Nurse

So working as a nurse has opened my eyes to a lot of crazy things that I never in my life would have thought I would have seen. For example I've probably seen every shape and size of butt imaginable, then this evening one of my patients had a wound that I had to pack with gauze and it was so big my hand was all the way up inside of her abdomen. It's just crazy the things we do in medicine now a days. We can bring people back from the dead literally. The question that gets me every once in a while is when is enough, enough? For example I have a 90 yr old patient who has had open heart surgery a pacemaker put in, kidney surgery survived cancer and now has cancer again and they are still going to be doing more tests and proceedures. Not just a blood draw test but surgeries and colonoscopys all the nasty tests that none likes to do in the first place. What is the point? The women, even if healthy, would still only live for 10 more years tops, why put her through all that pain and discomfort. Doesn't make sense to me. The things that is crazy is usually most patients are ready to go but the family just can't accept it so the family puts the patient through hell for what? A miserable couple of final days. I hope when I face that decision with loved ones in my life I can have the clarity to understand its better for then to happy than to be alive.