If I'm ever catastrophically injured...
If I'm ever hurt badly and cannot speak or need to be kept sedated (or whatever), please don't go around asking people to pray for me. This is about as close to doing nothing as I could possibly imagine. Instead, the most productive thing that could be done would be the following (roughly in this order of priority):
- For all that is holy, please take me to one of the best medical facilities available. In dire emergency, do whatever is best. But once I'm stabilized, get me to a premier hospital. This means a hospital in a major urban area, that likely has a prestigious medical school attached to it (e.g. Stanford, UCSF, UT Southwestern, to name some in relevant areas). Do not settle on a local or regional hospital or I will murder you in your sleep once I awake.
- Get other opinions from well-respected doctors. Don't elicit second opinions from doctor friends that you know, and don't get second opinions from someone my current doctor knows. Likely your doctor friend is not the best person to get advice from, or they would work at the hospital that you took me to (see above). And colleagues of the first doctor are also bad people to give advice for fear that they may offend the first doctor's diagnosis or because of certain professional courtesies that have nothing to do with my health. Instead, offer to fly in a doctor from another premier hospital.
- Do not ask people to pray for me. Instead, do fund-raisers, ask people to give money to pay for all the shitload of bills that will undoubtedly build up while I'm in the hospital. Pay off my credit card, pay my rent, but most importantly, pay for high-quality medical care. Do not throw your hands up and say "it's in God's hands now." If I find out that you did this, then I will hold you personally responsible for my outcome. Pray if you want, but you better have already done something physical and concrete to make me better.
- If I am catatonic or in a coma for long periods of time or suffer some horrible brain injury that interferes with my ability to live, and cannot respond to the question: 'do I want to continue living?', then do not feel bad about taking me off life support. Do not make me a national TV cause.
In summary, do everything physically possible. Talk to real experts, and do not just accept the opinion of whatever doctor I'm assigned to locally. Act quickly in the early stages and make executive decisions. Do not spend all day praying when you could be doing something that has tangible effect on my outcome.