You may not have heard of Hassan Rasouli who has been a patient in Toronto's Sunnybrook hospital for the past three and a half years, but his story is important. While his family insists he has been responsive and so can't be taken off life support his physicians don't agree. Their preference would be to remove him from support to allow his death. The Supreme Court has decided for the family, ruling that they must consent to this plan of action, so removal won't happen. It's a sad situation for a man who developed meningitis after surgery at the relatively young age of 58 -- I now consider the late fifties to be the prime of life -- and for his loving family. His relatives resist taking him off support for religious reasons as well. They are practicing Sunni Muslims.
I find it interesting that is often religious folk who believe that there is eternal life beyond this temporal existence who are adamant about maintaining extraordinary measures. We have a physician friend who does palliative care and has experienced something similar in his practice, contending with a conservative Christian family who wouldn't let Mom go. He is a active Christian himself, but they were so insistent that life support continue they wanted him off the case.
In the instance of Mr. Rasouli his care has cost our medical system about $3000 a day, or roughly three and a half million dollars. The plan is to move him to a nursing care facility which is less expensive, at about $1000 a day. The family has been asked to contribute $1700 a month, which they insist they can't afford.
Whose needs are being served here? As Christians we do believe in the sanctity of life, but at any cost? Whose lives are being compromised by the lack of dollars for care created by these situations?
What are thoughts on this? Can there be a time when "enough is enough" is keeping someone alive?
Please take a look at my latest Groundling blog entry.
http://groundlingearthyheavenly.blogspot.ca/2014/01/trumped-on-climate-change.html
No comments:
Post a Comment