The End-of-Life/ICU doctors Frontline followed and interviewed in this piece are amazing. Not only are they caring and compassionate, they manage to interview on camera about gut-wrenching decisions that are needing to be made, while still having concern in their voice and not turn into a robot that's not trying to show emotion. I only hope I get doctors like them when I'm in this position.
This show brings up the choices people are faced with when treatment to heal someone is no longer working. They are at the point where they will never get better, and will eventually die. They describe how with our current technology, we can pretty much keep every part of a dying person alive with machines, for years. But then it questions if this is the right thing to do.
The stories are all real lives of people who are dying, and the slower pace of this show works well for it. This gives you time to learn about these individuals, meet their families, understand their pain and watch them as they cling to every last hope for life. No ones story of death should be rushed. These are stories that we will ALL some day find ourselves in. We will either be the one dying, or the family member at the end of the bed.
Stories of grandmothers, fathers, brothers, mothers and husbands are all filmed. You feel as though you're right there in the room with the families, clinging to hope that this one last effort will work. You're heartbroken and crushed with tears in your eyes when you see the results of all their fighting.
They show how there are some treatments that actually kill 30% of all the patients. It asks whether living a year in horrible pain and in constant treatment is better than 4 months of good health, painless life and dying sooner. It shows how in the end, the results are all the same...that no one wants to die.
