End-of-life
Health, Quantum Psychology
Natural Childbirth/Unnatural Death
Heads/Tails, Life/Death, Two Aspects of the Same thing.
By Jean Boyd
I was supervising some student nurses, caring for Joseph, an old man in his eighties, when the doctors stopped by on their rounds. We had to keep the head of Joseph’s bed upright so he could breathe and stick a tube down his throat to suction out copious amounts of brown liquid from his lungs so he wouldn’t drown in his own secretions. Joseph’s eyes were full of dread, his 
face tight with fear. The doctors looked at his urine bag, which was hanging from his bed frame; his urine was also brown. “We better get a urology consult,” one of them murmured as they left.
This experience was the last straw for me. In my career as a medical-surgical nurse I have cared for many patients like Joseph, who suffer while their dying is prolonged by medical procedures and good nursing care. My objection was ethical: no one had asked Joseph, or his family, what they wanted. “I’m no different from the Nazis who excused their behavior by saying, ‘I was just following orders,’ ”I thought. In my case, I was following doctor’s orders. Shortly thereafter, I left medical-surgical nursing for good and entered the mental health field where dying patients were rare. That day, before I left Joseph’s bedside, I did something we nurses sometimes do in such circumstances. I held his hand and silently, in my mind, I gave him permission to die: “Joseph, it’s all right to let go now.” He died the next day.
