Daniela Lamas, of The New York Times, has made available for download her article, “When Faced With Death, People Often Change Their Minds,” published in The New York Times. The article begins as follows:
My patient had done everything possible to avoid being intubated. After a traumatic hospitalization when she was young, she had consistently told her loved ones that she would never again agree to a breathing tube. She had even filled out an advance directive years ago to formalize that decision.
But when she arrived in the emergency department one night this past spring with severe pneumonia, struggling to breathe, the doctors called her husband with a question. Should they intubate? If they didn’t, she would likely die.
He hesitated. Was this really the scenario that his wife, now in her late 60s, was imagining when she told him that she didn’t want a breathing tube? He could not ask her now, and faced with this impossible choice, he gave the team the OK. She was intubated and sedated and transferred to our intensive care unit later that night.
Posted by Bennett Mansour, Associate Editor, Wealth Strategies Journal.
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