Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
At Hi everyone. Thank you for tuning in to the
(00:22):
Postmodern Realities podcast from the Christian Research Institute and the
Christian Research Journal. I'm Melanie Cogdill, Managing editor of the
Christian Research Journal. It's April twenty twenty five, and you're
listening to episode four hundred and forty one, which is
a conversation about end of life decisions and dnrs. On
(00:46):
this episode, I'm joined by Jay Watts, who is the
founder and president of Merely Human Ministries, Inc. Which is
an organization founded to equip Christians and pro life advocates
to defend the intrinsic dignity of all human life. Jay
has written an exclusive online feature article for the Christian
Research Journal. His article is called Exploring D and R
(01:10):
Decisions with Hope and you can read it for free
at equipped dot org. That's equip dot r G. Jay.
It's great to have you back on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
It is so great to be back.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Well. Today, as I mentioned, Jay and I are going
to cover the topic of dn rs, and that's something
that's an acronym for a health directive and this is
a really important conversation actually for people of all ages.
I think sometimes we think of some of these medical
types of forms that we have to fill out for
(01:47):
people who are elderly. But these things come up even
for young folks and if something serious happens to them,
then their family is left to like what do we do?
So why don't you explain for our listeners what does
DNR stand for and what is it.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
It stands for do not resuscitate? So a DNR is
a medical directive and there's different levels of making it available.
You can either have that medical directive shared with your
family so everyone in your family knows what your wishes are.
You can have it shared with your family and your doctor.
You can have it put officially into your medical records
so that as they pull it up then your medical
(02:24):
records in a hospital it will show up. But at
dnrs it do not resuscitate order, which means that if
your heart stops, or if you go into a pulmonary
crisis in your breathing stops, then they are not to
perform CPR. They are not to intubate, they are not
to use a defibrillator, they are not to take any
of the normal resuscitation efforts to try to save your life.
(02:46):
And so this as you mentioned, this is something we
most often think of when we're thinking of people in
the seventies, eighties, and nineties area, particularly people who are
dealing with maybe comorbidities, a lot of different things that
they're dealing with, health issues or pathologies that they're dealing with.
But it is something that is vital I think for
people to both learn about and understand better when we're
(03:09):
discussing all of the what is done to you in
order to attempt to resuscitate you in the event of
either a cardiac or pulmonary crisis.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
So why would someone want to or not want to
sign a DNR. I think most medical professional and les assume,
here's the DNR, please sign it right now. We can
just put it into your file.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yes, it's interesting. In preparation for this, I did talk
to a lot of different people. I talked to people
as particularly older friends of mine and family members, and
I would say, do you mind if I ask if
you have a DNR? And most people, and I'm talking
about people in their late seventies and early eighties, most
of them either did not know, We're not sure, or
(03:57):
said no and under interested. And they had now they
had more advanced medical directives about very specific things like
should they be faced with brain death persist of a
same state of or anything like this, But this particular thing,
they all said no. And when I asked, there was
a defensiveness about it for them as well, because they said,
(04:20):
are you that? And that big of rush for me
to longer be here? And it was so it was
interesting that when you read about also there are most
of the studies on this. When you find medical studies
that have been done, official academic studies, they're older. They
tend to be in the nineties when you're getting data
on how doctors were talking to patients and how patients
were understanding. But there has been a place where it's
(04:43):
difficult for doctors to talk. And one of I thought,
one of the funniest things I read in one of
the articles was the person writing this academic articles that
first of all, doctors just aren't great at talking to
patients anyway, It's not their skill. So when you're talking
about the actual medical practitioners, they're just not comfortable talking
to patients. But they talked about particular phrasings or ways
that you talk about do not resustate orders that lead
(05:06):
to people to not being comfortable with it because they
feel as if they're being asked, are you ready to die?
Or are you ready to give up? Or do you
just not want to fight for life anymore? And the
doctors say things like some of the ways that they
talked about it, when you read the evaluations of their
communications with their patients, that they would say things like,
(05:28):
do you want us to do everything that we can?
Would you prefer that we not drive to the They
made it sound as if they were asking the patient
if you would prefer I just not treat you and
let you die. And so one of the problems that
they have is effectively communicating what a DNR is. And
(05:49):
also there is yeah, I mean, there's just some hesitancy,
right because people don't fully understand what it is that
they're agreeing to by putting and to do not resuscitate
order all of the time, and doctors aren't the best
at communicating, and there's fears that if I have a DNR,
they won't treat me and I won't get the normal
level of medical treatment that other people will get, or
(06:11):
that I'm just giving up on being alive. So it
wasn't even talking to people about it I noticed that
myself as I reached out to people and I would say,
do you have a DNR? There was some confusion. Some
of them thought they did. Maybe they did, they didn't
know for sure. Others said no, I don't, but I
have these other medical directives in place. And then their
response was similar to what we talked about. Why, I said,
(06:32):
why people would or would not? Is it they realized
at this point that they felt like they were being
asked if they're ready to give up in some way
or another. Even my own family, when we've talked about
this in regards to some of our family members, I
got to pushback from family members when I asked about it,
and they would say, no, it's too early for that.
It's way too early to start talking about dnrs. And said,
let me give you some information, right, let's let's let's
(06:53):
have an informed conversation about it. So I think at
that point, what DNR entails, what it is your fusing
and what the relationship is with now you're medical professionals,
as far as what they will and won't do to
help you if you find yourself and crisis. I think
all of that keeps people from being more comfortable with
it and at the end, I would say, statistically speaking, though, dnrs,
(07:16):
when you look at what they are, start to make
a lot of sense. When you're talking about people who
are older, medically fragile, and who or a said of
mentioned coorbid, it's a lot of different problems that they're
dealing with at any given moment. Those people should have
a frank and honest conversation with their doctor about what
CPR and attempts to resuscitate are, what they do to
(07:38):
the body, how successful they are, and whether or not
it's a good idea for them to consider a DNR.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Well, I do want you to explain a little bit
more about them, because you just mentioned that there is
confusion around what a DNR does and what it's allowing
or not allowing, particularly I think in light of issues
like euthanasia, especially when we hear okay, this person, maybe
they're an older person, or maybe they're not. Something happened.
(08:08):
Do we now they're on this respiratory machine? Now do
we turn that off? Is that part of the dn
R and all those kinds of things that people are like,
I don't know what it is. I'm exactly agreeing to
so help our listeners know how to differentiate these different issues.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah. Look, that is a great point because there is
so much confusion when you're talking about end of life
issues and the ethics of end of lices issues and
relationships with doctors. When we're talking about this, we're not
talking about anything in the category of euthanasia or a
hastening death. This is this is not embracing death as
a medical treatment or a means to avoid pain or
(08:44):
any of the things related to illness. Isn't This is
not the desire to die. This is not the hastening
of death. This is the acceptance of death. And so
the differentiation there, And I quote the article that I
review some of the Catholic teaching. Both the basic teaching
from the Council of Bishop says a moral obligation to
(09:08):
use ordinary proportionate means of preserving his or own life.
