God Will Help When You're Dying . . . Maybe

Based on an article by Lindsey Tannerap, accessed via AP:

Many Think God's Intervention Can Revive the Dying

My simple response: then why are there so many obituaries in the paper every day?

CHICAGO--When it comes to saving lives, God trumps doctors for many Americans. An eye-opening survey reveals widespread belief that divine intervention can revive dying patients. And, researchers said, doctors "need to be prepared to deal with families who are waiting for a miracle."

What in the hell does this mean? Doctors need to tailor their approaches to the practice of scientifically grounded medicine to cater to idiots who think an Imaginary Friend is going to reach down his gigantic hand like in a Monty Python sketch to cure Granny's viciously terminal bowel cancer? What miracle are they waiting for, the dying to get up and can-can around the room?

More than half of randomly surveyed adults—57 percent—said God's intervention could save a family member even if physicians declared treatment would be futile. And nearly three-quarters said patients have a right to demand such treatment.

What "treatment?" Giving costly, futile treatment to someone who cannot benefit from it? How ridiculous is this? How selfish is this? This is the argument that those alcoholic, hepatitic sons-a-bitches who go through 2 or 3 or 4 livers are using. When I become Philosopher-King, these decisions will be made, quickly and without a lot of drama.

When asked to imagine their own relatives being gravely ill or injured, nearly 20 percent of doctors and other medical workers said God could reverse a hopeless outcome.

This is basic wish-fulfillment, sad and whining and so pathetically sycophantic and fawning. So lame. Everyone wishes they could win the lottery, and God could make that happen, too, if he chose to. Or he could make me a film star. Or he could help me and countless others to live for five hundred years or more. The problem is: none of this has happened, and none of it will happen.

"Sensitivity to this belief will promote development of a trusting relationship" with patients and their families, according to researchers. That trust, they said, is needed to help doctors explain objective, overwhelming scientific evidence showing that continued treatment would be worthless.

So, what this is saying is that doctors, whetheror not they themselves have the faith that God is up there and actually cares about the enfeebled, critical patient in play, have to buy in to the family members' last-minute, grasp-at-absolutely-anything, fantastical wishes so that--wait for it--so that they, the doctors, can better communicate to the enraptured, in-denial family that there is nothing else that can be done? How does this make any possible sense in any possible way?

A doctor has to, because I am a Wicca-Druid, tell me that he understands that the Mother Earth spirit has communicated with the stones and the trees and that the earth is balance with water and fire, and that all are in alignment with the cosmos, and my crystals are aligned, too, so he can better deliver to me the no-shit punchline: your father is dying, and there is nothing medical science can do.

Pat Loder, a Milford, Mich., woman whose two young children were killed in a 1991 car crash, said she clung to a belief that God would intervene when things looked hopeless. "When you're a parent and you're standing over the body of your child who you think is dying ... you have to have that" belief, Loder said.

Truly, and this may be harsh, things are not hopeless; they are what they are. A tragedy has struck out of nowhere, and this is the bitter, horrible fact of life, that death is ever present, and sometimes will rise up and strike when you least expect it. Saying "you have to have that belief" is really a coping mechanism, a way of denying or at least delaying accepting the truth that the unthinkable is happening to you, right now, with no warning and no time for preparation.

I cannot imagine the agony this woman suffered in this situation, and I cannot fathom how I would react in the same situation, but I most certainly wouldn't be thinking about a non-existent God. If God were up there, and cared for your children and loved them, and if he loved you and your family and your children's friends, then why did he do this to you? If he can reach down and fix it--forestall the death of truly innocent children--then why doesn't he do it? After all, if you're signing up for the whole God-business, he is the one who brought the death upon them in the first place. God is the cause for their death; he made it happen. God killed them . . . if this is your belief system. What exactly is his calculus for doing this? Why is he killing the young and innocent? For their sins and mistakes? And why doesn't he bring them back?

While doctors should be prepared to deal with those beliefs, they also shouldn't "sugarcoat" the truth about a patient's condition, Loder said. Being honest in a sensitive way helps family members make excruciating decisions about whether to let dying patients linger, or allow doctors to turn off life-prolonging equipment so that organs can be donated, Loder said.

This has nothing to do with signing up for God and omni-present intervention. This is about sensitivity, empathy and respect, and understanding that we all will go through this, many times in our lives, sooner or later. Give someone the courtesy and treatment you would expect if you were in that situation. Help them the best you can. That's all a doctor or any other caregiver needs to do, not sign up for some hokum about God and his incredible powers--which he is consistently choosing not to use.

Loder was driving when a speeding motorcycle slammed into the family's car. Both children were rushed unconscious to hospitals, and Loder says she believes doctors did everything they could. They were not able to revive her 5-year-old son; soon after her 8-year-old daughter was declared brain dead. She said her beliefs about divine intervention have changed.

Of course they have. How can you continue to believe in God when he takes away your children? Or, at the very best, when things like this happen and he refuses to help you? How can you continue to have faith when this happens to you?

"I have become more of a realist," she said. "I know that none of us are immune from anything."

And that's because there is no God. There is nothing/no one watching over us. Life is cruel and harsh, uncompromising and unflinching. Existence is not a human thing, and therefore is beyond human belief, faith or wish. We live in it, and we are largely powerless to affect it. All we can do is be aware and wary, attentive to the threats that are around us every day, whether it's dangers in traffic, tainted meat, or pedophile priests.

Loder was not involved in the survey, which appears in Monday's Archives of Surgery. It involved 1,000 U.S. adults randomly selected to answer questions by telephone about their views on end-of-life medical care. They were surveyed in 2005, along with 774 doctors, nurses and other medical workers who responded to mailed questions.

