THE COSTS OF NOT FACING DEATH

A sample from a worthwhile read on end-of-life care from David Brooks: “My only point today is that we think the budget mess is a squabble between partisans in Washington. But in large measure it’s about our inability to face death and our willingness as a nation to spend whatever it takes to push it just slightly over the horizon.”

http://nyti.ms/raIujg

BEFORE LOU CAN DO HIS WORST

It would be wrong to call Dudley Clendinen’s essay in Sunday’s NY Times his advance directive for when Lou carries out his threat.

Lou is Clendinen’s nickname for Lou Gehrig’s disease, but theirs is no friendship. There is little uncertainty about what is in store for Clendinen, and he expresses no uncertainty about his plan to end his life before Lou does his worst. But the essay is directive for no one but Clendinen himself.

“We have to be able to see doctors and machines, medical and insurance systems, family and friends and religious as informative -- not governing -- in order to be free,” writes Clendinen, former Times national correspondent.

Clendinen writes about a drug that could might gain him some time, at prices he will not pay. “Lingering would be a colossal waste of love and money,” he writes.

He writes of his mother’s slow descent when “she looked at me, her only son, as she might have at a passing cloud,” and of his adult daughter, “the gift of my life. I don’t know if she approves. But she understands.”

Wherever you stand on decision-making at the end of life, Clendinen’s eloquent essay of acceptance offers unique and valuable insights. See: http://nyti.ms/qLl7ju

LEGISLATING CARE

Robert A Milch, on New York’s “flawed but needed” Palliative Care Information Act:
“The ills of the world will not be cured by legislation. But there are overwhelming data that the provision of palliative care and communication about it currently are inconsistent, inadequate, or untimely. The public and the medical profession long have recognized the unmet, ongoing needs for improved palliative and end-of-life care. Well-meaning advocacy and position statements, even ethical and professional standards, have proved inadequate in addressing the problems.”

For more, see: http://bit.ly/oF1GYZ