That we have that they say, we have a moral
obligation to use ordinary or proportionate means of preserving life.
But Pope John Paul the Second wrote in cyclical letter
Evangelia Vite, and in there he talks about the difference
between euthanasia the intentionally seeking of death as a means
of leaving pain and of what of foregoing excessive medical treatments,
(09:32):
which is what we're talking about with the dn R,
and one we are using medical technology and science to
bring death to us. It's not here for us yet,
but we're bringing it to us. And the other as
we're reaching our natural death, we are foregoing excessive medical treatments,
as he says, either because they are disproportionate to inexpected
(09:54):
results or because they impose an excessive burden on the
patient and his family. And and I think that that
clarification is helpful. The idea of euthanation and accepting death
as a treatment is different than saying my body is
failing and I open up the article. This is one
(10:16):
of the reasons I'm very excited to talk about this
as much as you can be. This is a hard
subject to read about and discuss because my own father,
I had to put in place a dn R from
my father at the end of his life. He was
in and out of consciousness in the hospital. His body
was showing signs of reaching its natural end. He was
progressing towards a natural death, and there came a point
(10:39):
where we had to have a conversation as his medical
surrogate in the hospital with his medical professionals that said,
if at this point his heart fails or his breathing stops,
what do we do? And that's a difficult question. And
I will be honest, I probably until I was preparing
this article, I have had moments since the year, since
(11:01):
the sixteen seventeen years since my father died, that I
have questioned should I have tried to allow him to
continue on? But it was only in finding.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Death though by welcoming this in as you describe it,
is that a non biblical thing too. It seems like
to the you know, just the lay person, that this
would somehow hasten death.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
No, no, no, And part of it is a better
understanding of CPR, right, And that's part of the issue
that we're having here is that. And I was talking
to my son about this recently. If you watch movies
and television and you understand the world through what you see,
there so many things that they show us are just lies.
And a better understanding about what they physically would have
(11:45):
done to my father to keep him alive had his
heart stopped and we had not put in a DNR
helped me to come to terms with the idea that
I had made the best decision for him, right, because
it isn't. At this point, you are dying, and the
question then becomes, what do we do to someone who's
dying to force them to prolong their life a little
(12:07):
bit longer? And we are under no moral obligation as
human beings or as Christians to live as long as
medical science can drag our life out. As a matter
of fact, for many people, this is exactly what they
want to avoid. They don't want to become an artifact
of the medical community that is requiring of them through
invasive medical measures to keep their heart beating and their
(12:29):
lungs breathing for as long as we possibly can, long
after a natural death would have taken us more peacefully
and allowed us to move on to the next part
of life. For Christians, we have no fear, you know,
we have no fear of the next step. We are
given ample scripture all the way through that it is
a natural thing that we're coming to the end of ourselfs.
(12:50):
It is just the process that we go through. So
I don't think it is hastening death as long as
you come to terms with the idea and actual informed
understanding of what the medical procedures that they would do
to you, the cost that they will take on your life,
the effectiveness that they'll have, the probability that they're actually
going to save you, and what would be the physical
(13:10):
cost of that salvation as far as those terms are.
Using those terms that way.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
We have so many great topics coming up on the
Postmodern Realities podcast, including DNRS and end of life decisions,
lucid Dreaming, and of course the very hot Severance season two,
and we will be talking about the meaning of severance
with Melissa Kine Travis. We have also an evaluation of
(13:41):
the theology and work of Peter End's coming up, and
this is going to be very helpful for parents. What
do you do when your student is doubting their faith?
We have some dos and don'ts for Christian parents when
confronted with those questions from their children about doubting Christianity.
(14:03):
There's a lot being said about the gen Z generation,
particularly women, and so why are women more prone to
leave the Christian faith in that generation. We'll be having
an in depth look at those statistics, and of course
a lot of cultural apologetics coming up. It's been a
while since we've covered some video gaming, we're going to
(14:24):
talk about Buddhism and Assassin's Creed We've got and or
coming up the new season two of that Star Wars series,
and of course all the big blockbuster movies Mission Impossible,
Jurassic World, DC, Superman, and The Fantastic Four. So you
don't want to miss out on any of these, and
(14:45):
please let all of your friends know through social media,
just telling a friend about all this great stuff that's
coming up, because we help you know how to answer
the most popular things and issues and Christian apologetics and
theology so that you can use that as a springboard
to share the gospel, or that you can make sure
that you know how to clearly communicate a Christian point
(15:07):
of view on that particular ethical issue. So we hope
you will stick with us, tell a friend about us
and also tell others about us if you would do
a big favor for us and partner with us and
head on over to Apple Podcasts. It just takes a
few minutes of your time. There's no cost except for
your time to write a short review. Because the more
people that write those reviews for us, the more people
(15:29):
will find this content. And I know there's other people
that are very interested in finding out how Christian apologetics
would answer some of these theological questions or respond to
some of the latest and hottest cultural trends. So we
hope you are enjoying this conversation if you haven't thought
much about dnrs and why everyone needs one. And I
(15:51):
will get back to my conversation now with Jay Watts. Well,
you're talking about this idea of you know, maybe people
don't want I want to keep going on if they
are naturally dying to be made perhaps artificially kept alive
for any longer, just because we have the medical science.
(16:11):
And does that because medical science does allow us to
live much longer than we could have in the past,
Does that make it why people are hesitant to consider dnrs?
What in their mind they're like, I mean, they know
their body's feeling, but they're like, I want to be
here as long as possible for my family.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, I think that we have been given and when
I mentioned that just a second ago, we have been
given a false idea about how effective resuscitation is in
the sense that if it worked like it did in
a movie or television, your heart stops, somebody jumps on
your chest and starts pressing. They may punch you in
the chest, scream at you to wake up, they'll shock you,
(16:49):
and you'll wake up. And we are given the impression
that CPR works a lot, is highly effective, and that
the cost, the physical cost related to CPR is low.
In reality, it's the other way around, in the sense
that the physical cost for CPR and the body and
(17:11):
intubation or anything that we do to keep you alive,
it's actually very high. It's very invasive techniques that we
only want to do if we absolutely have to, and
the probability that they're going to work is very low.
