Shouldn’t it be the other way round
Her beloved husband wasn’t faring that well. For the past many years, due to PSP, he hasn’t been able to comprehensibly articulate more than a few single-syllable words, but even so, she found no problem communicating with him everyday. Right now, he had a bad pneumoperitonium, in addition to an aspiration pneumonia that didn’t seem to get better. Her beloved husband wasn’t faring that well.
This entry is filed under Doctors and tagged death, love, musings. There are 14 responses to this post.
We discussed with her about resuscitation in the event of a cardiac or respiratory arrest. The chances of us being successful, in her husband’s case, would be small. Even if we were to succeed, the quality of life gained back would likely be much reduced too. So carefully we asked if she would still like for us to attempt a full resuscitation on her husband, if that were the case.
“Yes,” she replied with resolve, but her voice flickered a little afterwards. “We’ve discussed this before. I want full resuscitation for my husband. …We believe in God.”
What a difficult situation she must had been in.
Yet later, in the ward office, when we were thinking again about his resuscitation status, the elective student in our team echoed out my thoughts better than I could express myself – if they believed in God and His timing, “Shouldn’t it be the other way round?”
But perhaps many times we won’t know for sure. Tell me what you think.
-
oming to you
from a junior doctor who is color-blind, cleft-lipped and left-handed — this is where
I largely write about my
somewhat weird and wonderful encounters in Medicine. I wish,
though, more often than not,
that I could rather spend my days
drawing colorful pictures and bringing stories to life...... -
Search
-
Blogroll
Mmm, the same thought came into my head when I read what she said. I think so often Christians fall into the trap of believing that their faith will bring about their own desires. “Blessings,” instead of being the provisions of God in whatever way, get limited to the worldly positive things, such as finding a job or whatever else.
Not to say that she didn’t perhaps simply mean that even though the chance of him recovering well when resuscitated was slim, she believed that God could prevail over that; but it still seems that lately I’ve seen people believe that their faith in God will fulfill their wishes instead of trusting that God’s will is ultimately best and that so much blessing can be found in what he deems, even if it’s against our desires. And sometimes it’s so hard to trust that something that frightening can be God’s will and can cloud our thoughts so that all we can focus on is life and the possibility for the miracles we know God is capable of. I hope that whatever does happen, this woman can see God’s hand in it and grow stronger in faith through it.
I agree completely. But that having said, submitting completely to God’s will, but at the same time presenting your requests (by prayer and petition with thanksgiving) to God are not mutually exclusive – just that we, me included, often get our perspectives wrong. Thanks for commenting and sharing.
But that having said, submitting completely to God’s will, but at the same time presenting your requests (by prayer and petition with thanksgiving) to God are not mutually exclusive – just that we, me included, often get our perspectives wrong.
Precisely. :)
And thank you for making posts like these! Food for thought like this is always wonderful.
We have the knowledge and medicine to postpone death so I don’t see a problem in using it, as long as she understands the results might not be what she is hoping for.
Interesting how you mentioned about postponing death. The patient got better in the end, thankfully – so the resus status ended up not being all that important (phew) – but as he got discharged as a happy man, it just came across my mind that he’ll probably come back to hospital next time (not to be cynical, but the nature of his condition predisposes him to aspiration pneumonia), and he and his wife will be faced with the exact same questions again. Just postponing things – you could almost say.
Like ransomedsea said, she could be the type of believer who thinks that believing in God will make everything you want come true. Or, maybe she believes that if God really wants it to be her husband’s time, you won’t be able to resuscitate him if you tried, therefore you should try anyway.
Yup, I agree. Just as an aside, resus is quite a traumatic event for everyone including the staff – and resuscitating when you know the success rate is negligible is actually quite brutal in some sense…
Thanks for commenting and sharing :)
God is sovereign, and all we can be sure of is that in the end it will be His will that will be done.
The best we can do, it seems, is to trust in that fact, and do our best to make our decisions according to what we can discern is right, trusting that God will take us wherever He ultimately wills us to go.
Maybe she knows that, while she has the freedom to choose to resuscitate her husband, if God’s deemed that it’s her husband’s time, all she can do is surrender to His will, embrace it, and praise Him.
I agree completely. I’m encouraged by how mature you are!
Thanks for posting a comment here. Oh, you should update your lj, i’m interested in knowing how things are going now! ;)
I thought that if you haven’t seen it already, this might be of some interest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ_ny8hMgRY
His name is Mike Guglielmucci of the band ‘Planetshakers’ who was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Here’s the full song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4xsWldmqAo
Real throught about this before, how my free well and God’s well can go together? The understanding I achieved was I need to be true in front of God that means ask from the bottom of my heart, but be sure that God’s plan is always better than mine.
thanks for leaving a comment!
mind introducing yourself?
Hi tablecolor,thanks for posting good stuff onto the web. I found your livejournal early this year and had really encouraged by your articles. I just like the way how you illustrate your faith and help people to think. Hey sorry for be in quiet for so long,your throughts really had a resonance with me this time so I finally decide to break the silence.
Waiting for more good posts!
QJ
Thanks for reading and leaving a comment! Mind if I ask how you found my livejournal? When you’ve got some time, drop an e-mail too to tell me about yourself, ay. Ta.