Resuscitate, or don't Resuscitate?

To resuscitate means to restart the heart in a medical emergency - a car crash, a sudden dip in vital signs, etc.

Do you want to be resuscitated if your heart stops? Or would you rather let your body take its "natural" course? What about people on machines? Are they still "alive?" If people are "brain-dead," are they "dead". What would you prefer happen if this situation happened to you? To a loved one?

Along with this goes the process of creating a Living Will. Do you think Living Wills are good ideas, or bad ones?

In some cases, you don't really have a choice if medical staff will try to restart your heart... or not. In emergency response situations, medical staff can be fired if they do not try to restart your heart, such as at the scene or in an ambulance from an accident, or if a doctor makes a mistake during surgery.

Also, does age have anything to do with this issue. If so, what? When should people start to make their own decisions about how they may want to end their lives?

Pro-Euthanasia, anti-Euthanasia?

Finally, who is allowed to make these decisions about you?!

Discuss.

If they cannot restart my heart in time to prevent brain damage I do not want to be resuscitated, it states so in my living will.

Currently my sister has legal power if I'm incapacitated including the power to take me off life support.

Euthanasia is really a different topic. I do support making legal assisted suicide for terminally ill patients who are suffering.

I'm not sure I'd want to live with brain damage but if my heart had just recently stopped then yeah people should revive me.

Living wills are a great idea, if only because they remove extremely painful legal and moral ambiguities.

This doesn't seem quite like euthanasia though I'm "pro" on that subject.

ya, I'd rather not live through an accident where I lost brain function, a limb, my sight/hearing, etc

Originally posted by inimalist
ya, I'd rather not live through an accident where I lost brain function, a limb, my sight/hearing, etc

I could stand to lose a limb and maybe my hearing.

If the accident didn't kill me, and I woke up, sure, I'd probably decide to carry on. if I had the choice though, I'd rather not.

hearing might be more importan than seeing imho. what kind of life would it be without music?

Obviously I want to be resuscitated if it's going to save me... if it leaves me brain dead though, by all means skip it.

Originally posted by inimalist
hearing might be more importan than seeing imho. what kind of life would it be without music?

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
Thank you! You're the only person who's answered the "sight or hearing" question and brought up music.

it is such a huge part of my life. I could deal with never hearing another person again, but to lose music, to lose dancing, I couldn't imagine what life would be like

Originally posted by inimalist
it is such a huge part of my life. I could deal with never hearing another person again, but to lose music, to lose dancing, I couldn't imagine what life would be like

I say, cut off my head and freeze it before brain damage sets in. Then revive me after the Singularity occurs so my engrams can be uploaded into something akin to Destroyer armor.

Freeze my body and throw me into space.

When the aliens find me they'll turn me into an Atomic Superman Killin Machine.

I'll return to Earth and kick some ass.

I am againist euthanasia.If it is my time to go then it is my time to go and I reather leave that choice up to God and not of man.My hushand is however for enuthanasia so I will not be having him make the choice for me at all since I don't want the plug pulled if there is still hope.
For him however I will never have the doctor pull the plug at all.So anyway hopfully I never will have to make that choice.

Originally posted by inimalist
hearing might be more importan than seeing imho. what kind of life would it be without music?

That's kinda ridiculous. Music is great, and sure there's a lot of hardship deaf people face...but blindness isn't even in the same league, it completely changes your life. No Internet (feasibly), no reading (limited anyways), no reasonable easy way to navigate...

Originally posted by Bardock42
That's kinda ridiculous. Music is great, and sure there's a lot of hardship deaf people face...but blindness isn't even in the same league, it completely changes your life. No Internet (feasibly), no reading (limited anyways), no reasonable easy way to navigate...

This.

Originally posted by Bardock42
That's kinda ridiculous. Music is great, and sure there's a lot of hardship deaf people face...but blindness isn't even in the same league, it completely changes your life. No Internet (feasibly), no reading (limited anyways), no reasonable easy way to navigate...

No posting to KMC... omg_smilie

If I was in an accident, even if it did cost me a limb or sense, I'd want to be resuscitated. Sure, it would be hard going through life without a limb or sense, but I have to think about those around me too, and it would be a terrible blow on my family and loved ones if I died. At least... I'd like to think it would be. glare

I prefer not to be resuscitated. But it's a bit of a sticky question for me because I had a traumatic childhood illness, so the people around me are very : "You survived all that, and yet you don't think you can handle losing something else?"

But I don't know how I would live if I lost my eyesight. I had surgery on my eyes one time, and for two weeks afterward I had to feel my way around the house. I had prepared by checking out some books on cd/tape from the library, but everything was so awkward - eating, trusting my mind to know my house... I get goosebumps every time I think of going without my eyesight.

Originally posted by Bardock42
That's kinda ridiculous. Music is great, and sure there's a lot of hardship deaf people face...but blindness isn't even in the same league, it completely changes your life. No Internet (feasibly), no reading (limited anyways), no reasonable easy way to navigate...

it would be harder day to day in terms of getting around, sure, I'm not saying it wouldn't be

but the loss of music and everything that comes with it would be so devastating to me it would, in terms of subjective feelings of loss, be just as bad. Sure, I can walk around and still go surf the net, but there is nothing else that give me joy like music or like dancing, and to lost that part of my life would be equally as bad as losing the ability to surf the net.

so like, ya, a "normal" life might be more possible without hearing, I just want no part of that life.

Originally posted by ADarksideJedi
I am againist euthanasia.If it is my time to go then it is my time to go and I reather leave that choice up to God and not of man.My hushand is however for enuthanasia so I will not be having him make the choice for me at all since I don't want the plug pulled if there is still hope.
For him however I will never have the doctor pull the plug at all.So anyway hopfully I never will have to make that choice.

Originally posted by 0mega Spawn
your posts amuse me