LIFE is exciting. I would hope that, as a judge, you haven't become too jaded to appreciate that. I DO NOT mean that as an insult. Judges deal with the tragedies of life on a regular basis. It would be easy to become disillusioned.
It's not so much that you become jaded, but you realize after hearing the same arguments over and over, like you guys were hear, that the biggest problems are that teh two sides were not addressing the needs of the others. The grandaughter obviousley cares for teh grandmother or she would not of taken on the enourmous burden of caring for her. And I speak from personal experience with that. She probably thought that she was doing the right thing. "Let grandma go to Jesus." it's that what she said. Does that sound like an evil person? While you guys were trying to tell me Georgia law I was researching arotic dissections. The mortality rate for a woman of the grandmothers age is very, very high. Especially if there are other complications. That was what this young woman was hearing. Don't demonizer her for wanting to let her grandmother go. In her mind from teh information the doctors gave her. Her grandmother has a terminal condition in the grandaughters mind.
That brings me to the rest of the family. It is HIGHLY unusual for the family member who makes the medical decisions to not live in the same area as the person. I am going to hazzard a guess and say that they were problably not listed in the contact information the hospital had, or if the situation was critical, which at the moment of the dissection it would have been, where time was of the essence the hosptial will defer to the wishes of the family member that they have availble. Which is not against the law. Hospitals have that authority. All the regulations and codes that you have been so diligently posting only apply in emergency situations where the family is there.
Now afterwards, is a different story. Once the patient is stable in order for the other family members to assert thier rights they have to go to court and ask for them. Which is exactly what happened. and After readig the psot by the nephew, I would go back to my original premise that at some point before this incident the grandaughter had an ajudication in her favor or the nephew would not have said that he wanted her to turn legal authority over to him.