Redirect

There’s a story out of New Orleans today about what happened to several patients at Memorial Hospital in the aftermath and fiasco of Hurricane Katrina. It doesn’t really answer any questions, but it raises quite a few. Mostly about the ethics of suffering.

A report obtained by CNN paints a conflicting picture of what really happened. The city was flooding and the lower floors of the hospital were under water; there was no electricity. Patients on ventilators had to be ventilated manually. Someone had to stand there and squeeze a bag steadily over and over again to keep them with oxygen in their bloodstream.

It was a nightmare I hope I never have to live through.

The doctors and nurses implicated have repeatedly said that they were trying to alleviate pain by giving patients high doses of morphine and other drugs. Their patients were suffering, and that’s all they had to give.

I have a hard time separating that from the conferences my family had with the team of doctors at Methodist Hospital in Memphis when Daddy was dieing. They assured us that he was on enough medication that he wasn’t in pain. I didn’t really believe that until he became totally non-responsive.

When we made the decision to cut his life support, they gave him extra doses of pain medication. I’m guessing it was the same kind of morphine they used in New Orleans.

I’m not sure what the difference is. The only one that I can see is that my family made the decision. I’m not quite sure that the folks at Memorial Hospital could have found a family member, much less gotten them through the water to the hospital.

I don’t know what really happened in New Orleans, and I probably never will. But it reeks heavily of someone who should have had an evacuation plan in place ducking responsibility.

It would be more productive to find that person and hound them the way the doctors and nurses at Memorial have been.

And eminently more just.