And the misunderstanding the general public, and there's the pulling
that is a little old, but I think it's probably
(17:32):
still reliable. The more than half the population of the
United States, when they were questioned in this said that
they thought that CPR worked about seventy five percent of
the time. That you're gonna have about a seventy five
percent success rate. The reality is that it works. It's
the numbers are hard to get, but it seems to
work somewhere between seven to fourteen percent of the time.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Wow, that's crazy. I would have assumed and maybe it's
because of television and movies that it it always works.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
No, yeah, no, it About three hundred and fifty thousand
people annually have heart attacks outside of the hospital, you
have about a ninety percent fatality rate. And so I
think that we have this sense that cardiac arrest is
eminently treatable, that CPR works, and that there's a very
(18:22):
low cost. In reality, it's very now. It does work.
And what I mean by that is if you are
in if you are in a cardiac arrest outside of
a hospital, the best chance you have to survive is
for somebody to immediately apply CPR. But they have to
do it correctly even there. That's and that's one of
the things you see in the American Heart Association and
(18:44):
Red Cross data on this or as far as their
their literature on this, because they they attribute some of
the low success rates that we see to CPR to
people not doing it correctly. So CPR is something that
has to be done in a very specific way and
if you do it as it's meant to be. And
here's one other thing I was just talking to my
son about that this morning, is take a tennis ball,
(19:07):
sit the tennis ball on the floor, put your hand
on top of it, and compress it all the way
down as flat as you can on the floor, and
then all the way back up so that it recovers.
That's about a two inch compression with your tennis ball,
and then do that one hundred times a minute. And
you have to get that all the way down and
all the way up, all the way down and all
the way up. Well, now, feel somebody is like feel
if I feel in sit here, or tap my sternum,
(19:29):
and I realize that what I'm saying is is to
correctly perform CPR, I have to push my sternum in
two inches down and then let it recover two inches
back up. Well, my sternum and my ribcage were not
meant to do that, but that's the only way to
do CPR correctly. And why do you have to do
it correctly? Well, because your heart is very efficient at
(19:53):
moving blood through your body. But it turns out that CPR,
if done correctly as I just described two inches in
back to full recovery one hundred times a minute, it's
only going to be about thirty percent efficiency as far
as moving blood through the heart. Is what your heart
would do if it were beating normally and about ten
percent with efficiency and moving blood to the brain. So
(20:14):
now it makes more sense as to why this failure
rate is high because you take somebody in cardiac arrest
and even the best thing that we can think of
to do, short of having a defibrillator on site, to
try to recapture with a defibrillator a healthy rhythm, which
is all a defibrillator does. It doesn't restart a stopped heart.
It takes a heart in the middle of cardiac arrest
(20:34):
that has lost its rhythm and it restarts it in
the sense that it gives it a new, better rhythm.
It gives it a chance to catch that rhythm again
and start efficiently moving blood through your body. So even
at its best, it's about thirty percent of fision about
moving blood through your heart. Ten percent of fisient about
moving blood through the brain. So it has a but
it's going to break your ribs, it's probably going to
(20:56):
break your sternum, and there is if it's a prolonged
use of it doing that correctly two inches in two
inches back recovery, two inches in two inch back recovery,
it's probably there's probably it's gonna last rate your organs
an internal organs, things like liver, things like that can't happen.
And then if you don't have that heartbeat restored early
(21:17):
enough within this process, at your blood moving through the
efficiency in your brain at about ten percent when it
would with your heart beating, you face cognitive permanent cognitive
impairment because of oxygen loss to the brain.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
That just sounds so serious. I mean, it doesn't sound
I mean, like you said. In the movies, we see
it then somebody comes back to life or whatever. But
it sounds like with such low percentages that more harm
could be done. It could cause more serious injuries than
we think about because we watch TV.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Yes, and that is why you have to have it.
And again, television movies just have given us such a
false understanding about what this is. The medicalfessionals say, this
is a bridge. This is a bridge that if you
want to get somebody from that moment of crisis to
medical treatment and that that period of time can be
(22:09):
shrunk down, then CPR will save lives. It has the
ability to save lives. It does save lives if it
were done correctly immediately, and if we had defibrillators on site.
The American Heart Association says we may save more than
one hundred thousand more lives a year than we're already
saving through the practice of CPR. But the reality of
(22:30):
it is, it's going to take a toll on your
body and now go talk to your eighty something year
old relative and look at whether their body can handle
and have a serious conversation with them. Because that's when
the doctors, some of the doctors who have been through this,
who I had an EMT directly contact me about this,
(22:51):
and when he knew I was talking about this, sent
me a message, a private message where he said, it's
hard because the failure rate is so high, but it's
the only chance that we have to help people. So
you know, someone has about a ninety percent chance of dying,
but you are required to get on top of them
(23:11):
and to start doing this incredibly intensive procedure to try
to save their lives, which most of the time doesn't work.
The overwhelming majority of times it doesn't work. And when
you're talking about people who are older, and that's where
we say that idea of they don't understand what CPR is.
They think somebody is going to just hit them in
(23:32):
the chest a few times, yell their name, wake up,
don't you die on me, or something like we see
in the movies, and they're going to come back to life,
take a deep breath, and everything's going to be fine.
The reality is that ninety percent of the time that
somebody has a heart attack away from the hospital, they're
going to die. CPR will help maybe get them to
the hospital. But even if people have heart attacks in
(23:52):
the hospital and receive CPR from the medical community in there,
nurses and doctors trained to do it correctly with all
of the equipment around, the success rate is still is
someone like twenty to forty percent, and a third of
the people who are going to survive to discharge are
going to have permanent cognitive impairment from lack of blood
(24:12):
flow to their blamee of some level. So now I
think it makes more sense to say, okay, you should
have a serious, open and frank conversation with your doctor
about what the physical cost of CPR are, what the
probability of success is, and now why somebody who is
later in life facing their natural death, who may have
(24:33):
multiple issues that they're dealing with, multiple different pathologies that
they're fighting at any given moment, may want to seriously
reflect on the idea of saying, if my heart stops,
my breathing stops, is then dealing with a slightly prolonged
life with a very low chance of success. But if
I do live, I'm certainly going to have broken ribs,
(24:54):
most likely going to have a broken sternum, possibly gonna
have last rated organs, and run a thirty percent chance
of having permanent cognitive impairment. So it's not to undermine
the life saving nature of CPR and what can be
done with it, but it's just to recognize that the
reality of what people face and those numbers get far
worse when you're talking about somebody in their eighties or nine.
(25:16):
At nineties, the success rate of CPR is down to
something like two percent.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
I don't think the average person even knows when they're
signing the DNR or whatever, or I don't want to
sign the DNR, even knows what you just explained there.
