Life Support or Treatment - What do you call it?

[cdwbrooklyn]

As I was reading some posts and people were explaining their issues, I noticed that some people refer to dialysis as life support.  I've never heard anyone in my clinic refer to dialysis as life support.   I don't see it that way and to be honest it upsets me when people actually see it as life support because I don't see myself on any life support at all.   

Life support to me is a machine that helps you breath because you can't do it on your own.  Dialysis is not that kind of machine.  Dialysis is a machine to clean the toxins out of your blood because you kidneys are not able to do it because of weakness or failure.   So how does one person gets dialysis mixed up with life support?  This is way over my head 

Can someone please explain to me the similarities of dialysis and life support? 

Thanks

CDW

[Hanify]

I'm with yu.  I don't see it as life support - even though it is supporting my life.  Life support is a term as you said, which refers to a machine that keeps you alive 24/7.  Dialysis is no more life support to me than the chemo I take to keep my cancer at bay.

[monrein]

I certainly view dialysis as life support.  And I don't view chemotherapy as such at all.  Chemo is a treatment for cancer, the goal being to zap the cancer into remission and one is not on chemo indefinitely.  We hope that the cancer is eradicated and we continue life without chemo.  Without any chemo treatment in the first place, a cancer patient may die or they may not if the cancer goes into remission on it's own.
Dialysis on the other hand keeps people with ESRD alive.  It literally supports us to continue living.  If we stop dialysis, which keeps us alive by artificial measures, we will die....depending on our individual residual function it would'nt take very long either.

[paris]

Definition of Life support
Life support: 1. A therapy or device designed to preserve someone's life when an essential bodily system is not doing so. Life support may, for example, involve enteric feeding (by a tube), total parenteral nutrition, mechanical ventilation, a pacemaker, defibrillator, heart/lung machine, or dialysis.
(found when I googled life support)

I think this helps explains why it is looked at as life support.  You will die without kidney function and dialysis is artificial replacement of what the kidneys do.     

[cariad]

In all honesty, I don't understand why this is such a central issue when discussing dialysis. It seems to come up quite often. Yes, I understand these definitions matter in the legal world, but for those of us just living our day to day lives, I guess I don't get why the semantics of it are so distracting.

[thegrammalady]

In all honesty, I don't understand why this is such a central issue when discussing dialysis. It seems to come up quite often. Yes, I understand these definitions matter in the legal world, but for those of us just living our day to day lives, I guess I don't get why the semantics of it are so distracting.

i see you too ignore the big blue gorilla in the corner of the room. i'll say it again, he has a right to be there as long as he cleans up his own messes.

[dwcrawford]

So it is life support.  For a diabetic so is, sometimes, insulin.  That still doesn't mean it is ok to deny the "treatment"  or "life support" without the patients request, directive or some other court approved legal means. 

If, grammalady, we were only her if we keep the mess cleaned up, where would I move to?

Why do I comment on these things?  As Cariad just said, I guess I don't get why the semantics of it are so distracting.

[Hanify]

And Monrein some cancers aren't cureable and do need lifetime chemo - so what's the difference then.  I mean that I don't regard it as the same as life support - not that it isn't technically.

[renalwife]

 


Is heating your house life support?  We would freeze to death if we didn't have heat.

Never mind......It doesn't matter.

[Stoday]

I my view life support as a special kind of treatment. Most treatments improve your life; life support is a treatment that prevents death.

So I suppose house heating might be a form of life support.

[tyefly]

  Dont forget   Food..... just had my dinner..... I mean  life support.......

[Mizar]

I think Monrein, said it well. For My Husband, it is, Life Support. Maybe, it depends, on what Stage, You, entered, it as to how You see it. My Husband, went from  being " Well "  to Complete Kidney Failure, in Two Weeks. Without it now, He would Die and it would not take very long. I don't mean to sound " Crass " when I say, this, It's just a Fact.

[pamster42000]

I don't consider dialysis a form of life support and I never will. From my point of view it is a treatment.It has always been explained to me as a treatment, not a cure. No Dr. said it was life support.  Guess it all depends on your point of view....I'm just glad dialysis was available for my daughter...years ago a group of people chose who got dialysis...if you weren't one of the  ones chosen you died...no choices, no options.

[jbeany]

Legally, it's considered life support.  Even the Catholic church considers it life support - they don't consider it suicide to stop it.

Mentally, most of us think "treatment" because we need to focus on the idea that we can live long, active lives on it.  Everyone's mental image of life support usually involves someone in ICU, covered in tubes and barely alive.

[okarol]

To me it's life support because without it, Jenna would not have survived. ESRD is terminal without it. Same with her kidney transplant, it prolongs her life, and if it fails, she'll be back on dialysis.

[cookie2008]

We can live a long time with dialysis yes I do consider it life support, I dont compare it to chemo or the other life sustaining machines. Ive seen my father on dialysis and we had him in our lives longer than we would have if he didnt do the treatment and I seen my mother suffer and die from cancer would we have put her on life support no because she would have suffered longer with the type of cancer she had, and I wouldnt want anybody to go thru what she went thru.

