When is the end of life?
My friend Bill died recently. A brilliant scholar, he had suffered a number of strokes, and was being cared for in a facility that catered to patients with dementia and brain injuries. He decided that it was time to let nature take its course. He refused most food and medications, and died in short order, but he died fully confident in the resurrection life that lay ahead.
A few weeks later I was in the ER with a man in his mid-to-late nineties who had also suffered from a number of strokes. He was surrounded by family who pressed the staff to do whatever they could to not let him die. The last I heard he was still in the hospital being kept alive, but with no hope of recovery in any sense of the word that makes sense.
Our medics responded recently to the home of a 98-year-old woman who appeared to have no pulse but did not have a DNR order that anyone knew about. Her caretakers were emotionally agitated, urging that she not be allowed to die. The medics did what they had to to get a pulse and transport her to a hospital, where, connected to all the available contraptions, she died. By then a son had been located who affirmed that there was a DNR, but he was the only one with a copy and lived hundreds of miles away.
