A good death--but no thanks to the NHS

doi:10.1136/bmj.39127.437998.59

BMJ 2007;334:536 (10 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.39127.437998.59

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A good death—but no thanks to the NHS

Paula Newton

dp31v@yahoo.co.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A year ago my frail 77 year old father had his renal functionchecked, on a Friday, by his GP. It was not unreasonable todo such a check, as he had severe cardiac failure, a recurrentlyinfected replacement aortic aneurysm graft, lobectomy for asquamous cell carcinoma (secondary to smoking a pipe since university),and osteoporosis causing severe back pain, to name but a fewof his pathologies. Clearly he was living on borrowed time.Despite all this he had enjoyed a weekend away with his wifein the New Forest less than a week before and had a more thanreasonable quality of life.

His greatest fear was hospital admission; after all he had beenthere more times than he could count already, and as each weekendapproached the risk loomed of an out of hours admission fromwhich his own GP's wisdom would be absent. If it . . . [Full text of this article]

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