Tag: End of Life 2

General interest/Health/USA
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Modeling how to die

by Fran Johns

My remarkable friend Mary died yesterday, after showing us how to do it. Not when, mind you, because she was far too young and energetic — just how. How to question and oppose, to look at options, and eventually to accept the fact that life is fine and finite and go with grace into whatever lies ahead.

Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer barely a year ago, Mary began what would be a studied exploration of traditional and experimental interventions to see if she might wrangle some extra quality time on the planet that she had carefully nurtured throughout her life. Almost as importantly – most importantly to her host of concerned friends – she and her husband Tom signed up on CaringBridge. Immediately, her host of friends also signed on, forming a sort of cybercircle around the family.

As the journey progressed, they would post pictures and notes about their travels and travails, filled with exuberant photos, irrepressible humor and a clear-eyed view of our shared mortality. Friends and relations would sign in with their own comments. Sometimes the latter would include off-beat ideas for something else to fling in the face of the disease; more often they would be notes about how Mary and Tom were brought spiritually into other circles when they couldn’t be physically present. Sometimes they would be long and rambling; more often they would be simple affirmations of how the couple and their family were being held close in so many hearts.

It was an extraordinary gathering. With their three grown children and a few others on site, there was relatively little taking-of-casseroles over these months, though Mary was always the first to show up with a giant jug of homemade chicken soup whenever some affliction struck at my house (and many others.) The cybercircle kept us regularly informed, assured us that we were part of the journey, and served, I believe, as a constant reminder to Mary and Tom that dozens and dozens of their friends were at their virtual side along the way. It helped that both of the central characters – and they were central characters in all the best senses – were thoughtful and eloquent writers.

While preparing for a new round of treatment not long ago, Mary and Tom learned that her tumors had returned with a vengeance. So instead of setting out for one adventure they settled in for another. Hospice was called in, their children gathered even closer. Postings in cyberspace documented the passage of those days, from occasional sunset walks into the nearby hills to readings of comments from friends, as Mary grew weaker, that might win what Tom described as the ultimate honor, “the coveted arched eyebrow.”

As she died, Mary’s family fluffed the pillows and administered “magic drops and potions, all of which helped only sort of.” Afterward, Tom opened the window as a friend had prompted, ” to free her spirit, not that she needed any help from me” and hung their Revolutionary War era ‘Liberty’ flag out front.  And sent a final note into cyberspace for the ever-expanding circle of friends: “All hail, Mary, so very, very full of grace.”

General interest/Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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Hospital Safety 101: Didn't Mom Teach You to Wash Your Hands?

by Fran Johns

San Francisco Chronicle Washington Bureau writer Carolyn Lochhead reported today on a new idea somebody had about making hospitals safer: get folks to wash their hands. Hello?

The president of a leading medical standards organization announced a new program Thursday that is designed to improve health care safety practices, starting with a rigorous approach toward hand-washing by hospital staffers.

And this is serious business.

Hand-washing failures contribute to infections linked to health care that kill almost 100,000 Americans a year and cost U.S. hospitals $4 billion to $29 billion a year to combat, said Dr. Mark Chassin, who leads the Joint Commission, which sets standards and accredits hospitals and health care organizations.

Chassin’s announcement came after Hearst Newspapers published the results of an investigation, “Dead by Mistake,” which reported that 247 people die every day in the United States from infections contracted in hospitals.

Anyone who has ever come home from surgery with an infection, or more specifically anyone whose spouse has come home from surgery with an infection (nasty-wound-tending not having been fully explained in those for-better-or-for-worse lines) will applaud the new program, but it’s hard not to wonder what has taken the medical profession so long. Hospitals have found, Lochhead reports, that “caregivers washed their hands less than 50 percent of the time when they should.”

If there’s ever been a good example of potential savings to pay for universal health care, this is one to top the list. Consumers, we who would do well to wash our own hands when visiting or inhabiting hospitals, owe a debt of gratitude to the Joint Commission (and to Hearst Newspapers for the excellent ‘Dead by Mistake’ series.)

Maybe more sinks will be adorned with the sign that gave my husband and me a healthy chuckle during a recent visit to the Kaiser emergency room:

“Hand-wash unto others” it read, “as you would have them hand-wash unto you.”


Hospitals urged to strictly enforce hand-washing.

General interest/Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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Healthcare: Sorting Fact from Fiction

by Fran Johns

House legislation on health reform is a win-some-lose-some proposition for those over 65. Especially, as outlined in The New York Times yesterday, when it comes to Medicare drug benefits.

