One of my biggest fears is a “Johnny get your gun” (or Metallica’s ‘One’) scenario where I’m actually aware but cannot communicate it. That seems worse than death.
For organ donation the organ removal doesn’t kill you. They take you off of life support equipment keeping you alive first. Basically it’s the same way you would have died if it weren’t for extreme modern medical intervention.
Either way, you should communicate with your loved ones about what you want to happen if you’re diagnosed as brain dead. Ideally memorializing it in writing. It’s hell to have to make that decision without knowing what the patient would have wanted.
It’s not the largest of the concerns involved but (if you haven’t) you might also want to consider the financial and mental/emotional cost to the people having to take care of you.
This sounds biased (because I hold biases) but it’s not intended to convince. We had a family member on a ventilator recently and it sucked. But at least there were plans put in place before it happened.
The article made it sound like they actually don't turn the other devices off in case of brain death, because it's so much better for the organs that they be kept in as close to a living state as possible. If your lungs can keep moving air (even assisted by a ventilator) and your heart can keep pumping blood, it's better that they do so, right up until they're extracted.
>They take you off of life support equipment keeping you alive first.
They absolutely do not do this. You're kept on life support until the very end because it's important to keep the organs oxygenated. You're also not given any anesthetic because it's presumed you're completely brain dead and unable to feel anything. Given our primitive understanding and testing for brain death, I'm not comfortable with that.
So they receive the same sort of anesthesia as a surgery patient? When I asked other doctors about this I was told the patient was given some things to control blood pressure, etc, but not anesthesia, as it would be 'wasted'.
edit: I admit I didn't read the article, I get queasy reading about that sort of stuff.
Yes, the same sort of anesthesia. You mention blood pressure in particular. Controlling pain, usually with opioids, is a huge part of controlling blood pressure.
For organ donation the organ removal doesn’t kill you. They take you off of life support equipment keeping you alive first. Basically it’s the same way you would have died if it weren’t for extreme modern medical intervention.
Either way, you should communicate with your loved ones about what you want to happen if you’re diagnosed as brain dead. Ideally memorializing it in writing. It’s hell to have to make that decision without knowing what the patient would have wanted.
It’s not the largest of the concerns involved but (if you haven’t) you might also want to consider the financial and mental/emotional cost to the people having to take care of you.
This sounds biased (because I hold biases) but it’s not intended to convince. We had a family member on a ventilator recently and it sucked. But at least there were plans put in place before it happened.