Faith healing and dead children ( Archived) (15)

Not interested in religion and no prayer will bring my son back!

I was fired from a job once because I didn't follow a court order and withold liquid food (that was administered through a tube in the stomach)from a woman who had a stroke but was still up and walking around.
Her lawyer was her DPOA-HC and finances. There was substantial money for him if she died. Well, he argued to the courts that this was not the quality of life she would have wanted and the feeding should stop and she be allowed to die. But yet, not to stop the medicines.
The judge granted the order to stop the feeding. Basically, this put me in a position of legal assisted euthanasia.
End of story is....I morally couldn't do it. Especially since Hospice was not even involved yet They became involved days later as she weakened very much to the point where she was near death from the starvation. I gave continuity of care to another nurse.
No.... no one can judge what they think the family of the little girl in question should do. Or the little girl's choice of what to do. It is everyone's choice to live or die with their belief or non belief in God and to act accordingly. We all live with our conscience. As you may know, sometimes even with the best of medicine around... a person's agony is just prolonged and they die in the end. And sometimes...they live. JMO! A real tough call here!!

It does seem like a case of hypocracy though there is a difference. In one case, one is choosing a religeous form of medicine over a modern, scientifically proven medical treatment which may result in death. The other is certain death for an unborn fetus by way of a modern and unnecessary (in most cases) medical procedure. Even so, I do agree with you that people often pick and choose the basic human rights they wish to endorse. Frankly, I think the parents should be able to provide care to their children the way they see fit just as I believe in a woman's right to choose.

There's a part of me that agrees with you on this Conrad. I just don't like the idea of the government getting involved with how a parent decides to parent. Personaly, I would never participate in such a practice but I would hold short of forcing someone else to behave in the way I would simply because I feel I was right and they were wrong.

This is an interesting yet sad delima because I believe it would have been in the best interest of the child to receive medical care but where does the government draw the line.

The only chance in hell of being saved is from medicine only!
If their was a god the children would be burying their parents before themselves!

I have to agree with you here Conrad. For a parent to ignore giving medical treatment to a child in a case of painful deadly appendicitis, would be tantamount to Gross Negligence by the parents. In this case, I'd have to say that the law should trump the parent's "God willed it" decision to withold life saving medical care. Preserving the life of the child should hold precedence here.
In my student nursing clinical days, my hospital med surg rotation took me to the care of a 16 yr old teenage boy suffering from appendicitis. The pain was unbearable for the young boy and heartbreaking for me to see.He suffered a week because docs didn't know what was wrong. Using my newly learned nursing assessment skills, I told the charge nurse what my suspicions were. The docs followed up and removed the appendix shortly afterwards and he was OK after that.