My dad died. Twice, actually. The first time that he died was very suddenly. He suffered from a pulmonary embolism on the morning of February 23rd, 2008. His wife heard him breathing heavily as he left the bathroom and grabbed something from his closet. Shortly after, he collapsed.

She called 911 immediately and they directed her to check for signs of life. She could not find breath or a pulse, so she proceeded to perform CPR under the guidance of 911. This could not have been easy. C- is a small 79 year old woman. My father was 73 and weighed over 250 lbs. Obviously the moments were very emotional for her, but she probably had a lot of adrenaline keeping her going.

My father was taken to the emergency room in an ambulance, by the time he arrived at the hospital, he had a pulse and was initiating his own breathing, but could only breathe with the help of a machine.

My father and she had talked about what they would want in a situation like this. They had agreed that he would want a chance to live, but would not want to be KEPT alive by use of machines. In this situation, it became clear that the amount of brain damage that he had would have him living a life that he would not choose to stay in.

My husband J- and i have had many talks about life support as well. I think it was during the Terry Schiavo case we started talking about it. J- was on one extreme with wanting almost no medical intervention. Now that I have some actual experience with this, I see that this is easier said than done. Many times situations like these aren’t really as black and white as they seem.

While J- would prefer to have no intervention, it is hard to imagine doing anything other than what C- did. Of course I would want to try and save my husbands life. On the other hand, if my father had just died the first time, it would have saved a very difficult 4 days and a lot of medical expenses.

My father was not in good health to begin with. His heart and lungs were okay, but he was very heavy and had diabetes that he hadn’t taken care of for about 20 years. He wasn’t really getting around anymore. During the first few days, it wasn’t really clear what would happen. His prognosis was never good, but everyone said there was some hope; that sometimes people surprised them and that they were amazed that he was doing as well as he was. He had a steady pulse and was initiating his own breathing. The whole time, the threat of infection loomed, it seems that dad had gotten fluid in his lungs and probably had pneumonia. He was suffering from myoclonus, which are tremors caused by brain misfunction, which became longer and closer together.

By Wednesday morning, his temperature was up to over 103, even with an ice cold blanket on him and he was shaking constantly. We had an eeg the evening before. Unfortunately, it is not a very good test. What it did tell us (which we had already figured out, really) is that any brain response that my father did have was inconsistent and slow, he would probably never regain consciousness. My concern was that he did have SOME brain response to pain. It wasn’t clear what the response was, but C- and I began to feel as though we were torturing him by keeping him on life support.

So the question calls me, what is the “right” thing to do. Looking back, what could have been done differently and what would have been the best scenario for all involved.

Talking about what would have been best for my dad is complicated. He did have some choice in the matter and it is C-’s belief that this is the path that he chose for himself. Of course, there is a possibility that the decision to take him off life support came later than it ought to have. We do not know about any suffering that he may have been experiencing, there is certainly a chance that letting him stay dead the first time would have really been the best for him, it was fast and relatively painless.

For the family, it was a very stressful situation to be simply waiting to see what happened. In a way, it is lucky that my father’s body began to fail him even on life support, so that our decision was very clear. It would have been much more difficult to take him off of life support if it weren’t clear that he weren’t going to die anyways. On the other hand, it was a really positive experience to come together as a family and work as a team, to say goodbye to my father, and to have a week-long process to absorb the reality of his death. Taking him off life support was a very clear climax to this experience, where my strongest emotions came out. His death ended up being somewhat elating and beautiful, in a way.

So, my answer to the question is that there is no right and wrong about it. There is no way to know what the “right” way to die for my dad was. The ability to bring people back to life and keep them alive is complicated in ways that I hadn’t previously understood. This power comes with a great deal of risk and responsibilities, along with the obvious potential.