I don't know that I was clear on it, especially
with the statistics. So is there a time though, if
somebody is in distress, they've had like a stroke or
cardiac event or something else that has you know, landed
(25:43):
them in this situation. Would an er doctor ever over
Let's say they have you know, a DNR or you know,
maybe they're younger. Is there is there a reason why
or is there a time that a medical professional could
override a DNR or they like just totally air tight
(26:03):
no matter what happens, it can't be overridden.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
There's two things. The American Medical Association, under their rule
their code of ethics, say that a DNAR is air tight. Now,
that's written in their code of ethics. If a patient
has expressed that it is their wish that there there
will be no attempts to resuscitate them, then it should
(26:25):
be airtight. That's it. You have to respect the patient's autonomy,
they say. Even in the case where the doctor knows
that it would be better to resuscitate or attempt to
resuscitate the patient, they should respect the autonomy of the patient.
That's not now. Now now we get into the reality
of it. Yes, doctors and medical professionals ignore dnars all
(26:48):
the time for different reasons. Now I want to say
all the time, but there are reasons. Uh. There are
papers that are written where doctors are saying.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Though, can they ignore the DNAR legally, uh no.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Not Now they cannot know the DNR was there, which
is more likely not gonna happen with an EMT, right,
So they suggest if you have a DNR and you
put a copy of it, and it's just I can't
remember the color off the top of my head, but
they come in specific colors, and you put it on
your refrigerator. And EMTs are taught when they come into
your house to look at the refrigerator for medical directives.
(27:21):
So if you have a medical directive and a DNR,
you should post it on your refrigerator. And so when
an EMT comes into your house, if they need to
give you care, you should. You can put necklaces or
bracelets on so the MTS will check that if they
if they encounter you other elsewhere outside of your home.
But more often than not with EMTs, they don't know
because there they are taught to respond as fast as possible,
(27:43):
because we already said the lag time between response and
help is the difference between any chance of survival and death,
and so they're going to come in as fast as
they can and try to give aid as fast as
they can. And so it sometimes for EMTs. They just
miss it. They don't have the opportunity, they don't take,
they don't see it, they miss it. There are other
times when doctors have said they've overridden dnrs when they
(28:06):
are in the process of caring for you medically and
you may have an allergic like let's say you're in
a surgical procedure and you have an allergic reaction to
some of the medicine that they're giving you, and so
you go into pulmonary distress. Well, even if you have
a DNR, this doctors say at that point they will
override the DNR because they don't believe your DNR cover
or their argument is your DNR was covering the event
(28:27):
of a natural death, not something that was caused by
me under the course of treatment. Now there are doctors
in I've referenced one of a couple of them in
the article that I wrote who say they suspect that
also some of this overwriting dnrs may and this is uncharitable.
But they say that these are medical doctors saying some
of their colleagues are worried about bad statistics, and so
(28:49):
they may be saving people who don't want to be
saved because they don't want them dying on their table
or under their care, and so that is uncharitable. But
that is a charge that comes from one of the
doctor that talks about this. But legally it's battery. And
that's decided in the Cruison Verse Missouri case, where it
(29:10):
is explicitly stated by the Supreme Court that dnrs or
in that idea of for go medical treatment is as
easy as saying to somebody, I don't want you touching me.
And legally, now if you do touch me, it falls
under battery. So it is no, they're not under AMA
American Medical Association ethics allowed to override dnrs. It's legally
(29:34):
battery if they do so. But they do it, and
they do it for various reasons, for various excuses that
they offer. Sometimes they just don't think it was the
right decision. Sometimes they say, like desiatrin, because that had
happened while they were treating the patient and they see
it not as a natural stoppage of the heart or
stopping breathing, Or they just have rushed in and not
known that we're talking about somebody with a DNR, but
(29:56):
by the time they found out, they'd already done the treatment,
or they are already amid treatment, so they don't want
to stop now. So it is difficult because it requires
a clear expression and then the hopes that the medical
professionals that you're dealing with they're going to honor your request,
and to not honor it is both a violation of
the ethics of the American Medical Association and a violation
of battery laws. But the reality is that there's very
(30:19):
little stomach for lawsuits in this particular area, so there's
just no financial benefit. No lawyer is going to be
able to direct to collect a lot on this particular thing,
so you don't see people filing lawsuits. As a matter
of fact. A case it was brought up by the
New York Times article on this particular issue. They said
that a woman who went through this and did not
(30:40):
want resuscitation attempts was resuscitated when she had a pulmonary
incident while she was in a recovery room. Faced long
term issues as a result of it, psychological and physical issues,
could no longer care for herself. Her body was just
not what it was prior to going into that. But
she can't find a lawyer that's willing to take a
lawsuit because there's just no money to be made.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Well, can you explain to our listeners You briefly mentioned
something about autonomy, like our personal autonomy and these issues,
So explain that, and what does the law say about
what is a patient's right to autonomy and how does
that really affect dn r's if you have or have
not signed one.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Well, you're And this is where I told when those
people would say to me, are you just ready for
me to die? When I was having a conversation with them,
I would respond no, But I do really want you
to have a conversation with your doctor, assuming you trust
your doctor, a very frank and honest conversation about what
treatment looks like when your heart stops, when your breathing stops,
(31:42):
what the physical cost of that will be on you,
And then you need to make an informed decision for
yourself whether that is something that you want to go
through in order to prolong life in the face of,
as I've already mentioned, the high rate of failure and
the high cost physically of the procedure being done correctly.
(32:03):
And once you have made that determination, we should respect
the autonomy. And also other things fall into this, uh
malfeas it's the idea of a doctor shouldn't be hurting
their patient, right. I mean that's one of the things.
Do no harm is the beginning of the hypocratic oath, right,
And so they they are to do no harm. It's
(32:24):
the first oath that they make to their patient. They'll
do no harm. And that's where Pope John Paul the
Second and his eventually Envita was saying, in your and
they've informed the consent of the patient. They have to
have the best information they can have, and then they
must make decisions about the medical treatment that they wish
to get. And in order to override that, like say
(32:47):
you were in a hospital, First of all, the patient
gets to make the decision. If the patient's incapacitated and
they don't have clearly stated medical directives written down, then
the medical surrogate, which is usually a parent of a
member of the family, steps in. And that's what I
did for my father. If the medical surrogates and the
doctors wildly disagree, the doctors can go to a medical
(33:08):
ethics committee in the hospital and to try to override
the personal wishes of it. But it would only be
the most extreme cases imaginable where they could either one
way or another, either lift a DNR or put in
place a DNR, because it would have to be something
so extreme that the medical ethics can be was willing
to violate the autonomy of the patient as expressed by
their medical surrogate, which is a powerful, powerful thing within
(33:32):
a statement of medical issues flat out, once you determine
what you want done to you that or what you
don't want done to you, they are supposed to respect
that across the board. And so your autonomy and the
principle of malfeasance of not hurting you unnecessarily, both of
those things come into play when we're talking about dnrs.
