A friend asked if I knew how many people have been medically killed since Covid-19. My answer is that there is no way to know. We know about Michael Hickson and we’re just learning about Sarah McSweeney and perhaps many others from a recent NPR investigation. However, when relatives agree, or at least don’t vociferously disagree, medical killing happens quietly, behind closed doors.
I’m old enough to remember when advance directives were just getting started (late 1960s) and were highly touted as a matter of choice. The supposition was that this would increase individual choice. We were strongly and repeatedly assured that we could always make the choice to receive all medical care possible and no one would be coerced into signing up for an early death.
Recent reports from the UK and the US indicate that my experience with the medical system pressuring, even forcing DNR orders is not even unusual, much less unique.
When my husband, also a wheelchair user, approached his 80th birthday, it began. Every interaction with the medical system began with their attempting to talk us into placing a DNR in his records. In one case, they went ahead and placed it without permission, or even consultation. Though this was clearly illegal and was reversed when I found out and raised the roof our next contact started the pressure all over again.
Two years ago, I flew to California to be with by brother-in-law whom the hospital believed would not live through the night. Almost the moment I arrived, they started applying the strongest pressure I’ve ever encountered to try to get a DNR from us, even indicating that refusing the DNR wouldn’t matter because they would not perform CPR anyway. In other words, they had already placed a clearly illegal, unwanted de-facto DNR on him.
Both of these men were conscious and competent and both had indicated that they did NOT want a DNR. My role was to advocate for what they wanted. Doing so, I was vilified and repeatedly told that I was unrealistic, stubborn and unable to accept reality. So much for ‘choice.’ Both of these men had health insurance, both were military veterans, one was over 80 and a long-term wheelchair user, the other not yet 60 and had only recently become disabled himself, though his wife is a long-term wheelchair user. Both were white-appearing with Native American ancestry. Both were highly verbal, capable of expressing their wishes. If the medical system was so determined to make them dead that they were willing to take clearly illegal measures, what chance do obviously minority, uninsured, non-verbal and poor people have?
All of that was before Covid-19.