Extremis

One of two takeaways for me. One is that this is a position that a lot of people have faced and will face in the future. Its uncomfortable to watch because it forces you to think of yourself in their shoes one day. I feel for the medical staff that are left to make decisions for the ones who cannot make those decisions themselves or don't have families.

The other is that the medical system in America needs a re-work. It makes you question if one of the factors that lead to many people finding themselves in this position is the failure of the system. $2000 for an ambulance? I too might delay my health if it means I might be too broke to live/feed my family.

OK, at first, I was gonna write "I have no words", but actually I have quite a few words..

This is by far the saddest, but also the most important documentary I've ever seen. I really appreciate good documentaries. After seeing this one, I just can't stop crying. This really got me thinking. 24 minutes of love, hope, pain and heartbreaking scenes. It's such an important topic. I believe and hope that this will help people see that life is fragile. This can happen to anyone. We need documentaries like this one.

My thoughts go to all of the incredible persons in this project, and all of the people who goes trough the same.

So real and so viscerally hard yet compelling enough to make you feel immersed in what you're seeing. "Extremis" touches one of those hard topics we tend to avoid and hardly ever think about until it happens to us or to someone we know and care about and that is the decision one must do in order to save a family member who's dying or to pull the plug and let them go because there's nothing more that can be done. A short documentary following medical doctors, families and people at the saddening final moments.

"Extremis" makes you think about those choices and gets all those different points of view of what to do, how to react and all the doubts that comes with it. The sick person can't do much to what's happening to them, the ones here all got tubes, equipment and such to help them breathe and continue to live in a deficient way. It all boils down to the talk the doctors must have with the family members, an extremely hard talk that follows with a more difficult decision.

We follow three or four cases, and people with better understanding in medicine will get it better the patients conditions since the film doesn't establish all that much, already cutting to what's going on and what's need to be done. In a way, it was very good they did that because all we need to know is that the patients will live though not in proper conditions and their relatives are the ones who can understand all the pain that goes through, all the caring they do and if they find appropriate to continue treatment or relieve their loved ones from more suffering. As someone who've always seen through the sick/dying one perspective, this is was truly something new to me, it made me reflect to how certain I could be in making an important decision concerning a person I loved, things that, unfortunately, they won't respond or say anything unless stated in previous talks - and that's the one we tend to avoid while going on living...cause death is for the later.

A commendable work though very sad to watch. What concerns me about the project is the thin line between what is exactly real and what is staged (if there is something like that, I mean, there were times I thought it was all acting). With a longer time, it'd be interesting for us in the audience to get everyone involved, backgrounds from families and the concerned doctors, just little things that'd make this a lot better. 8/10

No one gets out alive. I don't want to be tortured on my deathbed. W don't allow suffering in animals but we force living, intelligent beings to die in agony because we believe in some god. Selfish to their suffering, and by the time our time comes, it is too late to say we were wrong and don't want to die in pain because there is a tube down our throat and we ate tied down to a table. Humanity is a cruel and heartless species.

It's an important and worthy topic - honestly, more people should be aware of what these conversations are like, both so they can express their wishes to their loved ones in advance, and because it would probably lead to interesting reflections on what one wants out of life.

However I feel the execution of this short film leaves too much out. We're not told much about the preceding circumstances of any of the patients, some of whom only get about 45 seconds of screen time. What happened to the patient who was 38 and just became a grandma? She seemed pretty "with it" but was being put on a long term ventilator - why?

That said, it was instructive to see how the doctors debate these decisions. A lot of people will probably second guess some of the doctors (especially the curly haired white woman), but I actually feel better seeing that it's a bit of a committee rather than just one doctor. And there honestly isn't one right answer, which is why it's a debate.