If a doctor realizes and one of the articles that
(33:56):
I quote it talks about code blues, and the doctor
talks about the psychological effect of treating patients, every patient
as if they were going to live through this, when
you know that's just not the case, and you wish
that they were clear directives and that they had expressed
(34:18):
in their own words that this is not something they
wanted for themselves, because as that doctor and other medical
professionals as at AMT that contacted me that one time, said,
they know they're doing harm in some cases when they're
offering resuscitation attempts on people who just have no hope
of being resuscitated.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
So help us navigate. You mentioned that you had like
a medical power of attorney for your dad at the time.
How do people like adult children navigate that? What if
they're you know, parents who you have that medical power
attorney says, you know what, I don't agree with the DNR.
(34:59):
How do you, as a Christian say, okay, is it
unethical to have one? What does you know is it unbiblical?
How do we help you know so there's not conflict, like, okay,
my medical pover attorney. You know the statistics, but the
person themselves feels still unsure. How do we talk about
these things even in the family as these You know,
so many families every day make these medical decisions.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
I called up my siblings and to talk to them
about care for one of our parents one time and said, hey,
we need to have a conversation about what mom wants
at the time, what did dad want? We need to
sit down, But it has to be an uncomfortable conversation.
So first of all, we all need to sit down
and have an uncomfortable conversation where we face certain realities,
(35:46):
and I think that's the hardest thing to Having dealt
with this a few times now with family members who
are getting older, there is the desire to want to
tell people what they want to hear, and especially when
the fiction has been portrayed for us so often in
front of us and the shows that we consume, the
movies and television shows that we consume, there is a
(36:07):
sense that you want to give people hope without having
a real conversation about it. And that's one of the
things that I think I have learned through the years
and studying end of life issues. We're talking about, not
just issues like Euthanasian and DNR, but all of these.
How we deal with the life that's coming to an
end is to be able to sit down and have
(36:27):
two frank conversations. Number one of them is the idea
that you know, when you get to be in your eighties,
you have now lived past the average person's lifespan, and
now we realize that, look, we have to talk about
the way we're going to handle your treatment going forward,
as if we understood that your body is less capable
(36:50):
of handling things, and doctors are terrible communicating this as well.
I had to be that go between from my family
and doctors in several different places where we had we
had people my grandmother, my father, people in the hospital
and my aunt who are in the hospital who are
dealing with medical issues, and that my family wanted aggressive treatment,
and the doctor didn't want to say and know in
(37:12):
certain terms their body won't survive treatment. They just it
won't if we start introducing these every medical treatment that
you and I take, even at this age of fifty four,
or or even my son at twenty two, or anybody,
if you go through medical treatment, there is both the
benefit and a cost, right every single one of you
(37:33):
take pills. Those pills have a benefit and they have
a cost, and the cost is usually excessive. Put your
liver through excessive work to try to clear out those
chemicals from your body. But everything that we do has
a cost. Well, you reach a point, We reach a
point in our medical treatment. And this isn't just age related.
It could be related to other pathologies, but you reach
(37:53):
a point in the treatment where the cost is too
how your body simply cannot pay the cost any longer,
and without having an honest conversation about what it looks
like at that point then to say, look, our body
can't be and that's one of the reasons. And I
didn't mention this earlier. There are medical professionals that want
(38:13):
to stop calling them dnrs, and there's two other terms
that they use. As a matter of fact, the American
Medical as Socition actually has already moved over to do
not attempt resuscitation because they want to get away from
the idea of people believing resuscitation is an option available
to them, and they want people to start to understand
that resuscitation is a rare result of this sort of intervention,
so they change it to do not attempt resuscitation. Other
(38:37):
professionals that work in this area like the terms allow
natural death A and B to just allow people to
have a natural death as opposed to interceding with an
intervention that is going to be highly stressful and low
probability of succeeding, and so being able to sit down
with people and say, as Christians, for me, I start
(39:00):
to talk to them about things that we know about
what's coming, the comfort that we've been given about the
idea of what the end means, you know, the idea
that we're not to proceed as Paul said, people, we're
not to mourn as people who don't have hope. I mean,
we're not to see death in the same way that
those people who don't have hope see it. We're to
(39:23):
see it death differently. We're to see life differently. We're
to understand all of it through a different lens than
the world around us understands it. And so even though
CPR and all of these things have life saving qualities
to them, there is a point where we have to
ask questions about Okay, and borrowing from Paul, have I
fought the good fight? Is my race over? Have I
(39:44):
done what I'm supposed to do? Paul calls living Christ right.
He says and Philippians one one, twenty one through twenty three,
to live is Christ. So our life is the opportunity
to spread grace and mercy in the lives of other people,
just as Jesus, to represent Jesus, to be an ambassador
for Jesus and the world around you. But then he
(40:04):
says right after that to die is gain, to depart
and to be with Christ is better by far. That
we are on the verge of something beautiful. And even
though medical science keeps progressing to a place where we
can extend life, this sight of heaven further and further,
that we have the ability to live longer and longer,
(40:26):
that when those interventions become so intrusive that they're going
to do more harm than good, And what exactly are
they keeping the Christian from? Well, I'm a selfish human
being in the sense that I love my family and
at this point in my life, if you said, Jay,
the cost of being able to see your daughter tomorrow
is that we're going to break your ribs, break your
stern and last rate some of your organs, and you
are never going to be physically the same person that
(40:48):
you were before this happens to you. But you will
get to see your son and your daughter and your wife,
your daughter's and your wife for many more years to come.
I'll make that deal in a heartbeat, right. But if
I get into that point at eighty something years old,
whereas like there's a ninety five percent chance that we're
going to do all of this to you and you
(41:09):
are not going to be here tomorrow, and I feel
like at that point I have seen so many beautiful
things In the article I know I'm running on here.
In the article I mention the movie Cinderella, the live
action remake in twenty fifteen, directed by Kenneth Branning, and
it's a beautiful moment in that movie. The King finds
out he's dying, and his son looks at him and
(41:31):
you can just see the desperation and it like there's
something we got to do, but unspoken, and Derek Jacoby
playing the King looks at his son and says, it's
the way of all flesh, boy, and just at that
moment he accepts that this is just the destiny of
all of us. It is given to all of us
to die once. We are going to die from this earth.
