By Lesley Wye
Senior Research Fellow
Centre for Academic Primary Care
My father is dying. This is pretty bad. What’s worse is that he’s dying in the US.
The Economist Intelligence Unit recently published a report that ranked the UK as the best place to die in the world, with the US ranking 9th, and I’m inclined to agree.
With advanced prostate cancer, a tumour in his liver 14 cm long, another pushing in his bladder and a recent bout of pneumonia, we’ve been told that my father has “weeks” to live.
He’s currently in a ‘skilled nursing facility’ on the premises of a retirement community. Medicare, a US federal government programme, is paying for his care, but only while he continues to have physiotherapy twice a day. It’s rather heart-breaking watching my father struggle to stand for more than 30 seconds and then collapse exhausted in his bed. But … Read more