Medicare beneficiaries would often have to pay higher premiums for prescription drug coverage, but many would see their total drug spending decline, so they would save money as a result of health legislation moving through the House, the Congressional Budget Office said in a recent report.

Premiums for drug coverage would rise an average of 5 percent in 2011, beyond the level expected under current law, and the increase would grow to 20 percent in 2019, the budget office said.

“However,” it said, “beneficiaries’ spending on prescription drugs apart from those premiums would fall, on average, as would their overall prescription drug spending (including both premiums and cost-sharing).”

The Congressional Budget Office report set off an immediate battle between Republicans and Democrats, each side eager to convince seniors — those vocal voters — that the other was representing the devil incarnate. Republicans swear the House bill will threaten Medicare beneficiaries in order to cover the uninsured, Democrats say the bill will help them by eliminating a gap in Medicare drug coverage.

On this particular segment of the impossibly complex bill, maybe seniors would do well to listen to their own purported champion:

Nancy LeaMond, an executive vice president of AARP, the lobby for older Americans, welcomed the report as evidence that “health care reform will lower drug spending.”

“Opponents of reform may use today’s projections to try to stall reform,” Ms. LeaMond said, “but we hope they will look at all the facts before jumping to a false conclusion.”

And there, some would suggest, is the problem. The facts have been virtually obscured by misstatements, misrepresentations and outright lies. Death panels? A lie that served its scary purpose. Rationing? It’s already here, folks; it’s done by insurance companies that deny coverage in sometimes arbitrary ways. Socialized medicine? Hello? Does anyone over 65 remember those screams before Medicare was signed into law in ’65? When half the population over 65 had no insurance coverage at all?

Set aside the fact that providing healthcare for all is simply the right thing to do. Millions of American seniors (whether you begin that definition at 65, 60 or — to their horror as it sometimes happens — 55) were motivated to support President Obama by not only their hearts but also their brains. If those brains can be called into play to sort fact from fear-mongering, we may yet get the health reform common decency requires of this otherwise civilized nation.

Health Bill Would Cut Drug Spending for Many on Medicare, Budget Office Says – NYTimes.com

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General interest/Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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More on Health Care: Where the Costs Are

by Fran Johns

A few interesting factoids were dropped into the health reform debate by New York Times writer Amanda Cox Tuesday:

In 2006, health care expenses among half the United States population totaled less than $800 per individual, according to the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

For openers, that seems entirely reasonable. Would that we could actually care for the citizenry at $800 a pop. Keep reading.

But the expenditures were not uniformly distributed throughout the overall population. Spending was far higher among the elderly, the obese and people who identified themselves as unhealthy. Median spending in those groups totaled $2,300 per individual. Although these patients represent just one-third of the population, they accounted for almost 60 percent of health care spending.

I hate to stomp this nearly dead — oops, bad metaphor — horse even further into its grave, but a lot of us, given the chance to talk to our doctors about aggressive, invasive, often futile end-of-life treatments that are going to make our ends horrific might choose to go home and spend our remaining time with palliative care, at peace. A nifty way to cut that $2,300 back down to $800. But Senator Grassley and others think we should now allow those conversations.

The truth may be too obscured by the cleverly promoted lies, but the issue is about choice. Compassion. Comfort. Peace. Sanity. If anyone could get this truth across to seniors, that one critical segment of reform might still survive. And personally, I’d like to have the option of saving the rest of you taxpayers my $1,500.

via Making Sense of the Health Care Debate – Prescriptions Blog – NYTimes.com.

Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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Counseling Improves Life's End. Surprise!

by Fran Johns

Knowledge, care and compassion really do bring peace. Why should this be a surprise? And why should a few strident opponents prevent those approaching life’s end from having this benefit?

A study appearing in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association points out the benefits of end-of-life counseling, although the widespread misinformation loose in the land may have doomed what should be a significant piece of health reform.

As a political uproar rages over end-of-life counseling, a new study finds offering such care to dying cancer patients improves their mood and quality of life.

The study of 322 patients in rural New Hampshire and Vermont also suggests the counseling didn’t discourage people from going to the hospital.

The Senate bill provision axed by Finance Committee chair Charles Grassley would have allowed coverage for conversations with physicians about things like hospice care, advance directives and treatment options.  But to opponents of reform, it was a handy attack mechanism. They enlisted a few standard bearers like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and media darling Rush Limbaugh to twist the issue into menacing “death panels,” and in no time at all Sen. Grassley had his excuse to excise.

Losers in this are all of us. Eventually, 100% of us will die. Aggressive treatment and expensive, futile procedures are common today to that experience; compassion and peace are harder to come by.