(41:52):
But he lives long enough in the context of the
story to see his son fall in love, to see
him become a man, and to stand on his own
time that he's dying and he's laying in his bed,
his son climbs on the bed and it's one of
the To me, it is one of the most beautiful
moments because it tells us something profound about dying. And
I've talked to many people who have been through this
with relatives recently of the last few years. There's something
(42:16):
profound about accepting that moment when it's naturally there, when
death has reached us in our time on this earth,
has reached us in to take comfort in the idea
that we were promised that this is the beginning of
something new. This isn't something this isn't the end of
anything permanently. It's the beginning of higher relationships, deeper love,
(42:40):
more lasting and enduring, grace and mercy, things that we
can't even comprehend on this side of things. And so
if we have that hope, then Paul saying that we
shouldn't mourn like people who don't have hope, We should
more like people who understand it that our race has
been run. We have fought the good fight, and now
it's time. I am to go to where it is
(43:01):
better by far to die is gain and to not
fight now. It may be you may be of the
mindset that you say, Jay, I'm just going to fight
for every last second I get. Do not go digital
to that good night. I'm going to rage against the
dying of the light. And that's fine. And that's where
you get into the autonomy of every particular individual. For
(43:22):
that person that realizes that my body's coming to an end,
I knew a person whose mother had a very aggressive
form of brain cancer. She tried to fight at once
and it came back and she just said no more.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Well, I think some people might be getting uncomfortable and saying,
you know, Jay, you are in pro life, yes ministry,
and I hear what you're saying. But to me, by
signing this DNR, it seems like I'm giving up on
what Christians would hold to as being pro life. That
I see that my life or the life of my
family member is valuable.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Yeah, it's precious. All life is gift and it has
an estimable value. But all life does end, and there
is I heard one time I said there's no such
thing as death with dignity. A doctor one time told
me that there's no such thing as death with all
Death is terrible, okay. Well, and from a Christian then
there's some levels of that as well, in the sense
(44:14):
that death is a curse and that is what Jesus
came to lift from us. But to hold on to
that concept of life as only understood this side of Heaven,
I think is the mistake I'm fighting against. Not that
life isn't precious, and not that we shouldn't endure as
long as we could and spread the grace and mercy
as long as we can. But had I not given
(44:37):
that dn R from my father, what exactly was I
going to do to him at that moment? His body
was failing and he had and I say this, I
perhaps would have felt differently except he woke up shortly
before he died. He woke up days before he died,
and he and I I was in the hospital with him.
(44:58):
My father was not a Christian. I talked to him
about having been there and praying for him, and he
seemed to indicate that he knew I was there. He
knew I'd been there and praying for him, and said,
I'm praying for you every day. Hope that doesn't bother you,
and indicator that did not bother him. Then I said, well,
now that you're awake, i'll leave you alone on that
and he said he didn't want me to leave him alone.
He wanted me to keep praying, And so I prayed
with my father. And while I was praying with him
(45:20):
and praying over him that afternoon, as he was laying
with me, I said, would you like for me to
pray for you to receive Christ for the repentance of
your sins, and we talked about the Gospel for a moment,
and he indicated that he wished for that to happen,
and so we prayed together at that moment. Now, maybe
if I thought there was still work left for my
(45:41):
father to do at that point, I would have fought
to have one more moment so that I could preach
the gospel to reach him for the grace and mercy
of Christ. But as my father's body was just coming
to the natural end of his life, and I knew
the intrusive nature of what they were offering to do
to provide to make him live a little longer with
a high fail rate. And as one of the doctors said, look,
(46:02):
if I saved this patient, they were still going to
have cancer, they were still going to be in heart
cardiac failure, they were still going to have all of
these problems that they dealt with prior to this. But
she said, instead of me being on him forcing him
to go through this death that I was putting him through,
where I was doing chest compressions and trying my heart
(46:24):
is to make him live longer, this medical doctor said,
I wish I could have just set with him and
held his hand. And I think that that's one of
the things we've lost. And I saw this in euthanasia
as we talked about, and we talked about physician assistant suicide.
When you study that area as well, and you see
in the writings of Ira Biak, who is one of
the founders of the modern hospice movement, we have lost
(46:45):
in our culture the idea that dying is a part
of living. We have separated death with us. We have
put it in hospitals. We have put it away from
us so that we don't have to see it and
it doesn't have to be a part of our lives.
But that isn't a part of the common human experience.
Death was closer to them. They saw it, and they
weren't afraid of it in the sense that it was
a more of a natural part of the human experience.
(47:05):
It happened in their homes, the bodies rested in their homes,
They cared for the bodies afterwards, they were there as
relatives passed on. And now it's so separated from us,
I think we don't deal with it very well. So
this isn't Jay a pro life guy saying give up
on life. Life isn't precious. This is Jay saying all
of us reached the end of our life this side
(47:26):
of heaven, every single one of us, and we need
to make decisions when we get there as to whether
we want someone to violently attack our body. And the
older we get or the sicker we are with an
exceedingly low expectation that this is going to work, and
if it does work, I'm going to deal with whatever
it was that led me to that moment of death
and now all of the injuries that I accrued during
(47:48):
the treatment in this invasive measure to keep me alive
or it can just die. And death is not the end.
So it's not something we should be afraid of. I
don't think, even though it's mysterious and hard for us
to understand, and I understand the fear of death. At
the same time, we've been given so much scriptural comfort
(48:10):
that this is this is the work side of things,
and that there is a time where we can say
the work is done. Now, let me be, let me
go home. And I don't think that that's bad now,
but if you don't, if you do, this is where
autonomy comes in. If you're of the point of view
that you should say no, no matter the cost, no
(48:30):
matter the physical impact on my body, no matter what
it does to me, no matter the low point of
the low opportunity of success, I'm going to fight for
every last breath that I can possibly have on this earth.
Then I say, good for you, use your autonomy to
have that kind of plan made up for you. But
no one is required to endure those heroic measures to
try to endure it just a few more moments of
(48:51):
their time here on this earth. I don't think we're
morally required to do so. I do believe that that
blanket Catholic statement that I mentioned earlier in the teachings
about John the Second probably are right online. I think
we have a moral obligation and duty to do what
is necessary under normal circumstances as a preserve of our life.
But I don't think that we are morally required to
be heroic in our pursuit of more time on earth
(49:14):
when we know that that means more probably than not
damage to our bodies and a very low probability of success.
I think at that point, somebody in their eighties or
nineties whose body is fragile, I know somebody who dislocated
their jaw biting into a cookie. This is a person
in their early eighties. They bit into a cookie and
(49:36):
their jaw dislocated because their body just isn't capable of
handling pressures that it was when they were younger. Now,
if you read the things that I've read over the
last couple of months in preparation to write this article,
and you hear about the kind of physical force that's
going to be applied to that woman's body if she
gets CPR, what on earth is CPR going to do
(49:59):
to that woman body when biting into a cookie dislocated
her jaw.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
I'm sure most people aren't even thinking about this. I mean,
as they've listened to this podcast, they're just surprised. You
know the stats, I think, and most of us I don't.
