Bad Decisions About Medical Care

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

A friend recently shared this opinion essay from an ICU doctor, where she tells a patient that he is dying. There’s a lot to unpack in there, and today the thing that caught my attention was the whole question of “bad decisions” about medical care.

You can stop.

Decide once and for all that this is your last intervention,

your last IV full of chemo,

your last day of radiation,

your last experimental drug trial.

You can remove the final medical device,

return home with only your organic body —

all these layers of tissue, muscle, fat, bone, and viscera,

nothing that wasn’t created by and for your body,

including your disease.

When you stop,

you can sit directly on the grass in your back yard,

sink your fingers deep enough to hold tree roots in your hands,

tell them, through the language of one cell to another —

I’ll be there soon.

Save my seat.