. They mentioned something about needing a "durable power of attorney for health care" or something like that. I would check your parent's state's bar for more info.

And...man...if you're going to put a feeding tub in me, how about adding a little hash brownies to make things interesting?
posted by sexymofo at 4:55 PM on March 25, 2005

My wife asked me the same question recently. I told her that, at that point, what would I care? Just like funerals, I think that these sorts of decisions have consequences only for the living.
posted by Popular Ethics at 5:09 PM on March 25, 2005

Watching the news covering the Terri Schiavo story has made me want to die now.

Seriously, I'd wait until they were sure that it was PVS and there was no real chance of recovery. They've been saying that it takes about a year. Of course if "recovery" means anything other than awareness of surroundings and capacity to think independently, then screw it, it's not worth it.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 5:15 PM on March 25, 2005

Interestingly, this whole debate is about what to do when the person's wishes have been made clear - and how to tell if they've been made clear.

I've heard nothing interesting about what we should wish for. I honestly don't know what I would want for myself in such a situation.

Amazing how we thunder on as a country, tackling this head-on, without addressing the 300-ton elephant in the room, which is: how do we feel about death?
posted by scarabic at 5:38 PM on March 25, 2005

scarabic writes "how do we feel about death?"

Um, it sucks for me but is good for humanity?
posted by orthogonality at 5:40 PM on March 25, 2005

It's a tough situation and we've all been talking about it but no one has made any concrete decisions. One things that's seriously colouring our perspective is that last year, my uncle, who lives with my parents, had a stroke. The doctor thought he wasn't going to recover the first night, and asked my father to consider DNR.

My uncle is in a nursing home now, because he has no use of one arm, but he can talk and eat and do things. He was never particularly social before (he has a mental disability), and is probably more social now. If my father had made the DNR decision the first night, he would have died then.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:15 PM on March 25, 2005

Condolences to you and your family, croutonsupafreak, and thanks so much for the honesty. It really drove home the importance of making formal plans now.

Piggybacking, I'd like to know if anyone has suggestions for setting up a living will in the U.S. in the cheapest possible way.
posted by mediareport at 6:23 PM on March 25, 2005

Media report - check out The Detroit Free Press. They provided forms today. They aren't as personalized as you would get if you paid a lawyer, but seems like they should be enough to get you where you want to go. Alternatively, check with your state bar - it seems like just about every one should have something to help you out at this point. [This is not legal advice.]
posted by dpx.mfx at 6:30 PM on March 25, 2005

Living Wills are free--follow my link and print it out. IT's good for every state.

i actually printed these out at work for everyone today --it started a ton of "pulling the plug" jokes, but everyone's had it on their mind. My family has all spoken about it and filled out living wills and health care proxies--all of us want our plugs pulled if we're brain damaged or terminal or completely paralyzed and can only blink or something like that.
posted by amberglow at 6:30 PM on March 25, 2005

oops--that one mentions new york--try this from the Florida Bar
posted by amberglow at 6:33 PM on March 25, 2005

Frankly, anyone over 30 who doesn't have a living will is placing their families in an untenable position should they become seriously sick or injured. I think the Schiavo case points out how anyone emancipated from their parents really needs to address this issue. Who the hell wants to be kept alive as a vegetable for 15 years? That isn't life. Let me go with dignity once it becomes clear that hope has passed. A further option is "do not resuscitate" which is probably a bit extreme for me.

As for how long, I don't think you can just put a time limit on it. When does it become clear that no hope remains? That is my time limit. That might be two weeks, two months, two years, or even in some very limited circumstances even longer.

If your definition of life is to just breathe then I guess their is no limit. If, rather, you value life as a sentient being, having the ability to think, make decisions and interact with the world than living in a vegetative state with essentially no hope of recovery is not life; it is in essence, death. Don't prolong the body when the soul has ceased to be or at least ceased to be able to be.

As a Christian, I find the prolonging of Terri Schiavo's time on Earth a travesty. Scores of doctors have determined that she has lost brain function and will never recover. Her time on Earth is over. Let her pass into Heaven. The delay is not for her, it is for her family. It is their inability to let go, their selfish desire if it be, to hold onto a broken dream which prevents poor Terri from passing from the miserable existence that is her life now into a beautiful afterlife with her Lord.
posted by caddis at 6:37 PM on March 25, 2005

Any type of PVS or anything Shiavo-like that the layman would consider 'brain-dead' (I realize the medical def. is much more strict)... seriously, a month, maybe two. No more.