It's hard to come to grips, like you said, with mortality, yes,
as we are so far removed from death and we
don't see it. You know, it's not like it was
two hundred years ago where you actually see people die.
(50:29):
Very few people. They might see one or two people die,
but it's not a regular occurrence that you actually literally
are there when the person passes. And so you know,
people are probably very hesitant, So how did they even
start the process? How would they? And also I guess
they would want to know, what if my doctor's not
a Christian, would they try to push me towards a
(50:51):
dn R because they think, well, you're old? So and
that's another question. You said, Okay, these people are older,
but isn't that something where and where people might be
infused with ethanasia? Well, you know, you've lived a good life,
you're in your seventies and eighties, so why not just
not you know, it's time to die or whatnot? So
how do people deal with this?
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Is I understand how it sounds like that because that
is clearly how it sounded when people and I talk
to each other. I would say to number one that
and I think this is vitally important on every aspect,
from the beginning of life to the end of life.
We should do the very best that we can to
have as our doctor someone we trust, because if you don't,
(51:34):
I don't. I mean, that's where that kind of stress
comes in. I trust my doctor. I love my doctor.
I think he's a great guy. I enjoy going in
and talking to him, and when he tells me something
is good for my health, and I ask him. I
will ask him pointed questions about the the types of things.
When when we go over my health and he tells
(51:56):
me this is good for you, then I trust him,
right because he is the doctor, and he is the
doctor I've chosen to put myself under the care of,
and I think that's a big deal. We have to
make sure that we have medical professionals in our lives
with whom we have a great deal of trust because
we're trusting everything to them. And it is not saying, well,
(52:17):
you might as well die. Remember, And basically what's happening
and what we're talking about in these situations, resuscitation is
bringing people back from the brink of death. This isn't
you went to the hospital, you found out that you
had a tumor and this is going to be a
care process going to last months. This isn't we found
out that you had a bacterial infection and we're going
(52:39):
to treat it and it's going to take days or
weeks to get you back. This isn't a viral infection
that we've got methods of treatment. This is essentially your
body stopped working. You were dying and now we are
attempting to resuscitate you, to bring you back from the
very brink of death, death that came on through cardiac
(53:02):
arrests or pulmonary distress for reasons that we don't know
at the moment what started that, what happened, what triggered it.
But this is the most extreme situations that we could
talk about. That's why the treatment is so extreme, because
this is a fight for life. This isn't just in
the ordinary intervention of metal. This isn't just ordinary medical treatment.
(53:23):
This isn't just you were going to live a lot
longer and then we withheld or gave you this to
make you die, or we withheld our official nutrition and
hydration and you died over the course of weeks. Those
are different moral concerns, different ethical concerns. They have to
be discussed. But in the context what we're discussing here,
we're discussing an emergency situation where our life is ending
(53:45):
and they're attempting to intervene and resuscitate us back to
a normal place. And I think in every medical professional
I read said, when you're talking about people where this
is an isolated incident, their bodies capable of handling the
CPR than CPR is the thing that you do. It's
a life saving thing, and more people should know how
(54:06):
to do it. We should have more defibrillators out there,
We should be more equipped to deal with these sorts
of things when they happen, because it's the number one
people way that people are dying by far. But there
comes a point where we recognize that the treatment itself
is too violent. As I mentioned that person. That person
and I just shared one story. I know a person
(54:28):
who was trying to make their bed and then by
just lifting the corner of their mattress, they had a
medical emergency begin through the tearing of their muscles and
the lining and their stuff. They had this massive hernias
that they got as a resultant and then had to
go into surgery. That's from lifting the corner of a bed.
This was a person in their eighties, right of their
(54:48):
mattress they were they were just trying to make their bed.
So we're talking about people who come to terms with
the idea that my body is just fragile for whatever reason,
if I have osteoporosis or whatever is going on, just
reaching that place where I'd have a failure to flourish.
I'm just not flourishing any longer. And if you sit
down with that person and say this is what this
(55:08):
type of medical intervention will do to your box, I'm
gonna be honest. Millennie, I wish I could unlearn some
of the things I've read in the sense of I
have read cases of where they applied CPR to people
and some of the horrible things that have happened to
their bodies as a result. To these people who are
in the last moments of their lives, read and detailed
(55:30):
accounts from doctors, and it made me wish I could
unlearn that because now I think in terms of the
people that I love, and I think, I want you
to live for as long as you can. The people
that I love, I want you to live as long
as you can. But there are people in my life
that I look at and I think, I don't want
(55:52):
someone to do that to you. Not now, even if
we were able to get you. And I said, the
success rate measure in different terms. Can I get somebody
from a cardiac arrest to the hospital live? Can I
get them into treatment of the hospital to discharge alive?
Will there be effects after the discharge that they're going
to be living with for the rest of their lives.
And when you add all of that together, the level
(56:14):
of success, so to speak, becomes shockingly low and compare
to the violence of the level of treatment. It makes
sense to have a conversation with a doctor you trust.
So sit down with a doctor that you trust and say,
you know my health better than anyone else in the world.
(56:35):
What do you think about dnrs? What do you think
about attempts to resuscitate me at this point of my life?
What would be the cost on my life? What would
be the chances of success? What would be the probability
that I would walk out able to enjoy my life
as I did prior to all of this. A doctor
or medical professional that you trust will give you honest answers.
And if you have a doctor or medical professional that
(56:57):
you don't trust overseeing your care, go find one that
you do.
Speaker 1 (57:02):
Now you've talked about like older people, but I think
all Christians should think about this. So how should they
think about this in a way where we can actually
get it done. I think it's one of the probably
the lowest priorities that people have. Sign a dn R,
don't sign a dn R. And do you talked about
making your wishes known? If after listening to this podcast,
(57:23):
no matter your age, is it something you should tell
a loved one, Well, hey, I listened to this and
I don't want to have a dn R or I
don't have one and I should get one. How should
we think through this issue?
