One Last Great Thing by John Burke

Author:John Burke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press

CHAPTER 11

The Decision

Over the next few days The Big Guy showed some improvement, but not a lot. We were looking for more and apparently he was, too. My dad had always been able to see a few more steps down the checkers board than anyone else. He had fought the good fight for eighty-plus days and instead of being lifted by the heart surgery, he seemed to know in his own mind that this was the end. When he looked down the checkers board he was not going to be able to make it. He had come to the conclusion that his chances of getting out of the hospital were limited, and that even if he did make it out, he would spend the rest of his life on a breathing machine and would be hooked up to a dialysis machine three days a week.

A week after the surgery, in his own way, he asked me to stop the suffering and withdraw the life support. At first I thought he was being too quick. The family gathered as we had just about every week to hear from the doctors. What were his chances of living? If he lived, what were his chances of having to be hooked up to a breathing machine? If he lived, what were the chances that he would have to undergo dialysis for the rest of his life? We went through all the questions just like Dick Burke would have gone through them all. On a scale of one to ten. The answers came back. Chances of living: five; chances that he would require assisted breathing for at least a few years: nine; chances that he would need dialysis three times a week for four hours at a crack: that one was a ten. I had done my best to spend as much time with him as possible, and I had also done my best to avoid communicating with him about the end of his life. By avoiding the topic, I felt I was buying time. But this was his life, and like everything else in his life, he liked to make the decisions.

On Friday, March 7, late in the afternoon, we brought in an old family friend who was a priest as well as a hospice worker. He had seen this movie before. He met with my father and then he met with us. His message was simple—it was time for The Big Guy to die. That was what he wanted. The entire family was there, and as it should have been it was a family decision. I kept thinking back to the run in Madison some twenty years ago, and his wishes had been clear. In a very weird way, the conversation shifted to when the life support should be withdrawn. Did he want to say good-bye to certain friends before it was over?

Later in the afternoon, I walked out of the conference room on the third floor and headed into the ICU to ask my dad when he wanted to die.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.