As for a coma that may go on forever, but that I could, theoretically, pop out of at any time and resume my life with minimal brain damage, I dunno, that I'd prefer a much longer period, though I couldn't quantify it.

However, the larger the chance of me waking with cool Johnny Smith style powers, the longer I should be given.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 7:27 PM on March 25, 2005

If there's any doubt at all, then let me go.

(I'm not a Christian, caddis, but that was really beautiful.)
posted by puddinghead at 7:49 PM on March 25, 2005

I'm with popular ethics, here. If I'm gone, I won't care. I understand that it's nice to give some guidance to your family, but it certainly won't make a difference to me. Basically, if I might pull through, keep me alive; if there's no chance, give my organs to someone who can make better use of 'em. In complicated cases, well, it's complicated, isn't it... I've already signed my organ donor card, and I'll assume doctors and my (non-wacky) family can figure out the details as well as I could.

If they turn off the machines too early, I'll have been in a coma the whole time, so I won't know, and if they keep me artificially breathing forever, again, my brain will no longer be taking in data, so what difference would it make to me? They can do with me what serves their needs best - if there's hope I could come back, and they want to keep that hope alive, great; if there's not much hope & it's a burden on them, well, we all go sometime.
posted by mdn at 7:59 PM on March 25, 2005

If there's nothing there, and no chance of anything coming back, just let me be gone. If I had to assign an arbitrary time-limit for my family....6 months.
posted by youarejustalittleant at 8:14 PM on March 25, 2005

I'm with orthog: for ever and ever, hallelujah. Give me the food tube, the brain pump, and the machine that goes bing, until everyone who could possibly pay for it goes broke. I don't care if someone needs to grind the bones of a hundred kittens evert day and mix it with fresh baby's blood to keep me going - just make it go, dammit.
posted by majcher at 8:14 PM on March 25, 2005

Filling out living will/durable power of attorney this weekend. A couple of weeks is fine, then give my organs to someone who can use them.
posted by fixedgear at 8:37 PM on March 25, 2005

If I'm a vegetable? Two weeks. let everyone say goodbye, cause I'm not there either.

Longer than that? It's vanity. You're just draining family and what money you have.

Don't put others through hell...especially when you're gone.

Yeah, organ donations is cool. Live on that way.

Isn't it funny that all the people involved with 'keeping the person alive' has no problem with the death penalty?
posted by filmgeek at 9:53 PM on March 25, 2005

give my organs to someone who can make better use of 'em.

give my organs to someone who can use them.

You guys raise an important point. We all want to make a contribution to society, and the time comes when the best one we can make is our organs. That sounds sad, but really, I doubt my rantings on this site, for example, are worth a good kidney to anyone in this world. Waiting lists are long, supply is short, every supply/demand permutation you might fill right now, this week, matters.

I'd like to point out that the "miracle of life," as expressed by someone in Terri Schiavo's condition, is utterly meaningless before the miracle of organ transplantation, which is, in my mind, a futuristic concept that is, unbelievably enough, a basic medical reality today. It's incredible that we can share vital parts of our bodies, live on after death inside one anothers' bodies, take a part of someone's else's body and use it for life, pool our biological resources as a species and share the very things that keep us each alive to keep us all alive. It's like a Star Trek concept, but it's real. We, now, in our lifetime, can do all of this, thanks to science. That's a motherfucking miracle, yo - and it's not born of moralistic policy, but rather, science.

It's frightening to me how many cholesterol-ridden Texas assholes we have in this world who are more than comfortable taking on a third human heart into their own chest, but adamantly opposed to stem cell research. Is there a pro-lifer in the house who would turn down a much-needed kidney in favor of waiting for God's plan to include him/her again? Thought not. What is it about your body that's so holy and inviolableafter your goddamn heart has been replaced? Answer me that. If God is so busy looking after your soul but has so completely abandoned the care of your body,then please, all of you, STFU and let the rest of us continue looking out for your ass as long as it's on this planet.

If your ass has no chance, then give something back. How many people are dead because Terry's organs weren't distributed? 2? 15?

