We don’t artificially feed someone who is dying no. There’s a point at which this becomes futile, the body is dying and feeding it won’t prevent that death.
Artificial fluids and feed when someone is dying comforts the family and not the patient. The body as it goes through the dying phase struggles to process fluids - they end up in the wrong place within the body pooling on such areas as the lungs/chest - this is a huge part of why you will hear what is often referred to as the death rattle.
Cannulation to deliver those fluids is also painful as the veins tend to become very difficult to use - cannulation is invasive and performing an invasive procedure on a dying patient is cruel and undignified.
If someone can eat/drink they are fed, if they can’t and life can be saved they are given IV/NG feeding/hydration.
If they are dying, death is a natural process and they should not have needless shoves in them and we should look to help with sips of fluid if possible or good mouth care.
We need to be better at recognising deterioration and the dying process.
2 weeks ago my friends dad died, he died with 2 cannulas in, he had ben pulled about, rehydrated, fluids stopped when bloods taken no longer showed dehydration but within 24/48 hours given it all again.
I visited him often, it was clear to me from my palliative care background he was dying, I told the nurses he was dying, he had periods of real alertness and they looked at me like I was mad.
But he couldn’t sustain his body - had reached his natural end, his desire to eat/drink gone. Finished his days with maybe 1-2 spoons of food each meal time.
He was miserable stuck in a hospital bed, and in the end died alone with no one except me calling it he was dying.
His daughter sent home only 2 hours earlier with the Dr saying he wasn’t palliative.
I’d repositioned him in bed a few days earlier and let me tell you he was cachexic
I could feel every bone in his back.
So you see, all those fluids made no difference, maybe kept him going a few more days but what his treatment did was prolong his death. Those fluids shoved into a body that by very nature didn’t need or want them made more urination for which he had to be moved around more to deal with, made a wet chest because his body tissues became leaky and didn’t save his life.
To deliver them he had needles shoved into retracted veins with more than one attempt at cannulation needed to do so, thin frail skinned arms that barely had any fat on.
We need to be better at recognising impending death, better at supporting people to die naturally but without pain.
Flip that over to someone in their 40’s with a life limiting illness and 6-12 months to live and it’s absolutely correct we artificially feed/hydrate not doing so would’ve killing them.
But the fact remains that most people ( not all) that argue about the not giving food/fluids have witnessed their elderly relatives die without bags of fluid.
Apparently that’s barbaric and cruel not to shove needles into someone who is naturally dying but it’s ok to shove a needle into someone who still has 6-12 months to live.
To me you can’t have it both ways.
You can have a terminal illness for years but you become actually terminal only a short time before death.
