Medical Dilemmas

The fields of medicine and nursing involve complex ethical situations. I believe totally in the sanctity of human life. We were created in the image of God - how special is that! - and He loves us all. That being said...we all know that medical treatments have been used for many years that extend lives far beyond what nature probably intended. When I worked in a newborn ICU, there was one particular baby that haunted me. It was a preemie who had lain in the double layered hard plastic isolette with needles and tubes and casts for several months. He was already blind and his mother had abandoned him. He was severely physically and mentally impaired and kept trying to die, but as soon as one of his monitors went off, a code was called and he was brought back enough to struggle on. A recent story is a young man who came out of a coma he had been in for a year after a car accident. He now can move only one arm and is dangerous with it. He is difficult to care for but he lives on. Another young male, still hostile, who has ruined his brain and body from deliberately and addictively sniffing fumes has bizarre movements, screams out obscenities, and cannot walk. And the endless, speechless, withered old people who lie in beds being turned and medicated. There are millions of stories like these and I am not wise enough to know the answers, but I do know that they suck probably billions from the government till. (Of course that money is dispersed to systems and workers who put it back into the economy so maybe that is the plan.) Doctors start treating and medicating out of hope, but the outcome is often heartbreak. Who can say when to give it up.