Doctors examined her, and told her family she would never walk or talk again. She was unable to respond to anything, but she saw and heard all of this, including the doctors' pronouncements that she was in a vegetative state. After several months, she began to recover mobility and speech. All this happened before I met her. (We've been married for 25 years.)
Last year, our younger daughter collapsed in a seizure in the middle of the night at her school. The hospital put her on a respirator and more IV drips than I have ever seen in a single room. The EEG, we were told, showed only "minimal", "terminal" brain activity. There was some (albeit mild) pressure to "accept the situation" that she would not recover. We asked for 48 hours on life support, and got it. Near the end of that time, she awoke. Five days later, she walked out of the hospital. It would have been two days, but we had to wait through the weekend and Labor Day (when the doctors whose signoff we needed to leave were out sunnin' and funnin'.)
If the culture of death is allowed to grow any further, that mild pressure we experienced, pressure to "pull the plug", will become stronger every day.
"When in doubt, choose life."
Or it will become like it is in the Nederlands: mandatory cessation of life support at the moment that the physician determines that you are consuming state funds unjustifiably.