Sometimes People Make me Sick!

Okay, so today I did some charity work in a hospital (reading stories to kids, playing with Legos, that sort of thing). One of the Doctors there is an acquaintance of mine through an Atheist group, so he gave me a tour. One of the most depressing areas was the "Maintenance Ward". This is where people who are for all intents and purposes dead, but are still kept alive at the requests of the family. Even in a small podunk area like this backwater bayou, there were quite a few old folks hooked up to machines there.

Now, you'd think that these people have families that just can't bear to part with them, and that's why they are keeping them on the machines. Of the 9 patients, NONE of them have regualr family visits. Not a one! As a matter of fact, two of the patients haven't had a visititor in over 18 months! So why are they there? Well, medicare pays for the life support, so it's no burden on the family. But here's the thing I found disturbing... Each of those patients still gets a Social Scurity check. And every single one of those checks is chashed by the surviving family.

Now, I can't say with any certianty that this is the only reason that these peole are kept on life support; but the implications are strong. In each case, the patients did not have any sort of living will, or any will at all even... I just gotta wonder what level of humanity it takes to use a person's body in that manner? It's disgusting!

So, make sure you have a living will! Do the thing that Americans really suck at: PLAN! For fuck's sake people, it's not that hard. And to the people who are using their elderly relatives in this way... I hope you're proud of yourself.

By the way, 8 year olds LOVE fart jokes! They were telling me some good ones!