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Daughter from California Syndrome
- asimjalis 5y agoI liked the last line: ‘In California, the "daughter from California" is known as the "daughter from New York".’
- LordDragonfang 5y agoAlmost missed this until I went back to check. I liked: See also: * Dunning–Kruger effect * Karen (pejorative)
- rconti 5y agoI laughed out loud at that as well. Although I guess in a westward expansion type scenario, where children "go west", it does make more sense that the child would be returning 'home' to the elderly parent in the east.
- ggm 5y agoGet an advanced health directive worked out well before you need one.
- rossdavidh 5y agoMy father did, and I never really thought about that too much, but it no doubt removed an amazing amount of confusion from my life at a time when I was not emotionally in good shape to deal with it wisely. As soon as I got back home, I sat down and immediately did the same, for my daughter's sake. Just kidding; of course I didn't. I should get on that.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoThis amounts to torturing someone for your own comfort instead of doing what's in their best interest. I have heard it described as "prolonging their death, not their life."
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mkl 5y agoThis came up in the "How Doctors Die" discussion the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26685244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26685244
- EvanAnderson 5y agoGiven that this is a forum with strong international participation I'd be interested to hear what non-Americans think about this. As an American, I believe that our culture has a very unhealthy attitude toward dying (often thinking about it as "if" instead of "when"). I think that attitude drives a lot of bad decisions surrounding end-of-life care (both for ourselves, and for loved ones). I know that attitude about euthanasia differ pretty markedly in other countries. How about the attitudes re: death and dying? Are the "attitude problems" I observe an American anomaly?
- mekkkkkk 5y agoI don't know if my experience is representative, but those I've known who have been terminally ill have all been calmly accepting of the fact after all reasonable options were exhausted. Same for their respective loved ones. One of my relatives went through assisted euthanasia before the illness got really bad, and it was mostly a respected decision by everyone. This is in Europe.
- ACow_Adonis 5y agoit's definitely consistent across the anglosphere in my experience. indeed, one of the non- American sensitivities, given other nation's relatively socialised medicines, is the application of comparatively redundant/ inefficient/pointless treatments on individuals nearing their end of life, because a lot of medical treatments assume the patient actually has prospects of recovery or the ability to gain utility from the outcome of a treatment. for instance, should you provide socialised elective (or otherwise) surgery to a 98 year old with dementia. what about physio for their "recovery period"? you can get a lot of pressure for treatments to "do something" (both from family members and from cost-recovery incentives... course in for profit systems those problems don't go away, and this is not addressing the issues with medicine that would genuinely require family intervention)
- thinkingemote 5y agoI think more interesting differences could come from cultures within America; do Irish Americans have different attidues than urban modern atheist ones, for example.
- 5y ago
- thaumaturgy 5y agoThis reads a bit like the medical profession's inability to acknowledge its own fallibility. I don't know if I would have qualified as a "daughter from California", but I have intervened in the care of a couple of family members, and in one case in particular it was for a pretty flagrant cock-up. I'm busy with my own life. I haven't always been able to visit relatives as often as I'd like. I try to ask questions about their health when the topic comes up, but I also have to trust them and their caregivers to be competent. But when there's a serious life event, I'll show up, and bring curiosity with me, and sometimes that uncovers mistakes made by people who are simply less invested in the well-being of my relative. In my grandfather's case, some long-term health issues got him admitted into a home hospice program. Overall, it was a great program. But, he was in it for well over three years. Home hospice is structured to last for around six months. There's a common drug cocktail of benzodiazepines and opioids that gets administered in increasing dosages to bed-ridden hospice patients, to help "ease them along". It's not common knowledge that this happens and it can be done without the family's knowledge or consent. In cases involving pain or anxiety or end-of-life care, it's a kindness. But the medical literature specifically advises against it in elderly patients that are still mobile, because it significantly lowers their blood pressure and when they stand up it can cause them to pass out. That's what happened to my grandfather. He got banged up pretty good and admitted back into the hospital, which is a bad place to spend much time when you're elderly. He was hallucinating when I saw him and his mobility was far worse than it had been when I saw him several months prior. So, I started asking questions, got caught up to what was going on, started pressing the matter, and finally got to pitch his case to a visiting internist, who reviewed it and then agreed that somebody had put him on the wrong program at some point and the rest was just a combination of game-of-telephone and just-following-orders. Dosages were gradually decreased, he regained full consciousness, got some PT, got out of the hospital, and had another couple of years of grandchildren and great-grandchildren and friends and so on. "Daughter from California Syndrome" may just as well be a term for the systemic errors that many people in medicine would prefer not to acknowledge.
- mekkkkkk 5y agoI don't think that the proverbial daughter necessarily has to be wrong. It's just a description of a sudden flurry of engagement by someone who has been distant from a dying patient. It's probably misguided in a lot of cases, but not all.
- notacoward 5y agoThis exists in programming too. People joining a project often start pushing for it to include every great idea they heard about at their last job (or the one they bounced to/from). Psychologically I think it's the same thing. Call it "Developer from Google Syndrome" I guess.
- thinkingemote 5y agoI think a better one would be a manager who was not participating much who, when learning of some major illness of a code center, diagnosed by an external consultant, attempts to fix it and instead makes things worse. The metaphor would be that if the manager was doing their job they would agree with the diagnosis of the consultants. Thinking about it perhaps it's not a manager but a senior developer. Someone with some limited power.
- mekkkkkk 5y agoI really don't think that is similar at all. The proverbial daughter is desperate to regain some sort of lost connection with a dying parent before it is too late. Maybe she feels that she needs to make up for all the care and attention she didn't give while the parent was healthy. Maybe she is in shock for not realizing the situation earlier. How is this like a programmer switching jobs?
- CyberRabbi 5y agoI can certainly empathize with the daughter from California. Life moves very fast and the lucky few notice before it’s too late.
- barnaclejive 5y ago> See also > Dunning–Kruger effect > Karen (pejorative)