In the new study, trained nurses did the counseling with patients and family caregivers using a model based on national guidelines. All the patients in the study had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Half were assigned to receive usual care. The other half received usual care plus counseling about managing symptoms, communicating with health care providers and finding hospice care.

Patients who got the counseling scored higher on quality of life and mood measures than patients who did not.

Could someone please get this information to Sarah Palin?

Study: End-of-life advice aids terminally ill.

General interest/Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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Tracking Down a Rumor

by Fran Johns

Rumors come, and don’t seem to go. Jim Rutenberg and Jackie Calmes of the New York Times have weighed in again today with a few facts… just in case anyone is interested in facts:

The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored “death panels” to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere in recent weeks.

Advanced even this week by Republican stalwarts including the party’s last vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, and Charles E. Grassley, the veteran Iowa senator, the nature of the assertion nonetheless seemed reminiscent of the modern-day viral Internet campaigns that dogged Mr. Obama last year, falsely calling him a Muslim and questioning his nationality.

Rutenberg and Calmes point out that the doggedly persistent rumor “was not born of anonymous e-mailers, partisan bloggers or stealthy cyberconspiracy theorists.

Rather, it has a far more mainstream provenance, openly emanating months ago from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating President Bill Clinton’s health care proposals 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, New York’s lieutenant governor).

This is the core of what all reasonable people know:

There is nothing in any of the legislative proposals that would call for the creation of death panels or any other governmental body that would cut off care for the critically ill as a cost-cutting measure.

But as T/S Contributor Andy Geiger points out, the real issue in health reform is that people are suffering because they don’t have health coverage. Opponents to any reform at all have found a handy way to create this smokescreen by keeping everyone riled up with an utterly false rumor.

I’ve spent much of my adult life working for better end-of-life care, including being forever on a soapbox urging everyone, not just seniors, to consider their end-of-life options, have conversations, create advance directives and then get on with living. I strongly, fully support the good provision in the health care bills that may indeed now get cut.

But we need not to lose this forest for a tree. Rational people have got to continue fighting for a decent system, a decent bill.

False ‘Death Panel’ Rumor Has Some Familiar Roots – NYTimes.com.

Health/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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End-of-Life Care is Losing to Lies

by Fran Johns

Here is some of the current worst news on health reform:

The Senate Finance Committee’s health care plan will not include provisions dealing with end-of-life care, now one of the more controversial topics in the health care debate, the committee’s top Republican said on Wednesday.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa said in a statement that the committee “dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.”

If anyone knows misinterpretation, it’s Senator Grassley. He’s the originator of such enlightened parting phrases as the one he tossed out at an Iowa meeting Wednesday, about not wanting a health plan “that will pull the plug on grandma.” There is, of course, no grain of truth in that phrase, but its repetition does exactly what Sen. Grassley and his ilk wish: whip the opposition to any real reform into an emotional, unthinking frenzy. And they are winning the war against reason one battle at a time.

A Senate Finance Committee aide confirmed that the panel was not discussing end-of-life measures, adding that they were “never a major focus” of the committee’s negotiations.

House committees have passed legislation that would provide Medicare coverage for optional counseling sessions on end-of-life services.

But as people like Senator Grassley, and former N.Y. Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey who sought fame and perhaps fortune by starting this whole flap, keep the country inflamed with misinformation the chances of decent legislation rising from these ashes grow dim.

The hopeless optimists of the land continue to believe that calls and letters and e-mails of sanity will convince our legislators that the country will rally around a decent bill… but Mr. Grassley and Ms. McCaughey are making optimism difficult.

via Senate Bill Will Not Address End-of-Life Care – Prescriptions Blog – NYTimes.com.

General interest/Health/Money
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Affordable Health Reform

by Fran Johns

It was actually spoken out loud on NewsHour Friday night: we could have a workable, affordable healthcare system if we would address the excessive costs that go into the last six months of life, particularly the last few days. The remark was immediately followed by the standard caveat: of course, no one is going to suggest doing this.

Good grief, why not? Everybody knows it, a few others have even said it out loud. Sure, it’s political suicide, but if someone were ever brave enough to fall on that particular sword there would be a lot of people around to pull out the sword, cleanse the wound and stand him or her back upright.

It could be done. If individual choice were encouraged and enabled. If physicians had to be honest about the quality of life (if any, usually for a few days or weeks) being bought with aggressive treatment at life’s end. If futile treatment were avoided. If protections were put in place for physicians and hospitals complying with the above, since fear of lawsuit is behind most of the mess. If all of us began to look at — and make clear — what extreme measures we would or would not want.

Big ifs. But the reward would be a workable, affordable system.

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