A while ago I shared with you this wonderful cartoon from Comic Nurse, alias MK Czerwiec. Now let me share with you this symposium, Out of the Frame and Into the Gutter, brought to you in part by Comic Nurse. Thanks, Comic Nurse! If you're near Columbia on the afternoon of April 4, learn what graphic novels can do for health and social justice!
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
No Aid in Dying In CT This Year
The Public Health Committee of the Connecticut Legislature has no plans to bring an Oregon-style bill for Aid-in-Dying (aka physician-assisted suicide) to the floor of the legislature for a vote, in spite of 61% public support for the bill. Serious opposition by religious groups and by disability activists have kept legislators from moving the bill forward. But, the failure of the Aid-in-Dying bill seems to have resulted in some substitute enthusiasm for a Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (MOLST) bill for Connecticut. (Some states call MOLST "POLST," for Physician Order for Life-Sustaining Treatment. It's the same thing.) Under MOLST, terminally-ill patients and their physicians can frame orders to be entered onto the patients chart, from "do everything" to orders restricting intubation, antibiotics, resuscitation, ventilation or artificial feeding; such orders would be legally binding on all caregivers. It's like an advance directive on steroids, because it's both an expression of the patient's desires and a physician's medical order in the patient's chart.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
End-of-Life Planning, Roz Chast Edition
Please, please go read this wonderful and moving and honest cartoon about, among other things, why we don't do end-of-life planning, by longtime and beloved New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast. Really, go read it.
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