When A Stranger Asked for Consent to Kill My Mother

Protectors in Shock after a Run-In with American Health Care

*The managers (Green, Jessica, and others) and firefighters (Sharky, Rhino, Koala and others) have all blended together to write this account of what happened yesterday.

A stranger called this morning to tell me my 83-years-young mom is dying: she’s been living at a rehab facility, recovering from a broken hip. They said she’d been found unresponsive, and they needed to check her into the hospital. In fact, the rehab stranger said she needed my consent to initiate hospice protocols.

She was lying.

She’s one of the many reasons American trust in healthcare professionals has declined from 70% a few years ago to 40% today. After this event, I’d say my overall trust is at a solid 2%.

Exactly what happened was explained to me by my sister, who’s a doctor. I told the rehab facility to call my sister, and that I didn’t consent to anything at all, because I don’t have that authority.

My sister said, the first thing she asked the people at the rehab facility was if my mom was overmedicated. They said, “Of course not!” My sister called the hospital, who told them that my mother was overmedicated, and that once they administered Narcan, she rapidly recovered.

Wow! So the story I got is that my mom was found unresponsive, and that she needed to be started on a hospice protocol. TO DIE.

The story my sister immediately leapt to was that my mother was overmedicated, which led to unresponsiveness. And indeed, my mom was rapidly and easily restored to responsiveness by administering Narcan, and then she was back to her normal self.

I know that our healthcare system is broken. I know it’s a sick care system. I know it’s horrible. I read the stories. If you Google “medical error third leading cause of death” Google will confirm just how bad it is. 250,000 people a year die from medical error! It is truly the third leading cause of death.

But what if I didn’t know any better and what if I said yes to the hospice protocol today? Could I have unwittingly allowed these crazy maniacs to kill my mother? To start her on a hospice protocol where no “extraordinary“ measures would be allowed to keep her alive? Would that include Narcan? Were they out to kill her? Did I talk to a murderer this morning?!!

This is so crazy making it’s almost unbelievable I’m writing it. It’s unthinkably ghastly and horrific. I was actually called on the phone by a complete stranger who asked my permission to let them kill my mother today, over a simple, easily resolvable situation of overmedication.

Another twist: my sister said that due to the enormous illegal trade in narcotics, it’s extremely common in nursing homes and rehab centers for individuals to undermedicate patients routinely and pocket their pills. So pain management is horrible — patients don’t get the consistent medication they need, and depending on which shifts have which individuals who may be involved in pocketing narcotics, they will be undermedicated on some shifts, and then get their “correct“ dose on other shifts, which becomes a dose that’s too high for what their body is used to, and so therefore respond as overmedicated or even overdosed. My sister thought this could be a real probability for the situation with my mom.

To recap: I went outside to sit in the garden this afternoon, and responded to a call from the rehab facility where my mom was staying. A stranger asked me my permission to potentially kill my mother by putting her on a DNR/hospice protocol. I refused because I’m not her healthcare proxy and told the stranger to contact my sister, who quickly clarified that my mother was in no need of hospice and had simply been temporarily overdosed by the rehab facility.

I believe that, in the right circumstances, palliative care is supportive, and a social  good. But rushing to institute a “do not resuscitate” (DNR) order which might preclude the capacity to give someone Narcan and therefore kill a highly functioning person is chilling — deeply chilling to me.

It is stories like this which make me absolutely believe that a quarter of a million Americans are losing loved ones to our healthcare/sick care system every year. The third leading cause of death in this country — after heart disease and cancer — is medical error. My mother could have died today if I said the wrong thing on the phone. The fact that I am not my mother’s authorized healthcare proxy wouldn’t necessarily matter — I mean, if this is the level of error we’re talking about, the level of incompetence, whether it was the older sister, or the other sister, I’m not sure it makes that much of a difference. What matters is the yes or no.

I said, “No,” talk to my sister.

I am so profoundly grateful my sister is a doctor and knows what goes on at a level I have utterly no concept of.

My mom is perfectly fine and she’s back at the rehab center from the hospital. I can only hope she survives her encounter with the people that are supposed to be taking care of her.

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Two case studies where a DNR led to death after a medical error and a decision NOT to correct it with Narcan:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3986316/

DNR “dying, not recovering.” https://www.investors.com/politics/columnists/do-not-resuscitate-dnr-orders-dangerous-for-patients/