Index: OLEYSON’s Medical Anecdotal Report [05-02]

 Title: Euthanasia.

 Period of Medical observation: December 2003

 Narration:

             As doctors, we are faced with difficult decisions especially when the patients involved are those that we know personally.

             We grew up together, he was about my age, we belonged to the same neighborhood, had the same group of friends, our families knew each other. So naturally, we hang out a lot, from childhood and later on as adults, we’ve kept in touch every so often to celebrate the major events in our lives. He may not categorically be labeled as my best friend but he was more than a mere acquaintance.

             Over the years, the two of us maintained communication albeit, by this time, such encounters became seldom. So I was very much surprised one day during my duty that I saw him in the hospital seeking medical assistance. I was taken aback by how different he looked at that time. He was thin, weak-looking, jaundiced, and he had a gaunt expression on his face. He was suffering and his condition apparently was not acute. He has been like that for quite some time, and yet he refused to seek medical advice nor tried to consult me for help. I immediately offered my assistance. He was then admitted under another surgical team for at that time, I was not part of the team which was in charge of cases such as his.

 He was diagnosed with Obstructive jaundice secondary to Choledocholithiasis. The plan was to operate on the patient after his condition was optimized. During his operation, I was decked with a different case on the other OR suite but from time to time, in between cases, I went into his OR to see for myself how “my patient” was doing. Intra operatively the findings were a mass on the pancreatic head with multiple seedings and the mass were adherent ton the underlying tissue. He then diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer stage IV.

             Four days after the OR, while waiting for the histopath results and recuperating from the operation, he succumbed to a coma, and was immediately hooked to a mechanical ventilator. The relatives, my friends, were customarily primed that the chances of survival are dim and that there was a great chance that he may not resume functioning if ever he survives. Seeing their patient suffering the way most of ventilator dependents do and knowing that he has cancer, they came up to me to ask that the respirator be taken off.

            I was in a dilemma, I understood their point of view because they saw their loved one suffer and that they were faced with a grim prognosis. But on the other side, I am still a doctor, bound by my oath to preserve life. Medical ethics compel me to decline their proposition. They did not necessarily ask me to the decision for them, but they did seek my opinion because I am both their doctor and friend. In the end, I offered what I believed was right. And that was to let the disease take its natural course.

 Insights (Reinforcements, Stimulus,discovery)( Ethical, Phsychosocial, Physical)

             Euthanasia has always been an option for patient’s relatives.
Seeing a loved one suffer and depend only for mechanical means to survive makes it easier to decide to pull the plug despite the moral dilemma that mercy killing presents. As humans, it is only natural to feel compassion for these people. Under the same circumstances, even medical practitioners may fall into that same predicament and might consider it. But then again, doctors took an oath to preserve life at all costs. It is our fundamental duty to do so.