Speaker 2 (57:34):
I think one of the things there was a couple
of books that I've read that I thought were great
in the sense of One of them is by a
doctor named far Kurlin and a professor of philosophy and
Christopher Tulofsen called The Way of Medicine. Another one is
by a guy by the name of carter O Sneed
out of Notre Dame where he talks and both of
(57:56):
these his calls what it means to be human, the
Case for the Body, public bioethics, and even the evangel
m Vite by Pope John Paul the second. All of
these people talk about the idea of properly used medicine
takes into account the human being as a whole, right
that we're embodied. We're not bodies, were embodied beings, and
(58:20):
so it takes into account the human being as a
whole and the circumstances, and so medical directives are things
that all of us should consider and think about and
talk to our families about. We should think before we
get into those situations. These are the places, These are
the things that I would like done. These are the
things that I would not like done. We should become
educated as best we can about what different procedures would
(58:42):
look like under different circumstances. But another thing that's important,
and I think every one of those people that I mentioned,
Curtis Knee, Christopher Tolofsen, far Curlin, and Pope John Paul
the Second when he was alive, all of them would
say that your medical directives are in flux. We shouldn't
look at them as permanent things. For if I give
(59:04):
a medical directive right now, and let's say I change
my mind, because right now I would not sign a
DNR for me or for my wife. There are other
people that I would probably say, you should have a
serious conversation with your doctor and make certain decisions, but
I wouldn't even consider them for my wife and I
at this point, because the cost would be worth the
payout of the possibility of living longer. At this age
(59:24):
of stage of our lives, at a stage of health
that we're in because it's not age necessarily, it's the
stage of health. They're very robustly healthy older people that
should say, look, my body can handle it. There are
other people that are dealing with things they would come
to terms saying my body probably can't handle this. Each
person must be dealt with as an individual. Each person
must make their decisions, and they must go into a
(59:46):
medical relationship where they understand and the medical professionals also
understand that these directives can change that. I could make
these directives now and say this is what I want
right now, but then I can make changes to it
later if I wish to. It could be that I
I sign a DNR, but I go into the hospital
and I am feeling good about my chances of surviving
(01:00:06):
whatever got me in, And when I get to the hospital,
I say, look, I have a DNR right now on
my medical records. I would like that lift it and
have that. I want to talk to somebody right now.
I want resuscitation right now. I thought about it five
months ago, ten years ago, whenever I was thinking about
all of this, I thought that I wanted one thing.
But at this moment, I want another and start to
(01:00:27):
make those medical directives, not as a sense that I'm
making permanent plans right now, but to see it as
I'm trying to figure out what the best path forward
through this medical relationship that I'm going to have moving
towards my natural death will be. And I want to
understand and stay in constant communication with the people around
me because I need to understand that they shouldn't be
(01:00:48):
seen as permanent decisions every time you make them, but
that you can make episodic decisions that you can see
things coming and you can say, look, right now, I'm healthy.
I don't need a DNR. I feel healthy, I feel
like I can handle it. I feel like I'm capable
of dealing with or even though I think I have
a very low probability of surviving, I feel like I
want it. I want to have a chance to come
(01:01:08):
out of this, even if that means I have to
go through what I have to go through to get there.
But having those conversations and looking forward and understanding fear
of death should never drive us. It's just should not.
As a Christians, we shouldn't be driven by a fear
of death. But nor should we be driven by a
desire to die. We should look at what's coming and
it's necessary because medical ability to keep us alive, to
(01:01:31):
prolong our life is just going to advance as the
years go on, and so we have to be both
aware of what that means, what that requires of us,
and to be confident in our autonomy to be able
to make decisions for ourselves and to talk to the
people around us, and to make those decisions made known.
So that is one thing I wanted to make very clear,
and that's what every author that I've read about this
(01:01:52):
as far as the ethics of it goes. If you
have a dn R but you're heading towards a medical situation,
lift it if you want to. It's not a permanent
If you put a DNR and file, you can go
into everybody around you and say I want the DNR lifted.
All you have to do is sign a piece of
paper have a witness sign it. So you just need
a witness. You need somebody to witness that you signed
(01:02:12):
a piece of paper saying that you want the DNR lifted.
In case something happens as you go into the hospital
or you make this views known to the medical professionals
in the hospital. We just can't look at medical care
as an all or nothing all I make this decision
and its permanent kind of thing. Everything must be understood
in the circumstances and in the context with which these
things are happening to the person to whom it's happening,
(01:02:33):
and everybody is in flux making decisions about what's best
for the health and flourishing of the patient. Either the
patient makes it for themselves, or their medical proxies or
medical surrogates who know them well are going to help
them in that situation where they can't express them for themselves,
or they've stayed in constant communication with their doctors saying
I want to have open and honest conversations about this
because death is going to come to us all and
(01:02:57):
so let's face it like people who have hope that
there's more beyond it, and be honest in our conversations
with the people around us about what it means for
us and for them at the end of our lives.
Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
Well, you've certainly given us a lot to think about today, Jay,
and so I'm going to end our conversation here, but
I do have a fun question for you, because that's
kind of a heavy topic. Yes, heading into the summer soon,
and what would you prefer going to the ocean and
swimming in the ocean or going lakeside and swimming in
a lake. Oh.
Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
I love the ocean, particularly. I love the Gulf of Mexico.
There's a place that we go every year and I
wake up early in the morning, I go down. I
set chairs up at like five point thirty in the
morning to beat the rush of people that are fighting
for space on the beach, and then I just sit
there for about an hour and a half by myself
and pray and the noise, the smell. I am an
(01:03:53):
ocean guy. That is my place of peace. So Yes,
after working on this and thinking about the things, reading
about the things I've read about, I am looking forward
to the next opportunity to just be at that moment
of peace with God. And there's a lovely moment for
me at the ocean where I feel small, he feels big,
(01:04:14):
and I know he's got it.
Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
Well. Thanks Jay for being a guest again on the
Postmodern Realities podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
It was great to be a guest again.
Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
You've been listening to episode four hundred and forty one
of the post Modern Realities podcast from the Christian Research Journal.
Today's guest was Jay Watts, founder and president of Merely
Human Ministries, Inc. We have been talking about his online
exclusive feature article for the Journal, which you can read
(01:04:43):
for free. His article is called Exploring dn R Decisions
with Hope. Please head on over to equip dot org
to read his article.
Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
You won't want to miss out on subscribing to the
other podcasts from the Christian recon Institute. We have the
Bible answer Man podcast, which is published Monday through Friday,
with the best of the week on Saturday. It's hosted
by CRI President Hank Handagraph and is available wherever you
get your favorite podcasts. In addition, Hank has a podcast
(01:05:17):
called Hank Unplugged. Hank takes you out of the studio
and into his study to engage in free flowing, essential
Christian conversations on critical issues with some of the most interesting,
informative and inspirational people on the planet. And you won't
want to miss out on the brand new podcast from
(01:05:38):
the Christian Research Journal. Christian Research Journal Reads presents audio
versions of Christian Research Journal articles. It was a print
incarnation of almost forty five years. It's now on the
web as you know, with new articles every single week,
so you won't want to miss these audio articles of
some of our most popular and most accessed articles on
(01:06:01):
our website equip dot org.