Do no harm

Re: Painful lessons on palliative care, July 8

Prof. Paul Adams wrote an emotional article about his wife’s death. He related his shock and helplessness at discovering his wife was to receive no nourishment or hydration. I was not surprised. I have heard many details from friends, acquaintances and caregivers, about loved ones and charges being taken off all food and drink, and essentially starved to death. These cases only differ in that they were usually elderly, however the method was the same: a friend’s mother was given no food or drink, and when asked, was told “you can bring her pudding from home.” A caregiver related how her charge in a nursing home was denied food; his doctor had made him “palliative,” but when asked, he told her he wanted food, so she fed him secretly.

The word palliative as used by the medical profession today is far from its true meaning as defined in the Oxford dictionary: “relieving pain without dealing with the cause of the condition” — the type of care Prof. Adams’ wife should have been receiving. Today, the term “palliative” has been distorted to the point where it more often signifies the removal of all nourishment, and the slow death of the patient rather than the removal of pain.

I personally was encouraged to put my elderly mother on “palliative” when she was very ill in hospital; her chart inadvertently listed her as palliative — news to me. I refused, but had to monitor regularly that she was receiving hydration, and she subsequently improved and lived at home for over a year.

Palliative care needs to return to its original goals of alleviating pain, along with the physicians’ primary dictate of ” do no harm.”

Linda Fingerote, BScPhm., Thornhill, Ont.