/troll
posted by scarabic at 10:08 PM on March 25, 2005

I imagine that at least a couple of the people here have expressed wishes they've not articulated elsewhere. How funny is it that Ask Metafilter might be evidence in some future Schiavo case?

OK, not that funny.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 4:29 AM on March 26, 2005

I've told my family and they've told me: Do not resuscitate. Life isn't so awful that I'm on a mission to end it, but it isn't great enough to hold on to at any cost. Fortunately, we're all so morbid, we didn't need this case to make our wishes clear.
posted by dame at 5:27 AM on March 26, 2005

It's frightening to me how many cholesterol-ridden Texas assholes we have in this world who are more than comfortable taking on a third human heart into their own chest, but adamantly opposed to stem cell research.

It's frightening to me how you can even see a moral similarity between these two things.
posted by wackybrit at 6:49 AM on March 26, 2005

Yank that plug as soon as it becomes painfully obvious I'm not going to be walking, talking, thinking any more.

The key word here is 'painful'. It can be awful for people who love you to see what is essentially your animated corpse, slowly deteriorating in a bed day after day. I'd spare my loved ones that torture.

Also, I've spent enough of my life in hospitals already. More doesn't appeal.
posted by ikkyu2 at 6:52 AM on March 26, 2005

"Your honor, I have here several postings made by my client to the me-ta-fill-turr internet website community that clearly lays out her intentions."

Me, I'd want basic life-saving techniques immediately after whatever incident it is, then basic life support with a little pain-killing medication while diagnoses are made as to my chances of recovery. If I'm in a state of being unable to reasonably care for myself and unable to convey my desires, I'd like to be left to die.

As others have mentioned, though, the more important thing is to set up the legal papers necessary to express your choice for power-of-attorney and health-care power-of-attorney. If you don't choose someone for this purpose, you'll be putting much more of a burden on your family than is necessary. This is a much more important thing to set up. Today.
posted by odinsdream at 9:21 AM on March 26, 2005

I completed a living will at the age of 20. I'd read On a Pale Horse at about 15 and never stopped thinking about the unending, unspeakable horror of a soul that wished to depart trapped in its dying body by machines. Let me go, damnit. There is nothing more terrifying to me than the possibility that I would be aware that my body wanted to die, and that modern "medicine" was keeping me on earth.

The current fiasco is profane and selfish in the extreme.

(On a side note, some insurance companies will only sustain life support in a futile situation for ten days, Texas or not. )
posted by Medieval Maven at 9:54 AM on March 26, 2005

Yes. My partner and I have spoken about this a few times but this whole fiasco has made me more willing to put it in writing. I used Nolo's Willmaker software to put together a basic will once I'd aquired some property a while ago and had no clear person to leave it to. There was a basic living will document in there as well. I'll probably be updating it. I'm an organ donor, and I'll probably chat a bit more with my family about all this in the coming weeks [both for their choices, which I'm pretty sure I know, and for mine which I'm pretty sure they know].

I remember being a kid when the Karen Ann Quinlan case was being decided and, at the time, being really freaked out about the state wanting to have a say about how she lived out the rest of her life, especially when her parents were in agreement and there was no opposing viewpoint that wasn't the state's. I talked to my Mom a lot about it. I think I cemented my opinion at that point: no PVS, no long term comas for me. If there's no chance of recovery someone else can have my bed and my stuff.
posted by jessamyn at 11:02 AM on March 26, 2005

I'm always surprised that this is an issue to some people. If I am brain dead, I am dead. Pull the plug as soon as you get a concurring second, well, ok, third opinion. The images we saw on the news here in Spain showed a bunch of fundamentalist christians dragging life-sized dead jesus crucifixes around among other unsettling images. Is this case really just a religious issue? I mean for the family. Or have the fundamentalists just been attracted to the case on an unfortunate side note?
posted by sic at 2:50 PM on March 26, 2005

My wife and I have had living wills for almost 10 years (since we had our first child). Interestingly, the Terry Schiavo case has caused me to rethink my wishes (which was to keep the tube in).

I will have to rethink this. When I revise I will also be adding that Congress will NOT allowed to be involved in any end-of-life family decisions in my case.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 5:53 AM on March 27, 2005