how fast would you get to a doctor if you vomited BROWN stuff?
 

holy stubborn old man across the street. he used to be so active! always working on his house. i rarely see him anymore..when i do, i see him getting skinnier and skinnier.

i saw his wife..she is so worried but cant get him to the doc. the old guy is vomiting brown..and keep any food down.

i would do a burnout of my garage if i puked brown..right to the ER.

she said he is afraid of what they will find.

He's probably got a good point there.

'brown' is a bit vague..
coffee grinds is what folks rightfully freak about..
that's blood making it's way thru ..
he's losing weight is because food intake causes him pain down the line..
should he go ..
of course..
but he will most likely be barfing & split a line...
then it's a matter of minutes before he bleeds out..

Rika

Are his bowels working, is he having pain his belly?

what T is referring to is..
color & consistency ..
tar like would be my guess..

Dr's can tell much by what one expels..
same goes for urine..
figure the old guy knows he's got problems...
he's got a regime...
certain foods, barf to relieve pain, Maalox,Rolaids by the handful..
rinse & repeat.

Rika

I suspect he knows what time it is.

If it stank like hell and sort of granularish his liver may be shot. Esophageal varices because his liver is all plugged up.

Vash always has the best threads. Blook, blook ,blook

figure he'd have some edema going with liver going kaput..
my $ is Esop or colon..
not matter ..
agree with Biv...he know's it's bad news & made his decision..
no surgery, no this or that..
best he can hope for is to bleed out before the pain takes him to a hospital..

Rika

2 different mind-sets at work here:

my dad has leukemia. He's been fighting it for about 4 years. It has been an ugly, draining, terrible fight. And very expensive in all ways, not just $$$
Unfortunately it has taken it's toll. I don't want to say any more about it.


My wife asks why I only go to the doctor about once a decade. Paraphrasing.
When it's my time, people will say "wow, that was fast. all the sudden". I won't go through what he has gone through and I won't put anyone else through it either.

Some folks are afraid of what's next and some are not.

I think we may be related. Walk proudly and carry a big life insurance policy.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/puke.gif

Beer through the nose

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In the movie Saving Private Ryan the medic gets hit badly about half way to their objective. The rest of the platoon hovers over him, asking for his direction on what to do to save him. He suggests that a few more ampules of morphine ought to be about what he needs. After exchanging confused looks for a few moments, the rest of the platoon gets what he means. They nod and to each other and agree with him that they'll pump him as full of morphine as it takes to make him comfortable.

Perhaps Old Crotchety Neighbor is aware that what he needs is a case of single malt Scotch, a box of Cubans and a companion on the porch to share them.

U should be so fking lucky.

I subscribe to early warning system of regular doc visits. It's hard staying healthy. I would want to know.

He does know Vash.

Yep. Seems he's decided to check out at home if he can. I don't blame him.

As should you.

Give me a visit to the doc, hospital if necessary. Then if you don't have much time left they give you meds to make the trip into the next world more comfortable. Barfing up brown stuff at home and suffering needlessly is stupid. But each one to their own.

Even if I was older than dirt, I'd at least want to know what's up. There are things that are easily fixed, i.e. with meds, and others that aren't. If it isn't easily fixed, you can still go home to die. You don't have to agree to any treatment.

G

After watching several people go through cancer treatments, I think that if I were diagnosed, I would save my insurance company a few million, and just let nature take its course .

spent 3 or 4 days in the hospital a few years back.

nice local place, great staff (no misspelled pun intended), etc.

never want to do it again. it's damaging to the soul. I can certainly understand an older person saying '**** on that, i'll die on my terms'.

This. Many types of cancer and horrible diseases can be treated and cured. At the very least many can have treatments for the symptoms, and make live more comfortable.

I do for sure believe in a LEGAL medical assisted end of life. My uncle died a horrible horrible death from cancer. In the final days he was on morphine at such a heavy dose that any more would kill him, yet he would scream in agony when trying to move him enough to change sheets. No one wants to go through that. No one wants to see it. Let them go. I fully understand it is a slippery slope, but there has to be a way.

hospice is, in my experience, simply upping the morphine dosage until death occurs.

It depends on what color the last thing I ate was.

Which brings us to those profound philosophical questions, of course.

The whole assisted death thing is a red herring.

Death has been 'assisted' in our medical system from the beginning.

Some will say it is just how one reads between the lines, but to me there is a fundamental difference between actively giving someone a lethal dose of a pain med, and a pain dose that is so large it overwhelms the autonomic nervous system and you stop breathing.

One is a direct action (choice), the other is a side effect. A HUGE difference between two.

IMHO, pain should be controlled/avoided as much as possible. Killing yourself before you get to that point... well that's 'your choice' and you should have to put that into action YOURSELF. Don't drag your Dr. into it. They will have your back WHEN YOU NEED IT if you let them.

My dad had esophagus and lasted ten years after the surgery... at the end it returned, he couldn't eat and just got weaker and weaker until he died in his sleep (but he got an extra ten years!)

My mom had colon cancer about twenty years ago, she had surgery and they gave her a year or two. She turned 92 this year.