Last year I read an article called How Doctors Die which I highly recommend you also read.
In a nutshell, and as a generalization, Ken Murray MD finds that doctors faced with their own terminal disease seek none of the high level medical interventions they might carry out or recommend to their patients, but rather go for palliative care … and instructions like ‘Do not to resuscitate’ …
… doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.
Of course, doctors don’t want to die; they want to live. But they know enough about modern medicine to know its limits. And they know enough about death to know what all people fear most: dying in pain, and dying alone. They’ve talked about this with their families. They want to be sure, when the time comes, that no heroic measures will happen—that they will never experience, during their last moments on earth, someone breaking their ribs in an attempt to resuscitate them with CPR (that’s what happens if CPR is done right). …
Today I read in What Do Divorce Lawyers Do In Their Own Divorces? (also worth a read) that divorce lawyers in that situation (it must happen all the time) avoid fighting and try to negotiate!
… They try to stay out of court. Despite their familiarity with the system, and despite any perceived advantage they are believed to have, they do everything they can to settle their case before it reaches the court system.
Divorce insiders try to resist the inclination to fight. They think going to court is a losing proposition. It wastes energy, time, and money and is a last resort; it is something they will consider only when there is no other choice.
Well! What to think about anybody’s ‘advice’?
– P
PS As far as I know I’m not ill or getting divorced. (In case you wondered.)
This is interesting, but I don’t think there is anything unexpected in the Doctors on their own death Bed article, I was expecting some angle of they tend not take subscribed medicine they recommend for the same diagnoses so why don’t they administer to themselves conspiracy.
Anyhow this reminds me of a study done regarding Homoapthy/Alternative medicine. Where people who were openly Anti Pharma and regular Medicine but when faced with serious Health issues quickly wanted the proven approaches.