6’3″ 190 lb Lee Mealer was down to 135 lbs and begging for food! By the time the family found out and believe me, we were totally shut out of this due to Karen Deville and her legal guardianship as fiduciary.. By the time we fouind out and rushed to Mesa Christian Care Center 255 W Brown Rd, Mesa, Az 480-833-3988, it was too late.

I watched my dad beg for food. I also watched him eat after the ultimatum was given and we were about to “kidnap” him to safety against the wishes of Ms Deville. The doctors wanted to feed my dad, but Deville said NO. She’s not a doctor! She has no medical background! This murderer needs to be living penniless and homeless under a bridge in refrigerator box and she will be when I get through with this entire murder plan she instituted on my dad. She is demanding he be buried or cremated asap to hide the evidence, but we are so far, successful in fighting it for an autopsy and veteran’s funeral at a veteran’s cemetary.

So far, Gov Jan Brewer has lent support and has helped with the limited time we have known about this. Call and thank her if you care to…800-253-0883. Kevin McCullough and Stephen Baldwin, KTAR, KFYI and hundreds of others (including militia members out of Idaho) who lended me a hand getting my dad fed a week too late to save him. The phone calls made the difference, but it all came about too late.

Do not allow this happen again!

JL Mealer

My father was hospitalized initially for “failure to thrive.” (As you suggest, this designation means that someone is not doing well, but they don’t know why.) The doctors performed a number of tests, discovered that he had an infection, and treated it. They concluded that the root cause of the my father’s problems was dementia, and they recommended against further treatment. They did suggest hospice care, and we met with the hospice people. These latter made it clear that they would not provide treatment of any sort, certainly not an appetite stimulant. The hospital’s palliative care division was devoted to convincing us not to seek treatment and to let go. However, eventually, after my father had been in the hospital 5 days, the doctors reluctantly started him on the appetite stimulant. This was a major teaching hospital, and the doctors provided me with medical literature that supported their decisions. It was clear that they were following the standard procedure for treating the demented.

The care that you have given to your father and your partner is extremely admirable. However, neither suffered from dementia. So we are really talking about different issues.

I have never heard of anyone’s being discharged from a hospice. Your suggestion that hospices are places to go for treatment is certainly not consistent with their intended purpose. I do not think that you are really talking about hospice care, but about nursing care. Your antipathy toward physicians is misplaced. From the medical literature I have read, they prefer nursing care to treatment by feeding tubes, at least for dementia patients, on the grounds that it works as well. In my view, all sustaining treatments should be considered along with nursing care. Since you evidently think the old and feeble ought to be sustained, you are on my side. Your book will be valuable if it persuades people who are capable of providing care for their loved ones to do so. This is best for the patient, but also, as I say at the end of my article, those who can care for parent may themselves get as much or more from it.

Your comments and those of others reminded me that many if not most people have a very different view of the medical profession. The standard picture is that doctors are quick to take extraordinary and painful measures in hopeless cases, measures that prevent patients from having the dignified, peaceful death that they would surely prefer. Not this, but the opposite happens when the patient suffers from dementia. Then, doctors recognize that the underlying cause cannot be treated, they judge the patient’s life not worth living, and, therefore, urge the family to allow the patient to die. Such patients do not typically die of the disease but of treatable symptoms. This is what I regard as “euthanasia.” It happens when the patient is severely demented, but also by a slippery slope when patients are not so severely demented. Again, my point in the article is that doctors do not want to treat the demented because they judge their lives to have no value and their prognosis to be hopeless. That these patients have lives worth living is, I think, a view you share.

You write, “I do not support euthanasia or the assisted suicide programs in Washington and Oregon. They are not mercy. Modest and comparatively inexpensive changes in end-of-life care are what are needed, not euthanasia and not assisted suicide.”

The government has no right to interfere in such matters, or to force a person to wait until the options are so limited. In a free country, a man’s life is his own, and that includes deciding when it should end.

But America is no longer a free country. America has fallen victim to the vilest form of cradle-to-grave totalitarianism. Nothing could demonstrate this more clearly than the State claiming jusridiction over the time and circumstances of death of its citizens — and to give this claim the chillingly Orwellian name of “health care.”

It would be helpful to know why your father was hospitalized and I would appreciate your sharing that information.

Cynthia

Wake up America.

http://greensrealworld.blogspot.com/2009/05/health-care-nightmare.html