Sunday, September 24, 2006

Comfort Care

Comfort care is a definition of medical care given to the elderly in nursing homes and hospitals. It sounds good. It sounds like someone everyone would want, but I learned first hand about comfort care when my husband and I were watching out for his mother.

Sadelle was healthy at 90 and told that she could live 10 more years. She was opinionated and spoke her mind, which was not always welcomed. I admired her intelligence and felt she had a right at 90 to say whatever she wanted. She was coded comfort care, which means no food or water with morphine to ease the pain, without consulting family and without a legal document to support this action. The family would never have consented to this outrageous action.

I'm concerned that comfort care could be used in the future in hospitals and nursing homes on those individuals without sufficent funds at a time when budgets are tight and as a way to eliminate a population of babyboomers who become dependent. If family members are busy and don't visit often, this can happen. It almost happened to Sadelle.

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