Survey questions mostly dealt with untimely deaths from trauma such as accidents and violence. These deaths are often particularly tough on relatives because they are more unexpected than deaths from lingering illnesses such as cancer, and the patients tend to be younger.

Well, duh, of course these are harder. When you see death coming, everyone can prepare. There is no way out, and we're all headed there, but it's nice if you've got time to get ready. When you can do that, it's easy. The abrupt and unexpected is the hardest. But, this doesn't mean that God or even hollow God-talk should come into play. Just because it's an ugly, tragic, excruciatingly painful situation is no reason to abandon the truth.

Dr. Lenworth Jacobs, a University of Connecticut surgery professor and trauma chief at Hartford Hospital, was the lead author. He said trauma treatment advances have allowed patients who previously would have died at the scene to survive longer. That shift means hospital trauma specialists "are much more heavily engaged in the death process," he said.
Jacobs said he frequently meets people who think God will save their dying loved one and who want medical procedures to continue.

Again, if it's all about God and what he can do, then why are you asking for medical treatment to go on? If God is going to make it happen, there is going to be blinding golden light, angel choruses, that kind of thing. If medicine can fix the victim, they'll already have it done or be working on it; if medicine can't, then the doctor owes you the unvarnished truth.

What's the first stage of grief? Denial, yes. That's what this is, forestalling the inevitable, denying it, and substituting the power of God for reality. Get on over it, accept the truth, and move on.

"You can't say, 'That's nonsense.' You have to respect that" and try to show them X-rays, CAT scans and other medical evidence indicating death is imminent, he said. Relatives need to know that "it's not that you don't want a miracle to happen, it's just20that is not going to happen today with this patient," he said.

Nothing wrong with wanting a miracle to happen, and with the billions of people in the world every now and then that zillion-to-one instance will occur, and Junior will jump up from the table all better. But most days, almost every single day, that's just not going to happen.

Hope for the best, expect the worst.

Families occasionally persist and hospitals have gone to court seeking to stop medical treatment doctors believe is futile, but such cases are quite rare.

Nothing like squandering insurance and all of the assets and wealth of the estate to provide medical treatment in a futile manner, eh? Nothing like taking time and attention away from those who will pull through. Nothing like that kind of denial.

Dr. Michael Sise, trauma medical director at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, called the study "a great contribution" to one of the most intense issues doctors face. Sise, a Catholic doctor working in a Catholic hospital, said miracles don't happen when medical evidence shows death is near. "That's just not a realistic situation," he said.

So, Catholic Doc, I guess the only miracles are those performed by the saints, without having that whole eminent-death thing bearing down on them, right? Again, religious dogma is ready for anything.

Sise recalled a teenager severely injured in a gang beating who died soon afterward at his hospital. The mother "absolutely did not want to withdraw" medical equipment despite the severity of her child's brain injuries, which ensured she would never wake up, Sise said. "The mom was playing religious tapes in the room, and obviously was very focused on looking for a miracle."

Denial, pure denial. Likely another Catholic, brought up in a life of dogma, costumes, hierarchy and ingrained, rote-memory ritual. So what do you go to when everything else you know has let you down? Right back to your ritual.

Claudia McCormick, a nurse and trauma program director at Duke University Hospital, said she also has never seen that kind of miracle. But her niece's recovery after being hit by a boat while inner-tubing earlier this year came close. The boat backed into her and its propeller "caught her in the side of the head. She had no pulse when they pulled her out of the water," McCormick said.

Doctors at the hospital where she was airlifted said "it really doesn't look good." And while it never re ached the point where withdrawing lifesaving equipment was discussed, McCormick recalled one of her doctors saying later: '"God has plans for this child. I never thought she'd be here.'"

What a load of shit. I would be incensed if my doctor or that of my child was spouting hollow religious crap when it's time to save someone's life. Enough of the hollow quackery, and let's get to the hard science, the real things that make medicine go. The story itself tells you the deal: "it never reached the point where withdrawing lifesaving equipment was discussed," so there were clinical indications she might not make it, but also clinical indications she was viable. God and plans had nothing to do with it.

I say: let's come back 20 years from now and find McCormick's niece, and see what kind of plans God has for her. Who's up for this test?

Like many hospitals, Duke uses a team approach to help relatives deal with dying trauma victims, enlisting social workers, grief counselors and chaplains to work with doctors and nurses.
If the family still says, "We just can't shut that machine off, then, you know what, we can't shut that machine off," McCormick said.

Yeah, that's grief, just taking some time to adjust. It's got nothing to do with the victim getting better; it's all about the family adjusting to the new reality.

"Sometimes," she said, "you might have a family that's having a hard time and it might take another day, and that's OK."

Bottom line: If you believe in God, you must then believe that not only can he fix the bad things that happen, but also that he has the power to stop them from happening in the first place (we won't get into the whole "he caused the bad thing to happen" bit). So, if God allows bad things to happen to good people, how is it that he is looking out for any of us? Why would he give us a lifesaving miracle when he let that bus run over that little girl? When pedophile priests continue for decades with fully witting bishops and cardinals shielding them, how does that show God is looking out for us? When crminals defraud and steal in the name of God, how is it that God is looking out for us, or at least the morons duped by their schemes? When child rapists get away and offend over and over, how does that show us God's love? How does the very existence of child pornography demonstrate to us God's love for us? When children get cancer or other diseases, are hit by cars, are beaten and starved and tortured and murdered by their parents, how does that show the depth and purity of God's undying love for us, his own children? It doesn't, It doesn't because there is no God. Never has been, never will be. The sooner we all figure this out, the better off we all will be.