[dwcrawford]

Interesting discussion demonstrating how most things are perspectives.  If you think about it, eating is life support isn't it?  But what's wrong with life support?

[girliekick]

what is wrong w life support?
 
There needs to be a legal answer, but it boils down to individual view point. And peace w that.

I have had asthma my whole life & been treated w steroids, preventive meds as well as acute med.
For me asthma was easy to define. As it was audible, visual, & tactile..... & acute. The only thing i could see from ckd was foamy pee.  i have many symptoms from k failure and D, when my head hurts i tend to FEEL the problem is in my head. (ha oops didn't mean it like that)  it was always easier for me to treat the asthma when it needed it. 

- lets see if i can make my point now-

with out the asthma med, i promise you that i would not be here.  sustaining my life. D is sustaining my life also, but the difference is i cannot make different health choices, herbal remedies, and shield myself from certain things and maintain a good Kt/v or GFR.  having those choices is what separates  a medical option and life support. If i could say this machine isn't doing it for me i think ill take a yr leave. (but i would die) then i would not consider this treatment life support.

Our lifes are extemded, prolonged.  bc of technology we are confronted with our mortality with a choice. Which seems kind of unnatural  to me. Some may refuse to hear the knock of death, and not see it as a choice, others may see it as a blessing to give them more time.  it is some thing we choose to do every treatment, and we our all aware of what changing our minds means.

I struggled w this issue for a long time, as i always believed that i didn't want any type of life support ever.   I either had to change  my personal definition of life support, or accept D the way i saw it.

Girl

[petey]

I think dialysis is definitely life support.  And I don't have a problem with the fact that my husband is on life support -- just glad there's a life support available for him.

[dwcrawford]

Yep, glad there is still a life to support.  Dialysis and Lantus and a couple of spam sandwiches and I have a life.  Only wish I had a younger and better looking body to go with it.

[monrein]

http://www.deathreference.com/Ke-Ma/Life-Support-System.html


Just because I don't WANT to view myself as needing any form of life support doesn't mean that I'm not on it.  All sorts of things support life in humans, breathing, eating and so on and the stark truth is that every human being is in a process of dying.  None of us will get out alive.  There is however a distinction to be made between a treatment (dialysis is a life sustaining treatment) without which a person would die within a reasonably predictable time frame and a treatment that treats a condition and improves the quality of life but without which life will continue to bump along indefinitely...not forever which is impossible but without a pretty clear end in sight.  Although food supports life (and we should indeed worry about the quality and quantity of what we eat) I don't think anyone considers it a "treatment" but rather one of the essential conditions of life.  It's not a treatment if it's something that every human being must do, it seems to me.   

All this stuff can of course be "argued" and picked at until infinity, such is the nature of linguistics, but I think this discussion has more to do with our personal feelings about our illness and our own mortality than it does with the semantics or semiotics of the words life support.   Denial or the personal redefinition of words can be comforting to some and as such can be viewed as a functional coping mechanism as long as dialysis is continued.  If however we take the idea that D is NOT life support, to it's logical end and stop doing it, we will more than likely be dead reasonably quickly.  Furthermore, we are not obliged to do dialysis, we have the choice to refuse or even stop life support measures and as such we are not legally considered to have committed suicide.

I'm personally very happy to have lived a very artificially prolonged life.  I was given 6 weeks to live at 8 months old but I will turn 57 this year.  I don't find death scary but I prefer living with the support currently offered by my kidney transplant and if and when that fails, like my last one did, then I'll be back in the world of D, and glad it's there if I choose it.

[dwcrawford]

I, personally, would die possibly in weeks or perhaps month without my support of dialysis.  However I could end it all in a couple of days (at least the consciousness of it) if I abruptly stop Lantus.  It's all semantics anyway.  Whoever needs the last word, Go. 

[petey]

Whoever needs the last word, Go. 

"GO" says Petey............didn't surprise you that I wanted the last word, now did it, Dan?

[cdwbrooklyn]

Thanks everyone who responded.  I've taken you views in consideration and can see why some may see if as life support.   However, I am not in a state of denial and I do see dialysis as treatments.   There are people who have to be on meds for the rest of their life or they will die.  Meds are considered treatments to a person that needs it in order to survive.   I see dialysis as a med that I need to survive, which is considered treatments to me.   On the other hand, life support is a machine I need to breath and without it, I cannot breath. Being on life support, you cannot work, play, date, eat solid foods, etc.  So life support is more devastating then dialysis.  I only need dailysis three times a week for 3 1/2 hours.   I can skip one treatment and still be okay.  On life support, I need it every day 24/7.  I cannot skip it because I will die as soon as I am not on it.  To me, it is a huge difference.  So, my mind cannot wrap around dialysis as being life support.  Sorry, I don't see it that way however, I do respect those who do. 

Thanks again everyone! 

[Malibu]

Petey said it all -- I thought my husband was going to die before he finally agreed to dialysis.  I am ever so thankful for the life support that is dialysis. 

dwcrawford -- what in the heck is that in your picture?