Difficult Decisions
My parents made their end-of-life decisions long before they needed to by signing an advance directive. Dad was lucid until the end, but things were different for Mom. After his death, she moved into a nursing home where her slow, sad decline from Alzheimer’s disease continued for seven more heartbreaking years.
During her last winter, mom developed aspiration pneumonia. In the emergency room cubicle, she gasped for breath and tugged on the oxygen mask as her eyes darted to the scrub-clad personnel who hovered around her: a lab tech drawing blood, a nurse starting an IV, a respiratory therapist getting an arterial blood gas. A red emergency cart drawer filled with endotracheal tubes was left ajar.
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