Week 11 Homework

In regards to end of life, I have very little experience with the subject from a family perspective. The most recent death in my family happened to my grandfather when I was 7 years old, so I barely remember the details from the event. One thing I do remember, however, is how my mother reacted after the fact.

 

My mother is very religious, and I think watching her father slowly decline neurologically and physically was very hard on her. She has told all of us in our immediate family that she does not want to be resuscitated if she dies, or put on life-sustaining measures (such as ventilator, tube feeding, etc.) if something were to happen to her. Interestingly, she has not signed an official DNR order yet, but she feels very strongly about the subject and doesn’t want to be kept alive artificially.

 

I feel like that has sort of rubbed off on me a bit, too. I’m not as religious as she is, but I’d definitely prefer not to be on a ventilator or kept alive by artificial feeding if I’m in, say, a serious car accident. If I went into cardiac arrest for some reason then yes, I would like to be resuscitated, but I’m not worrying about that too much right now. This topic parallels what we discussed in advanced assessment, and I’d like to iterate what I said during that discussion: if I were to find myself dying or in a resuscitative situation, I’d want my family around me. They’ve always been extremely supportive of me when I’ve been ill, and that has made those experiences better. I love my family very much, and having them be by my side in that type of situation would be very reassuring.

 

I’ve not heard too much about this topic from my peers in class. While I know some have had traumatic experiences with friends and loved ones being sick or passing away, I think that we as healthcare practitioners have learned to become much more resilient to those kinds of events. Not only have we become more resilient, but we have also become more empathetic towards those going through such difficult times, and that has made us much better nurses as this program has gone on.

 

Overall, this is a weird topic for me to be thinking about personally, but learning and thinking about it has definitely enhanced my ideas and feelings toward the subject of death and dying.