Miss Mae is 'everybody's' mother. What almost happened to her can happen to every one of us. There I go again, speaking as if I lived in the US, which I don't, I am an Australian. It just can't happen here. From personal experience both as the widow of a medical practitioner and the admittance of aged relatives to a nursing home where the patients are cared for right until their last moments, all I can offer is the suggestion that the US must change its entire system of medical care. Starting with the paperwork, the very wording of 'Living Wills' which appear to be designed to deliberately confuse and result in nothing less than the death of the person who signs a document that they believe expresses their wishes, and literally sentence themselves to death by starvation.
From what I have gathered of the Terri Schiavo saga, and now the sad Miss May story, death has become an industry in the US and the legal system is complicit.
'Guardianship' has become a mockery of the term - it's no longer an instrument that guarntees the best interest of the 'guarded' - Guardianship appears to have become a fast-track toward inheritance.
Atotrney Gibbs speaks out on Mae!
http://www.prolifeblogs.com/
I don't like this. Any of it. Families turning against each other. People feeling like they need to write out every medical directive possible because they can't trust the people that love them to do what they wish.
I hate to think that I couldn't trust my hubby to make good decisions for me.
This is just my opinion but I think part of the problem is we expect too much from doctors. We look to them for all our medical questions and the doctors feel pressured to give definant diagnosis when that is almost impossible. Not everone is goin to react to treatment the same way. And the average person hearing medical terminology hang on every word the doctors say because we as the public are intimidated by what we don't understand.